A merchant from Zhou Village, who had amassed a considerable fortune trading in Wuhu, chartered a vessel to return home. Before boarding, he witnessed a butcher slaughtering a dog at the pier. Moved by pity, he paid a hefty sum to buy the animal and brought it aboard for care.

The boat captain, in truth, was a brigand who specialized in robbing and murdering passengers. Having secretly observed the merchant's stored wealth, his greed was ignited. He slyly navigated the ship into a thicket of reeds, then crept into the cabin, dagger in hand, intending to end the merchant’s life. The merchant pleaded desperately for the captain to at least spare his corpse intact. The captain agreed, wrapped the merchant tightly in a blanket, and cast him into the swift current of the river.

The dog, seeing its master in peril, immediately leaped into the water. It seized the blanket in its jaws, preventing it from sinking, and so the man and the dog drifted together downstream for what seemed like many miles before finally coming to rest upon a shallow sandbar.

The dog scrambled ashore and searched frantically for people, finally reaching a populated area where it began to bark incessantly. One man, noting the dog's relentless agitation, sensed that something was amiss and followed it back