Chapter 929: More Fishing Boats

Neither of them said a word. No matter what, he had no choice—he had to agree whether he wanted to or not.

If he didn't agree, things would continue like the past two days: he could only collect the catch from the two boats he'd brought, and there wasn't even much of it.

If he agreed, he could collect a bit more.

Ye Yaodong had thought about just grabbing the men from those two boats and giving them a beating, then having everyone cut them out and board at a different spot. But that would mean completely tearing things apart.

Blocking someone's path to wealth is like killing their parents. He came out here to make money, not to make enemies.

They had all come out together in the first place, from the same area. Making things too ugly wouldn't do anyone any good.

If he pushed them too far, they'd spread the word everywhere about his group having a fishing spot with tons of catch, making a thousand bucks a day. Then they wouldn't even need to leave this town.

Besides, they were renting right there. If they boarded at a different spot, those people could still follow them starting from their doorstep.

He couldn't dodge it either way, so he might as well use it to negotiate terms. It would honor the goodwill from last year and this year, and they could still greet each other in the future, keeping face.

Chen Jianian was silent for a moment, then nodded. "Fine, we'll do it your way. Tell me the fishing spot, and we'll each do our own thing, no interfering with each other."

"You two youngsters are something. In no time at all, you're almost squeezing me out."

"No, no, no. I didn't want things to go this way either. I wanted to keep my fishing spot to myself, but with you watching me like that, I couldn't keep it hidden. How is that us squeezing you out?"

A Guang chimed in, "I was already pretty content just being able to get in on it and make some money. Working together is fine by me, but you just had to take a liking to Dongzi's fishing spot. So we each just have to do our own thing."

"If you hadn't gotten in on it..."

"Even without you getting in on it, you couldn't handle this much catch..."

"Who says so? I can't handle it temporarily, but I can go negotiate with the factory later and arrange..."

"That's for later. This year there's this much catch and this many people, all because of Dongzi. You just spread the news, people followed you out. Getting half is already a lot..."

"Without my tip-off, you'd still be back home right now..."

"That's exactly why we gave you half. But who knew you'd be so greedy and even have people tail us..."

Chen Jianian was speechless with anger, his face flushed bright red, and he wanted to argue some more. Ye Yaodong quickly cut him off.

"Stop arguing, it's pointless. We all have our own issues, so let's just part on good terms. One favor for one favor, each does his own thing, each makes his own money."

Chen Jianian snorted coldly.

A Guang also rolled his eyes. "Don't snort. You've been making plenty of money lately too. Don't act like we owe you something. I'm telling you the fishing spot, and once I've repaid the favor of you telling us about the fishing season, it basically means everything you earned these past few days was free."

"How can you count it like that?"

"So do you want to part on good terms or not?" Ye Yaodong was getting annoyed by their bickering. It should've been settled in one sentence, but they had to start arguing again.

"We'll do it your way. Tomorrow morning, I'll bring those two boats and follow your boats there."

"Alright, that's settled then. We've had a long day, we need to hurry back and eat."

Saying that, Ye Yaodong grabbed A Guang and left.

As they walked, he said, "Why'd you have to argue with him so much? Give him a choice, he picks one, and we go. Why drag it out with all that useless talk?"

"That won't do. We have to argue it out clearly whose fault it is, otherwise people will think we're the ones who don't play fair."

"Everyone's got issues, how can you sort that out clearly? Forget it, let's leave it. Once we shake him off, you can earn a bit more, and I won't have to pay that middleman fee anymore."

A Guang grinned broadly, happy as could be.

Ye Fu saw them come back and knew the matter was settled. After asking a couple of questions, he nodded and said nothing.

A Guang asked hesitantly, "Should we bring the others along tomorrow?"

Ye Fu said, "Bring everyone. If we bring Chen Jianian and his group but leave our own people out, everyone will find out eventually and talk behind our backs. It'll leave a thorn in their hearts."

Ye Yaodong nodded in agreement. "I thought the same. Keeping it tightly to ourselves is one thing—that's normal. But once we've told outsiders, there's no reason to leave our own people out."

"Alright, let's eat first. Everyone else has finished, only you two haven't eaten yet."

"Yeah, it's a shame it rained for a few days. Who knows how long we can keep fishing."

"Fish one day at a time. Later, call everyone else over and tell them to go together tomorrow."

Early the next morning, Chen Jianian, for once, waited with the others at their doorstep.

Ye Yaodong and his group kept their promise and brought everyone along. A huge crowd headed to the dock, taking all the boats out toward the sea trench.

Everyone had been half in doubt at first, but once they reached the destination, one by one—just like A Zheng and Xiao Xiao a few days earlier—they were so shocked their jaws nearly hit the floor.

In their hearts they all kept exclaiming, "Good lord! No wonder they have so much catch every day. With this many jellyfish floating around, it's hard not to scoop up a lot."

With this natural treasure trove right here, why bother searching all over the place out there?

We're rich!

After Ye Yaodong stopped the boat and cut the engine, he turned and looked at the dozen-plus boats behind him, every one of them already drooling with fiery eyes.

He didn't bother with the others and directly told the boatmen on his boat to start fishing.

They'd reached the spot anyway, so everyone could fish on their own. Now wasn't the time for talking—whatever needed to be said could wait until they got back in the evening.

They fished enthusiastically all day long, and everyone's face was inevitably beaming with joy.

One day fishing at the sea trench was worth four days fishing out at sea. Just the money from selling today's catch had everyone thrilled.

After selling the catch in the evening, they hurried back to the rental house and started counting the money.

Chen Jianian, now that he knew the location, had to pay more in middleman fees today, but it still couldn't compare to when he was splitting profits with A Guang—the difference was huge.

Ye Yaodong didn't care what plans Chen Jianian had for the future. From now on, they'd each do their own thing. Still, he pulled A Guang aside to talk.

"Right now, all the catch from these 18 boats here is collected by you, and we don't have to split with Chen Jianian. What do you think about setting aside one or half a tenth for Yang Guo'an? That way he'll shelter us a bit more, and next year he'll remember to tip us off too."

"I had that idea before, but after giving away half, the catch wasn't much those few days, and there wasn't much left in hand. I could only send some random gifts. Now we really do need to give Yang Guo'an a share—next year we'll still be counting on him."

"Yeah, the local official beats the one far away. Zeng Zhao Weimin did say that if we have problems we should go to the local Gongan Bureau, and he's put in a word for us. But he's not actually here. We still have to rely on ourselves to win people over."

"I'll think it over tonight."

Ye Yaodong told him to handle it as he saw fit.

After showering and lying on the bed in a daze, he thought that if this trip could just keep going smoothly like this, fishing peacefully, that wouldn't be bad.

Last year it was trouble from outsiders; this year, with more people, it became internal conflict. Now this counts as resolved, right?

Sigh, he hoped nothing else would go wrong — out here on the road, all he wanted was to earn money safely and bring it home.

Too bad his hopes were pretty. Not even a few days later, one evening while he was selling goods, he noticed several strangers had appeared on the shore — and they were speaking their local dialect.

Everyone's attention was drawn over.

"Why are there so many people from our side? They weren't here yesterday." Ye Fu watched, puzzled.

"Did they just arrive today?"

"Shit, could it be that Chen Jianian called back home and had people come over?"

"Damn, very likely. That bastard doesn't have much cargo to collect, and seeing so many of us here with so much cargo, he's definitely jealous."

"Holy shit, how many people did he call over? Has he gone crazy chasing middleman fees?"

"Saw it coming long ago. There are so many of us here, pulling in so much cargo every day, while on his side there are only two boats' worth to collect — all the money goes into our pockets. How could he be content with that?"

Ye Yaodong knitted his brows tightly, then went on: "He came out here to make money in the first place. Seeing that treasure trove of a sea trench, of course he'd call back home and bring every relative and friend over."

"Dammit, should've never told them. We should've switched to a different dock."

"No use. As long as we're in the same town, they'll eventually find out where we live. Outsiders already stand out — can't avoid it." Father Pei said.

Ye Fu also said: "Let it be. He collects his, we collect ours. I thought we'd have to wait until next year before he brought more boats over — didn't expect he couldn't wait. In just a few days, this many extra people showed up at the dock."

"Wonder how many boats came?"

"Probably not that many. It was just empty talk — a phone call back home. At most his close relatives and friends would believe him. Where would they find so many trawlers willing to come?"

Their group didn't leave after finishing their pickup; they stood nearby watching the people across the way chat, watching them walk and laugh with Chen Jianian.

A few words drifted over on the wind — something about having searched a long time, docking at villages all around, asking their way here the whole trip, some people refusing to tell them, they should've arrived yesterday, something something…

"What do we do then?" Ye Ye Yaohua asked, deeply worried.

"Nothing. The well water doesn't interfere with the river water — we catch ours, they catch theirs. As long as they don't bother us, let them be."

"So many boats from our hometown — it'd be great if Chen Jianian couldn't collect any cargo!"

Ah Guang spoke his dark inner thought aloud: if Chen Jianian couldn't collect cargo, then the people he'd called over might just end up being a bargain for him.

Ah Zheng's eyes lit up and he immediately chimed in, "Good idea!"

His dad smacked the back of his head hard. "Good your head. Behave yourself. Out on the road, don't cause trouble. Let people do as they please. There's so much catch on the sea — you can't finish it in a few days, and it keeps growing every day. Can you even catch it all? Don't do anything stupid."

Ah Zheng covered the back of his head, wronged. "I was just saying."

Ah Guang couldn't help but edge a little farther from his dad too. "I was just saying too."

"We're all honest folk. We never even dreamed of the middleman money at the start of the year — you've already picked up a huge bargain. We did drive people off, and he went and called more people over to fish…"

"Dad, that's not right. What do you mean we drove people off? He was the one who had people follow our boat to find out the fishing spot. Then we figured we couldn't keep it hidden forever anyway, so we told him the location, repaid the favor, parted on good terms. This was a peaceful negotiated settlement."

Father Pei realized he'd misspoken. "Fine, fine, my mistake."

"We didn't wrong him either."

"No point talking about this. Let's head home — catch what we can for one day." Ye Yaodong, head aching, walked on ahead first.

Human relationships are this complicated, and human greed is endless. What can you do? Nothing.

Eat and drink your fill, then sleep on it.

Meet soldiers with generals, water with earth — that's how it is. He didn't know if what he'd done was right or wrong, but protecting his own and siding with his people — that definitely couldn't be wrong.

The group trudged back to the rental house in low spirits, but it wasn't long before a meal later, everyone had cheered up.

They had come here, and to the locals, they too were foreign invaders — no one was any better than anyone else.

The locals probably hated them enough to gnash their teeth.

Early the next morning, sure enough, not long after they arrived at their destination, four or five extra boats had appeared on the nearby sea.

Luckily it was only four or five more boats — everyone breathed a sigh of relief seeing it. Not too many, barely acceptable.

Those new fishing boats were also extremely well-behaved, not crowding close, keeping a great distance from their boats. The nearby sea was full of jellyfish anyway — more than enough for them to catch.

"Dongzi, feels like there are even more jellyfish today. Has the peak fishing season already arrived?" Ye Ye Yaosheng had just baited one and held it up in front of him as he spoke.

"Don't know, probably. We haven't been fishing out at sea, so we don't know if the numbers out there have gone up too. Anyway, yesterday evening the net bags on the island had noticeably more — double what they were a few days ago. We're collecting an extra thousand jin or so every day."

"The numbers are going up day by day, and our boats are increasing too. What if we finish this place off before the fishing season even ends?"

"If it's fished out, we find another spot. The whole coastline is that long — how could we count on just the catch from one sea trench? As long as it's still fishing season, there'll be a steady stream floating up on the sea. Don't worry about that."

"Lucky them — they picked up a ready-made bargain."

"Look on the bright side — at least it's people from our hometown who got the bargain. The natives are the ones losing out…"

"Their processing plants are making money too."

"True. The increased harvest is also boosting their local economy."

"With so many of our boats all heading the same direction every day, will it draw the attention of the local fishing boats?"

"Bah, jinx! Don't talk nonsense."

Brother Brother Asheng immediately pressed his lips tight shut.

Still, this reminded Ye Yaodong of something.

"Starting tomorrow, everyone goes out on their own. Don't wait for each other, don't have all the boats running together."