Chapter 736: Still Something in the Cracks

Just as he was rising, out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of something—seemed like a dense mass of living things—hiding in the cracks of the reef.

His legs had already kicked upward, but he immediately stopped, spun around in the water, and kicked back, wanting to confirm what it was.

The seabed was a hazy grey, and as the sky gradually darkened, the light grew worse and worse. He had just been busy pulling the shrimp cage free from the reef it was stuck on, and only saw that the reef was smooth and bare, no longer the scene of last year when it was crawling with abalone.

He felt a moment of regret, then paid it no more attention.

This time, having flipped over and come back, he stopped in front of the crack between two reefs and curiously peered inside—and to his delight.

"Ah!" he exclaimed in his heart.

Soft silk! Big-tail squid!

In the cracks of this reef was a whole pile of big-tail squid.

The big-tail squid is called "the king among squids," its flavor is superb, and the largest individuals can grow to three or four kilograms; colloquially they also call it soft silk.

It likes reefs on the seabed, likes concave inner positions, likes places with seagrass.

Its eyes are the largest of all the locking-tube family, so it is rather photophobic; during the day it lives in waters fifty meters deep, and only on moonless nights does it swim up to the shallows just a few meters from the surface.

Here, because of tectonic movement, the reef was pushed up, so this stretch is only a dozen or so meters deep; these soft silk fear the light, which is why they hid into the cracks of the reef.

Ye Yaodong really wanted to catch them all, but they had hidden into the cracks of the reef and were hard to reach; the surface of the reef was rugged and uneven, and if he stuck his hand in, one careless moment and it would be scraped.

Besides, he didn't have much time left—he was about to run out.

But to just stand by and watch, then walk away like that, he couldn't swallow it either; he felt behind him for the small hand net tucked at his waist.

He had originally brought it along just in case he ran into lobsters, so he could net them with it. Unfortunately, walking over just now he hadn't seen any, not even sea cucumbers—maybe the light was too poor and he missed them.

This time, the little hand net could come in handy, but he had to hurry.

He slowly extended the hand net into the crack of the reef; the soft silk that had been perfectly still were instantly startled and began swimming about in all directions.

With only this little time, scooping them all up in one go was impossible; he could only try to see if he could grab a few more.

Spotting a small cluster that was relatively bunched together, he swept the hand net over them, then, as they darted and bumped this way and that, he slowly drew it back out along the wall of the reef.

Then he reached his hand in ahead of time at the mouth, waiting for the hand net to come out so he could immediately close the opening and keep the soft silk from escaping.

Even though the soft silk in the crack had been startled, they didn't dart straight out; instead, after swimming about a few times, they shot deeper inside.

Ye Yaodong just glanced, then took the soft silk inside the hand net out one by one through the mouth, and stuffed them into the net pouch at his waist.

Only four, because each one was just too big—the moment he grabbed one in his hand he could feel it weighed a full two jin.

Right after that, he reached in again.

Time was running out, and he could feel his breathing getting labored; he swept the net around haphazardly, then drew it back out—this time only two. After grabbing them he immediately hurried to the surface.

Only after his head broke the surface did he let out a breath of relief.

Ye Fu had been waiting anxiously up top, glancing at the sea one moment, glancing at the island the next, terrified that fishing boat might suddenly come over.

He didn't dare tug the rope carelessly, afraid it was still tied around Dongzi's waist, afraid that pulling on it would affect his movements on the seabed—he could only sit there in anxious restlessness.

Only when he surfaced did he dare to pull the rope with relief, slowly and steadily hauling up the big blue shark that had been bound by the rope on the seabed.

This big blue shark was over two meters long, probably a hundred-plus jin; while it was in the water, pulling it was still fairly easy.

But just as it was about to break the surface, it thrashed violently, and Ye Fu alone simply couldn't manage.

As soon as Ye Yaodong surfaced he scrambled quickly onto the boat; after gasping for breath twice, he helped pull together. Father and son, with great effort and time, finally hauled the shark up bit by bit.

It had only been a short while since it went down, yet several kinds of sea worms that specialize in eating corpses had already crawled onto the shark, and two starfish had attached themselves to it as well—they only fell off as it was being hauled up.

Both father and son wiped sweat from their brows, panting.

"Fussing this, fussing that... next time don't go running your mouth... that dog mouth of yours is way too accurate..."

"Same to you!" Ye Yaodong talked back.

"Why were you down there so long? Nearly scared me to death. Next time teach me, swap and let me go down."

"Forget it, you're already old; just keep watch up top. This kind of work, the young folks go down."

Ye Yaodong spoke as he untied the net pouch at his waist. The moment he'd surfaced he'd only gasped twice before helping his dad pull the shark, so the soft silk inside still hadn't been let out.

Only now did Ye Fu notice the few soft silk in the net pouch at his waist, and he was immediately astonished.

"There's this down there too?"

"I was about to come up, but then I saw a whole bunch of these hiding in the cracks of the reef, so I had to turn back, spent two minutes catching a few—nearly drowned me."

"You could've come up first, what's the rush for this little bit of time? If something happened to a person, what then? We can always go down again."

"Who's going down again with you? It's already dark. I figured it'd only delay me a minute or two, should be fine—and it actually was fine. Caught six of them, over ten jin; there's one really big one, probably two or three jin. Wonder if it'll still be there tomorrow?"

Ye Yaodong fished out the biggest soft silk and handed it to his dad to look at.

Big-bodied, thick-fleshed—Ye Fu felt it the moment it was in his hand: this one was at least two and a half jin, probably close to three.

Don't be fooled by the size, it's not tough at all; the flesh is fine and tender, delicious fresh—better by far than the iron-plate squid on the night-market street.

"This one's worth money, and it's big. These few together are fifteen or sixteen jin; at six or seven mao per jin, that's just over ten yuan."

Ye Yaodong poured all the soft silk from the net pouch into a bucket. "Two more minutes of fussing underwater, earned ten yuan—that'll do."

"When you come out tomorrow, go down and check if they're still there. If they are, you can catch more. It's too late today, it's already dark, can't see a thing."

"Mm." Ye Yaodong glanced toward the distant island; that boat still hadn't left. He figured the watch was hard to find—wasting time was no better than just taking one from the confiscated smuggled goods to make up for it.

He hoped they wouldn't come again tomorrow; otherwise he wouldn't dare go into the water openly, and would have to stay on edge the whole time.

"I'll go start the boat, you tidy up the catch on the deck." Ye Fu tossed out one line, then went to start the boat.

"Wait a sec, there's still one shrimp cage not hauled up. When I found that big shark just now, I also spotted a shrimp cage stuck on the reef. After I freed the cage, I noticed the soft silk in the cracks. Let's haul the cage up first—won't take a few minutes."

Pulling it up now and dropping it back down, then coming to collect another haul tomorrow, could net a few more jin of catch.

"Oh, then steer the boat over a bit." He'd almost forgotten—there was still a shrimp cage.

After the sun set, darkness fell especially fast; in just the short while they'd been talking, the sky had already gone black.

By the time they'd hauled up that row of shrimp cages, the night was pitch black, and Ye Yaodong hurried to start the boat back.

There were still so many fish and shrimp on the boat that hadn't been sorted—plenty to do when they got back. Just the shrimp from the cages filled more than two baskets, and the deck was littered everywhere with saury.

Only the ones caught by the trawl nets during the day got sorted through a bit while they were working.

Ye Yaodong figured that once they docked, he would first take these trawl-net catches to sell, and load the rest into baskets to bring home. The horse mackerel weren't being sold anyway—they had to be taken back, gutted, and dried.

But sorting through those two-plus baskets of shrimp wouldn't be that quick, and the fresh ones still made up a relatively small share, so there was no need to keep A-Cai hanging around there.

He'd take them home and sort them slowly himself, and once they were sorted there was no need to sell them either—he'd just dry them into dried shrimp directly.

Thinking this way, once they docked he did exactly that.

A-Cai watched with some regret—those baskets of horse mackerel looked like a thousand or two catties, worth a few dozen yuan at least.

Those shrimp that were said to be not fresh were also a pity; that was all money, but in the end they didn't get collected in time and went bad.

"You guys ran into a school of horse mackerel, didn't you?"

"Yeah, we happened to spot them on the way back, so we cast a few nets."

"Just in time to dry some more fish. Business at your shop in the city looks pretty good, huh? Much inventory? Last time I saw you took in so much, and your friend keeps buying goods back from the city to dry—you should be able to sell through year's end, right?"

Heh! He wasn't going to tell him that his stock was pretty much cleared out, and he was about to shut up shop and close for good.

Ye Yaodong played it off with a laugh. "Hard to say, so-so. We'll see when the time comes. But I did hear from my father-in-law that a lot of new shops have opened in the city lately. The area around the market entrance is looking livelier and livelier—I'd guess the spot around your second entrance will slowly start getting tenants too."

"I've heard the same. Best to rent it out, saves it just sitting in my hands when I don't have time to go run a shop in the city."

Otherwise, the way he sold dried fish so well, the whole village was spreading word that he'd made a fortune and was about to buy a second boat—how could the others not have thoughts about it in their hearts?

It's just that they couldn't find anyone suitable to go watch the shop in the city, and they were also worried that the new market had just relocated and the surroundings weren't lively yet, so their second entrance wouldn't have business, and they feared the investment cost would be too high.

"Oh right, I heard you bought a second boat—when are you bringing it back? Planning to lease it out like A-Guang did?"

"Not leasing it out yet. Planning to have one boat each with my dad, get through the upcoming squid fishing season first."

A-Cai gave him a thumbs-up. "You're something—watching you get rich step by step, and you even ran into this chance."

Ye Yaodong was a bit pleased with himself. If in a few more days he brought back another boat from the border defense station, wouldn't that scare them to death?

He could already imagine how the folks back home would boil over with excitement when his three boats sat side by side at the dock.

Not to mention the only one in the whole town—within these miles and villages, he was the only one who could own so many boats.

His mother was still pretty smart. He told her to only leak word that he'd bought one boat, and to hold off on mentioning the other one from the border defense station. Sure enough, now in the village there was only the rumor that he'd bought one boat.

At the critical moment, she was still fairly reliable.

"Hehe, God of Wealth bless, Goddess Mazu bless. Once Goddess Mazu moves into the Tianhou Temple, I'll have to burn a few extra sticks of incense too."