Chapter 3 Big Deal
Chapter 3 Big Deal
Time waits for no one. Li Changle was too lazy to bother with a few gossipy women. He ran down the mountain and walked to a pile of rocks by the sea. He walked through the rocks for more than ten meters and squeezed through a narrow crevice. A small cave appeared in front of him.
The entrance of the cave was only wide enough for one person to pass through. Once inside, it was about one meter wide and ten meters deep. When he reached the low end, he bent over and went in, took off his clothes and put them in the backpack. Then he put the net rope, headlamp, scoop net and net bag into an oilcloth bag and hid the backpack.
Carrying the oilcloth bag, he walked out of the cave, turned left, stepped on the sea water that submerged his feet, walked along the cliff for more than 30 meters, and stopped in front of a rock protruding from the cliff.
There is a culvert-like entrance under this protruding rock.
He took out his headlamp and put it on, took out the rope from the oilcloth bag, tied the bag up and tied it around his waist, took a deep breath, and dived into the water.
At first I just felt a little stinging in my ears, but after I gradually adapted to the underwater pressure, there was no discomfort anymore.
He had swam this route hundreds of times and could reach his destination with his eyes closed.
After diving about two or three meters, he began to tilt to the right and swim upstream. He swam for about two or three minutes. When he surfaced, he was already in a cave.
This cave was discovered accidentally by a few young people who went to the beach to watch the sunrise and dive in the millennium.
The cave is about one hundred square meters in size, like a large cave dug out by humans.
There are three water holes in the cave. The further you go in, the higher the terrain becomes, with jagged rocks everywhere. There is no place to stand at high places.
Everyone guessed that the top should be at the top of Yantou Mountain.
I heard that the first time they went in, they caught a few large yellow croakers, knocked a lot of oysters weighing three or four pounds each from the cliff, and after going out, they also found more than a dozen pearls of excellent quality.
The villagers who heard the news entered the cave and pried out all the oysters inside. It is said that many families also found pearls.
He followed in and pried out more than 100 kilograms of oysters. Perhaps he was unlucky and didn't get any pearls.
Later, people would dive into the cave from time to time, and he was one of them. Every time he went, he would be able to catch some sea fish from the three water pools inside.
After Li Changle entered, he shone the headlamp on the cliff, and saw that the cliff was densely covered with oysters.
Suddenly, there was a splashing sound coming from the puddle next to him. He turned his head and shone the headlamp over there, and saw a big bass. The lower mouth of this kind of fish is longer than the upper mouth, a typical overbite.
Further ahead, a conger eel about forty to fifty centimeters long and a blue crab were frightened by the light and crawled into the crevice of the rocks. There was another "splash" and the splashes of water from a big fish's panicked escape splashed all over him.
He wiped the water off his face and turned his head to look in the direction where the big fish fled. He screamed in surprise, "Fuck! What a big fish!"
Rice fish, whose scientific name is croaker, is also called sturgeon in some places. The bigger the fish is, the more valuable it is.
The reason why large rice fish are valuable is that the fish maw made from it has high medicinal value.
It has the effects of nourishing blood, tonifying the kidney, moistening the lungs and strengthening the spleen, and has anti-inflammatory effects; fish scales can be used to make scale glue; internal organs and bones can be used to make fish meal and fish oil; otoliths have the effects of clearing heat and removing blood stasis, and have diuresis.
In later generations, good wild croaker maw can be sold for tens of thousands of yuan per pound. This big rice fish must be at least thirty or forty pounds. In the previous life, a wild sturgeon of this size would cost at least three hundred yuan per pound. I wonder how much it can be sold for per pound these days.
When the headlights shone into the shadows, a colorful figure flashed in the corner of my eye.
Li Changle stared at a pair of colorful large flower dragons with green stripes, two dark red tentacles, black and white limbs, and many yellow spots dotted in between. They were swimming quickly towards the dark. This large lobster was the Chinese Splendid Lobster, which was called "God Shrimp" in ancient times.
Wild splendid lobsters were listed as second-class protected animals in 2021, and catching them privately is very dangerous!
Judging from the appearance of this pair of large flower dragons, the smaller one is more than 30 centimeters long. In later times, such live shrimps would be sold for at least tens of thousands. It should be no problem to sell them for 1,800 now, right?
After the millennium, the starting price of wild lobsters up to 30 centimeters in length was less than 30 yuan per catty. Those over centimeters were no longer calculated by weight, but would increase by about yuan for every centimeter of length.
There are so many good stuffs in this one puddle. If we scoop up the other two puddles, how many good stuffs will there be?
But the tide has started to rise, and when the sea water comes up, this place will be submerged.
Oysters grow on the cliff walls, but you have to catch the big flower dragons and big rice fish with a net when they are trapped in the puddle. If you let them run away, you will probably regret it for the rest of your life.
Li Changle did it right away. He picked up the scoop net, walked towards the big fish hiding in the deep water, raised the scoop net over his head and covered it with a "splash". The big fish was covered by his scoop net and it took some effort to fish it out.
"It's posted! It's posted!"
Li Changle gripped the handle of the scoop net tightly, and looked at the big fish struggling in the net with great excitement. He thought it must be at least thirty or forty kilograms, so he quickly took out the net bag, put it in it, and put it in the water.
Then there was the big flower dragon. When we fished it out, we also found a few mantis shrimps and a few green bream. Mantis shrimps will be valuable in another 20 or 30 years, but nowadays, no one wants them even if we give them away.
There is also the green carp, which even in later generations only sold for three or four yuan per catty, and is not as valuable as the small crucian carp, let alone now.
Li Changle planned to go find the sea bass and conger eel first, and then deal with them. After finding them, he would scoop them up and put them into the net bag at lightning speed.
He looked around the puddle and found that the blue crab had hidden in the crevice of the rock. Turning his head, he saw three Spanish mackerels, each weighing two or three pounds.
The meat of this fish is tender and white, with few bones and a lot of meat. It is extremely plump and delicious. It is best eaten with rice when dried.
I scooped it up and put it in the net bag. When I was about to go to the second puddle, I found that the sea water at the entrance of the cave had risen. I estimated the weight and felt that I could still carry some, so I went back to the puddle and caught several mantis shrimps and green shrimps in one net.
He lifted the net bag and weighed it before tying it up with a rope and tying the scoop net on it. He walked to the entrance of the cave, went into the water, took a deep breath, and dived into the water holding the net bag and returned the same way.
After surfacing, he pulled the net bag up with great effort, lay on the beach for two minutes exhausted, then quickly walked back to the cave along the cliff carrying the net bag.
He took out the backpack, without even having time to put on clothes or pants, and went to the seashore with the oilcloth bag, filled it half with sea water, carried it back to the cave, put it on the backpack, and then poured the fish and shrimp in the net bag into the bag.
The big rice fish couldn't turn around in the basket at all. The main value of a rice fish is its swim bladder, so even if it died, it wouldn't affect the price.
But the big flower dragon is valuable when it is alive, and it is only slightly more expensive than ordinary prawns when it is dead, so you have to go to the town quickly.
Li Changle quickly took off his wet trousers, changed into clean clothes, packed his things, put the net bag and scoop net on the backpack, and carried the heavy backpack out of the cave.
The red sun shines on him, and a new day begins.
(End of this chapter)