In 1644, a local official named Hu Dai laid the first blue-stone blocks of a pagoda in Jingmen to control regional flooding. His workers had raised the walls to a height of just two feet when the rebel army of Li Zicheng breached the city gates. The builders fled, leaving behind an unfinished stone stump. For a century, this stump sat silent, swallowed by weeds and damp earth.

In 1746, a new prefect named Shu Chenglong arrived to rebuild the local government offices. Beneath the ruins, his laborers unearthed a vast, silent assembly of human bones—the remains of soldiers and citizens killed during the rebel siege a century earlier. Moved by the discovery, Shu gathered the skeletal remains, sealed them inside large wooden coffins, and buried them deep beneath the unfinished foundation of the pagoda. He completed the structure in 1750, carving the word "Shengtian"—meaning "ascending to heaven"—onto its surface to pacify the dead.

Time continued to reshape the stone. During the Xianfeng reign in 1859, local leaders repaired the tower. A century later, in 1959, industrial workers hollowed out the sacred interior, sealed it with cold cement, and topped it with a tank to serve as a water tower for a nearby phosphate factory. The original deity statues were destroyed in the mid-to-late 20th century. Finally, in 2011, preservationists restored the pagoda to its historic form. Today, it stands in Yuelianghu Square, a quiet monument of stone, bone, and survival.