The Abyss Penitentiary

Evan Cross wants to be free of the Abyss Penitentiary. For years his body has been awake while his soul is chained up there, so he is drowsy all the time and gets bullied for it, and he has learned to put up with that. Then the dream changes. Behind bronze bars the Monkey King opens his eyes and calls him the Seventh Warden. Evan makes a deal with him: he will find the Monkey King's lost staff, and in return he gets to borrow the Monkey King's power and finally get out. He draws on the staff's power for the first time to save a girl with an evil thing living inside her, and that gets him taken in by the bureau that investigates strange incidents. He passes their test and becomes an intern. While he is hunting for the staff he learns that the Abyss was built to hide the thing the Celestial Realm fears most, that keeping prisoners was only ever the cover for it, and that his own place there was never simply a warden's. Then he finds out by chance that the staff is in the safe at the bureau's branch office.