Most of the people in the village had been engaged in this kind of work for generations. The workers would use sand scoops to dig up the yellow silt from the bottom of the Yellow River, then filter out the finer sand grains to sell elsewhere. In this way, they could make money on the one hand, and on the other, help dredge the Yellow River, reducing the risk of the river breaching its banks during flood season.

Just like the salt and charcoal guilds, once the sand trading business reached a certain scale, it also formed its own interest group. At that time, such sand trading groups were called sand factories.

Every year, there was a period when the Yellow River entered its dry season. The river would break off in sections, exposing the riverbed in many places. This was the best time to dig for sand, and also the busiest time for the sand factories.

All rivers that experience breaks in flow will show a similar phenomenon: a large river with an uneven riverbed, and after the water breaks off, the water level drops, forming many small lakes and ponds. At this time, the river hasn’t completely stopped flowing; water still seeps downstream beneath the sand layers, but the small lakes above are still.

The section of the river managed by this sand factory was just like this. The Yellow River was very wide there, and after the water broke off, a large waterless lake would appear in the middle of the riverbed. This lake had never dried up for thousands of years, and the water could last until the next flood season. Legend had it that a feng shui master once said this lake was the “eye of the Yellow River,” so the locals called it the “Yellow River Eye.”

For thousands of years, the “Yellow River Eye” had never dried up. No matter how severe the drought or how badly the upper reaches broke off, the “Yellow River Eye” remained as clear as a mirror. So this sand factory had never lacked water since ancient times. The elders all said there was a dragon at the bottom of the lake, so the water would never dry up. The villagers never had the habit of storing water.

However, one summer, a strange child in a green cotton-padded jacket suddenly appeared in the village, shouting everywhere that the Yellow River Eye was going to dry up and telling everyone to store water. No one believed him at the time; they just thought it was odd, since no one had ever seen this child before or knew whose family he belonged to.

Later, the child disappeared. People thought maybe an adult had taken him home, and the matter was dropped. No one gave it another thought.

A few months later, many people heard a loud “bang” on a clear day coming from the direction of the Yellow River Eye. When they ran over to look, they saw that the always crystal-clear Yellow River Eye had become completely muddy. An old man heard this and immediately said something was wrong—the dragon in the Yellow River Eye had flown away.

Sure enough, the next year, when the Yellow River broke off, the Yellow River Eye, which had never dried up in thousands of years, gradually began to show its bottom.

The villagers were all terrified, not knowing what they had done wrong. They invited several feng shui masters to calculate, but none could explain it. They could only watch as the Yellow River Eye turned into a patch of dry land.

The “Yellow River Eye” had never dried up before, so no one had ever seen the riverbed. In the days when it was about to dry up, the elders were filled with fear and reverence, burning incense and making offerings on the shore, hoping the dragon would return. But more young people came to watch the spectacle, curious to see if there were any traces of a dragon at the bottom of the river.

Naturally, there was no dragon at the bottom of the Yellow River Eye. But strangely, after the water dried up, a stone platform about half a person tall, half-buried in the sand, appeared in the riverbed mud.

The stone platform was about the size of a basketball court. The braver ones went down to the riverbed to look and found that it was built from some unknown material, seemingly without a single gap, as if it were a single piece. The surface was covered with strange bird-like carvings.

The most peculiar thing was that, under the sunlight, the stone appeared semi-translucent like mutton-fat jade. Through this translucence, they could see a black shadow inside. Touching the stone platform itself felt warm, but touching the area where the shadow showed through was icy cold, as if the black shadow could absorb heat.

People living in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River all knew that strange things were often dug up from the river. There were all sorts of wild legends. During the Republic era, it was said that crystal coffins containing corpses had been dug up in both Henan and Gansu, which was very strange. But no one had ever heard of such a large, semi-transparent stone platform being unearthed.

The superstitious local elders said this thing was a dragon’s coffin, and the black shadow inside the stone platform was the corpse of a dead dragon. But the shadow was too blurry to make out what it was. Many people said it looked like a person, while others said it wasn’t a person, but a big fish.

Those years were turbulent, with strange things happening everywhere. The village leaders discussed the matter and decided it couldn’t be spread around. They found a few brave men to bury the stone platform with mud. But strangely, no matter how they tried, they couldn’t keep it buried. The river sand piled on top of it one day would be gone the next, and the stone platform always ended up half-exposed.

The strangest thing was that some sharp-eyed people noticed the shadow inside the stone platform changed every day. At first, it seemed oval-shaped, but later it actually started to grow what looked like arms and legs.

In the past, when something like this happened, the village would always consult a feng shui master. But at that time, the village was very poor, and the good feng shui masters charged high fees. Most of the rest were just charlatans, and none could be found for the job. So they turned to the oldest old man in the village. This old man was already over ninety years old and was said to have once been a “southern tomb raider” (grave robber) with some feng shui skills. They carried the old man to the stone platform.