The Flow of the Yellow River

In 1974, the Yellow River ran dry.

Eighty meters beneath the riverbed, an expedition team unearthed an "Iron-Headed Dragon King Ship" wrapped in cast iron. Four men went below deck. Two drowned in a dry compartment with no water, one went mad, and one lost half a lung to rot.

Forty years later, the Yellow River ran dry again.

A debt collector who had crawled up from the riverbed arrived at an antique shop in Panjiayuan.

The ancestral rules had been broken, and the dead who had slept for ages awoke.

Dried corpses from the Qing dynasty hung upside down throughout the ship like bells, while living human hair sprouted all over a huge bronze coffin beneath the water.

My name is Shen Du, eldest grandson of the third generation of the Shen family.

They all say the Yellow River's depths are filled with endless bronze and gold.

But I alone know it is a vast tomb for the living, and I am the final nail to be driven into it.