Dredging a Reservoir, I Unearthed a Southern Heavenly Gate

After his father disappeared, Zhou Du inherited a struggling underwater dredging crew on the verge of bankruptcy. To pay off eight million yuan in debt, he took an emergency dredging contract at Yunmeng Reservoir. All his competitors were waiting to see him make a fool of himself. The reservoir’s silt was twenty meters deep, and the bottom was strewn with rocks. The two previous crews had both withdrawn after their equipment broke down. Yet on his first day underwater, Zhou Du hauled up a bronze door knocker the size of his palm. A cultural relics expert examined it on the spot. A modern imitation. No historical value. Onlookers online mocked Zhou Du, saying he’d even brought out a prop from Journey to the West just to drum up publicity. But when the door knocker came free of the silt, a muffled question sounded from deep within the reservoir. “Who dares remove the ring of the South Heaven Gate?” That night, a chain reaching up from the bottom dragged the dredging boat ten kilometers. A trench ten thousand meters deep split open in the middle of the reservoir. A golden plaque even larger than the dam slowly rose from the silt.