The Salt Sea Map Beneath the Ice Dome

In the winter of 1984, while organizing old Republic-era archives, the National Surveying and Mapping Bureau discovered a peculiar map drawn using a 'salt crystal rubbing' technique—it marked not mountains and rivers, but a moving city. At the map's edge was a faded Tibetan annotation: 'When the salt sea dries, the ice dome opens; the greedy who enter become murals.' Kong Wu, a retired reconnaissance soldier; Shen Tang, an ancient architecture restorer; and Zhaxi Dunzhu, a highland guide, converge in Lhasa for different reasons: Kong Wu seeks his missing father, a geologist who never returned from a 1954 expedition; Shen Tang, while restoring Potala Palace texts, finds that three generations of her family have died under the map's curse; Zhaxi Dunzhu guards a clan secret—the 'Salt-Crusted Holy City' deep in the Karakoram resurfaces every sixty years, and 1984 marks the sixtieth year. — Description from novelcodex.org