Old Gentleman Zhang was a man of Shanxi. When he was about to marry off his daughter, he took his whole family south to Jiangnan to buy her trousseau. When the boat reached Jinshan, Zhang crossed the river first, bidding his family not to fry or cook anything greasy on the boat, for in the river there was a monstrous turtle that, smelling the savor, would come out and capsize boats and swallow travelers; it had been a scourge for a long time. After Zhang left, his family forgot and roasted meat on the boat. Suddenly a great wave overturned it, and his wife and daughter were both drowned.
Zhang rowed back, maddened with grief and hate, and climbed Jinshan to call on the abbot, asking about the turtle's doings that he might take revenge on it. The monk was alarmed. "We live with it from day to day," he said, "and, fearing disaster, worship it as a god; we pray it not to be angry, and at times sacrifice an ox or pig, throwing it half a carcass, which the creature leaps up to swallow and goes away. Who would dare be its enemy!" Zhang, on hearing this, at once conceived a plan. He summoned an ironsmith to set up a furnace halfway up the mountain and cast a mass of red-hot iron weighing more than a hundred catties. Having found out where the turtle habitually lurked, he sent two or three stout fellows to drop the iron in with great tongs. The turtle sprang out, swallowed it eagerly, and dived. In a moment the waves rose mountain-high; then the billows calmed, and the turtle floated up dead on the surface. Travelers and monks all rejoiced, and built a shrine to Old Gentleman Zhang, setting up his image in it as a water-god, to whom prayers never failed of answer.