Zhang Xianzhong was the leader of the peasant rebel army in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, and in recent years his name has been associated with the "Shenyin Ruins", which is located in the Minjiang River in Jiangkou Town, Meishan City, Sichuan Province. In 2015, a "rare treasure theft" unveiled the mystery of this site, which lasted for four years from 2011, according to relevant experts, the value of the theft exceeded 100 million, and many people were involved. In 2016, the Sichuan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage, with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, began archaeological excavation work on the site.
With the progress of archaeological excavations, the true face of this sinking silver site gradually surfaced, its scale is amazing, in ancient times, such a powerful and powerful person like Zhang Xianzhong in the face of a crisis, often sink the gold and silver jewelry to the bottom of the sea, in order to make a comeback in the future, so the "underwater sinking silver" is not a particularly rare thing, but like this scale of such a huge "sinking silver site" can be described as rare. 
Zhang Xianzhong was a household name in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, and he and Li Zicheng led the peasant uprising movement in the late Ming Dynasty. In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, peasant uprisings were frequent, and there were thirteen large-scale peasant uprising armies, among which Zhang Xianzhong and Gao Yingxiang were the oldest and the highest status. The peasant uprisings in feudal societies often had class limitations, and the leaders of these peasant uprisings often began to covet comfort, luxury, and oppress the common people after achieving certain successes, which was no different from the traditional feudal dynasties. Zhang Xianzhong was like this, in 1644, he led the army from Hubei to Sichuan, occupied Chengdu in August, and proclaimed himself emperor in Chengdu in January of the following year, and established the name Daxi. In the same year, Li Zicheng had already marched into Beijing and forced Emperor Chongzhen to hang himself, which shows that Li Zicheng is more forward-looking and more conforming to the will of the people. The newly established Onishi regime soon came to an end. Zhang Xianzhong had the courage to fight, but he did not have the ability to govern the country, and he himself was extremely brutal, which led to the excitement of the people in Sichuan, and everyone was in danger, which eventually caused a strong resistance. 
In fact, he has already set aside a way back for himself, he is ready to transport the wealth he has accumulated over the years of squeezing the people out of Sichuan, and then rely on this wealth to be incognito in the south of the Yangtze River and become an ordinary rich man. But things are not as simple as he imagined, there are only two roads to choose from out of Sichuan, one is the Shu Road in the north, as we all know that the Shu Road is difficult and rugged, Li Zicheng's generals occupy the Baoning area, and it is obviously difficult to get out of this road with a large number of gold, silver and jewelry. The second is the waterway to the south, but this road is not smooth, he ordered by a vanguard force to go south along the river, this vanguard encountered an ambush set by Yang Zhan on the way south, a large number of warships and ships of the vanguard were burned, Zhang Xianzhong was extremely angry after hearing the news, so he led all the remnants of his troops with gold, silver and jewelry down the river to start a decisive battle with Yang Zhan. 
During the decisive battle, the Yang army adopted the method of fire attack, and sailed to the main force of the Zhang army by light boats carrying flammable materials, under the action of the river wind, the warships of the Zhang army were quickly set on fire, due to the narrow channel of the Min River, the main ships that were ignited could not retreat, but in the end all the ships were burned to the ground. The ship's gold, silver, and jewels also sank to the bottom. However, Zhang Xianzhong survived the battle, and he led the remnants of his troops back to Chengdu Laoben, preparing to take the Shu Road in the north, because the gold, silver and jewelry were inconvenient to carry, he decided to hide these treasures and come back to retrieve them in the future. He first gathered a large number of craftsmen to build an embankment on the Jinjiang River to cut off the flow of water, and then ordered the excavation of many caves several zhang deep, sinking the gold, silver and jewelry to the bottom of the caves, covering them with earth and stones, and finally breaking the embankment. These gold, silver and jewelry are the capital of his turnover, and they are his hopes for the future. However, after the general of the Great Western Army, Liu Jinzhong, rebelled, Zhang Xianzhong finally died of an arrow, and these gold, silver and jewelry began to sleep for a long time. 
Recently, the three phases of archaeological excavation activities on the "sinking silver site" at the mouth of the Pengshan River in Sichuan have ended, the archaeological excavation activities, after more than three months, a total of various types of cultural relics have been unearthed, reaching more than 10,000 pieces, including more than 2,000 pieces of important cultural relics, mainly gold and silver utensils. One of the most special cultural relics is a gold seal, this gold seal is engraved with the four words "Shu Shibao", which is the first time that the Ming Dynasty Shizi treasure seal has been found in China. Up to now, 367 years have passed since "Zhang Xianzhong Shenyin". After more than 300 years of rain, these historical relics have finally resurfaced. The archaeological discovery of these cultural relics plays an extremely important role in confirming the event of "Zhang Xianzhong sinking silver".