In 2010, China's "golden decade" of coal came to an end. Qinghe County, Qingliao Province, serves as a national coal reserve base. The 63 coal mines in Jiulong Town contribute 80% of the county's GDP with "each mine supporting a street". Black coal not only brings a carnival of wealth, but also breeds cancers such as secret operations in mining rights approval, concealment of safety accidents, and the bundling of government and business interests. In 2011, the price of coal reached a peak of 590 yuan per ton. The "coal bosses" in Kowloon Town spent money like water and built the "Yinshan Club" imitating Shenmu's "White House International", which became a secret base for power-for-money transactions and cultural relic smuggling.
Coal prices have fallen off a cliff since 2013, reaching the bottom of 180 yuan per ton in 2016. 37 Coal mines in Jiulong Town closed down, 20,000 miners lost their jobs, and debt disputes and wage demands occurred frequently. In 2018, the "20 Years of Coal Investigation" policy was unsheathed, and a working group was stationed in Qinghe. Every transaction and mining disaster from the mining rights reform in 1998 to 2018 was re-examined, and the tomb robbery chain and corruption hidden under the black coal were completely uncovered. The thousands of kilometers of underground tunnels formed by coal mining have become a natural secret passage for all forces to sneak into the Tomb of the God of Plague.
