Chapter 214: Watering Hole
Chapter 214: Watering Hole
After walking for nearly an hour, they finally found a satisfactory water hole. Li Changle happily put down the bucket and backpack, picked up the kettle and took two sips, then sat down on a rock, took out a cigarette, lit it and started smoking.
"Uncle San, have you found the water hole?" Li Xiaoyang caught up with him, sweating profusely.
"Yes!" Li Changle picked up the kettle and handed it to him, "The water hasn't been drained yet, we'll start when it's gone."
"Oh!" Li Xiaoyang gulped down a few mouthfuls, wiped his mouth, put down the kettle and went for a walk nearby.
Li Changle leaned against a rock, feeling the sea breeze, and wanted to sleep comfortably. Before he closed his eyes, he heard Li Xiaoyang's surprised shout from behind him.
"Uncle San, come quickly, there are so many Buddha's hand snails here!"
"Is he big?" Li Changle stood up and walked towards him.
"It's big, several times bigger than the one we dug at the seaside!" Li Xiaoyang said, pointing to the cliff.
Li Changle went over to take a look and saw that there were indeed Buddha's hand snails growing on the cliff of the big rock. There were densely packed ones there, and the sizes were even bigger than the ones he had carved out on Concave Island last time.
"Uncle San, would you want a restaurant like this?"
"Yes, I can sell it for one yuan per pound."
"The restaurant still has money!"
Li Xiaoyang looked at the Buddha's hand snails with shining eyes, as if they were looking at one dollar bill after another. "So many of them can be sold for a lot of money. I'll go back and ask my mother and the others to come and chisel them."
"Okay!" Li Changle stood up and looked around, "Go up the way we came from. Go slowly and don't fall."
"Okay!" Li Xiaoyang climbed up quickly.
Seeing him running away, Li Changle returned to the big rock, took out all the plastic tubes in the backpack and placed them on the rock, then took out the hook for prying the Buddha's hand snail and went to the rock wall.
Aim at a cluster of larger Buddha's hand snails, insert the hook into the crevice of the rock, and pull out with force, and a large cluster of Buddha's hand snails will be hooked out.
After he had pried out most of the bucket of conchs, the puddle under the rock was revealed. Li Changle returned to the rock carrying the bucket, and Li Xiaoyang also came with his men.
"A Le, there were a lot of mussels and snails on the way here. They are much bigger than those on the beach." Mrs. Li said excitedly.
Hearing that the terrain here was a bit steep, she and Li Ersao brought Xiang Xiaoyu here, leaving Zhou Ruonan on the sand slope to look after the child.
"There are some here too. First pry out the Buddha's hand snails, and then pry out the mussels." Li Changle handed the iron hook to Xiang Xiaoyu and said to the others, "The place to stand is a bit narrow. Be careful not to step on empty space."
"Thank you, Uncle Ale."
"Don't worry, this is not the first time you've tried to pry a snail out. You know how to do it." Mrs. Li held up the bucket and looked inside, then cheered in surprise.
"Oh my god, the snails on the island are just huge. You can't even see these big ones on the beach."
"I have to look for it every time I go to the beach. It gets pried open before it grows big." Mrs. Li walked downstairs carrying a bucket of water.
Li Xiaoyang patted Xiang Xiaoyu and said, "Ayu, my uncle said that the big ones sell for one yuan per pound. You can pry open the big ones and sell more. Then you can have money to buy cotton to make cotton clothes."
Xiang Xiaoyu was surprised after hearing this, "So expensive?"
"Yes, pry more, and Uncle Le will help you sell it later." Li Changle added, "You can only pry it in this area. If you go to the cliff, I won't help you sell it."
"I remember." Xiang Xiaoyu nodded heavily.
Li Changle carried a plastic pipe and went down to the puddle. He picked up a pipe, put it into the water, filled it with water, blocked one end, dragged it to a low place and let it down. The water began to flow down.
"My third uncle is so smart!" Li Xiaoyang looked at him with admiration, and even pulled Xiang Xiaoyu who was trying hard to pry open the Buddha's hand conch to watch.
"Uncle A Le, this is a good idea." Xiang Xiaoyu praised and went back to prying out the Buddha's hand snail.
After Li Changle put all the pipes in place, several pipes drained water to the outside at the same time, and the water level in the stone pit dropped at a speed visible to the naked eye.
While the water was being drained, he went to the rock wall to pry out the Buddha's hand snails. At one dollar a pound, the catch was much more substantial than the invisible fish in the puddle.
Li Changle threw the snails into the bucket. Seeing that Xiang Xiaoyu was quite skillful in prying the snails, he asked, "Xiaoyu, have you pried them before?"
Xiang Xiaoyu smiled and said, "There are some on the reef beach, which are much smaller than this one. I will pry them up when I find them and sell them to Chen Ji."
"Uncle San, you see the Buddha's hand snails under the rock wall seem to be bigger than those here. It's a pity that there is no place to stand on the cliff, otherwise we could collect hundreds of kilograms." Li Xiaoyang said, pointing to the cliff.
Li Changle rolled his eyes at him and said, "Don't be greedy. It's good enough that we got all these out today."
Mrs. Li looked at the small fish bucket, then at Li Xiaoyang's, and became furious. She glared at her son who kept glancing at the puddle, "Don't you always ask to fish in the sea? Why don't you hurry up?"
Li Xiaoyang rolled his eyes and argued, "I want to help Uncle San watch the pipe in the puddle. If it flows down with the water, it will be a big loss."
"Don't give me that!" Li Changle knocked him. "As long as the tide doesn't rise, it will never flow away."
"Lazy people don't care much." Mrs. Li felt that she had no idea what to do with her eldest son.
I beat him, scolded him, and coaxed him, but in the end it seemed to be of no use.
After more than half an hour, the sound of water flowing from the puddle became smaller and smaller, and from time to time there was a splashing sound of water from the puddle, which was the sound made by fish when they were swimming.
"Fuck! There's really a fish in the puddle. I can even see its back!" Li Xiaoyang, who had been paying attention to the puddle, shouted excitedly. "Speak properly!"
Li Changle tapped him, picked up the net bag and went up to pour the snails into the bucket, put on gloves, and walked down with the scoop net.
Before I got there, I saw water splashing high in the pit. The fish swung its fan-like tail and then hid in the deep water.
"Uncle San, hurry up, there are big fish in there!" Li Xiaoyang was so excited that he didn't even bother prying the snails. He climbed up the rock, put the net bag into the bucket, and ran after him with the scoop net in hand.
Mrs. Li Dasao, Mrs. Li Ersao and Xiang Xiaoyu were also startled by his excitement. They stopped prying snails and stretched their necks to look towards the puddle.
Mrs. Li screamed, "Oh my god, it looks like a blue grouper. It's hiding behind the rocks. It's quite big."
"Look, there are black sea bream, shrimps, and crabs!" Xiang Xiaoyu also shouted excitedly.
Li Changle also saw it. He found that there were a lot of black sea bream in this area. He caught a few small ones and a big one on the way here, and there were several more in the puddle.
Seeing the three of them craning their necks to look over here, he quickly reminded them, "Be careful, don't fall down."
Mrs. Li nodded, "Okay! Let Xiaoyang help you catch it."
With his two sisters-in-law here, it was difficult for him to take off all his clothes except for his pants, so he rolled up his pants legs to his thighs and entered the puddle.
The water didn't reach his calves. The rocks were exposed at the shallowest part of the pit, and the water level near the rocks seemed quite deep.
When I turned over the stone, I saw a big octopus. When it saw someone coming, it spread its tentacles and quickly fled to the deep water.
Li Changle grabbed it. The octopus's tentacles were tightly attached to a stone. He stepped forward and used some strength to grab it and threw it into the bucket.
One is a bit too little, two more would be enough for lunch.
Li Changle turned over a stone and saw a stone crab quickly crawling into the crevice. Seeing that it was not big, he let it go.
Suddenly, I felt something under my foot. I was so scared that I quickly raised my leg. I saw a turbot as big as a bowl swimming quickly forward along the bottom of the pit.
"You scared me." Li Changle stepped forward, grabbed it with both hands, and finally caught it after trying twice.
The flat and round body of the fish was almost as big as his two palms. He weighed it and found it weighed about two kilograms. He happily put it into the bucket and continued his treasure hunt.
Don't worry about the deep water area under the rock wall for now, just let the big blue spot hide in it. Wait until he has searched all the shallow water areas and crevices on this side, then go and pump out the water to get it.
The water in the puddle was becoming shallower and shallower, and the fish living in the shallow water were fleeing to the deep water. A large yellow-finned fish swam out from the crevice of the rock, waving its tail quickly, and hid in slightly deeper waters.
Li Changle waded over quietly and held its head down with a sudden move. The splashing water soaked all his clothes.
"Uncle San, this yellowfin bream is so big!"
"Yes, more than two kilograms." Li Changle put the fish into the net bag with a smile, continued to search, and caught another black sea bream.
At this time, the rocks in the shallow water area were completely exposed.
The water at the rock wall could no longer be pumped up, so Li Changle collected a few pipes, dragged two water pipes to the rock wall, put the pipes in and planned to continue pumping water.
When he looked down, he saw two long tentacles swaying in the cracks of the rocks. He was delighted and thought, "Oh my goodness, there is actually a big flower dragon hiding here."
After saying that, he hurriedly put the pipe filled with water outside the puddle, reached out to grab the tentacles, pulled twice but failed to pull them out. He was worried that if he broke the tentacles, he would not be able to sell them at a good price, so he wanted to reach out to grab them, but the crevice was not wide enough, so he simply let go and moved the stone.
"Uncle San, the water is so cool. If I had known, I would have gone in earlier to fish."
Li Changle turned his head to look at Li Xiaoyang, who was stripped down to his underwear, and thought of the tiger fish he caught last time when he was pumping the water pit. "Be careful, some fish are poisonous."
"Oh oh! I'm going to catch crabs over there."
"Come here, help uncle catch this big flower dragon."
"Okay!" Li Xiaoyang ran towards him with a landing net in hand, splashing in the water. "What does a big flower dragon look like? I haven't seen one yet!"
"It's in the cracks of the rocks. You'll know once you take it out."
"Watch me." Li Xiaoyang stretched out his hand and grabbed the big flower dragon's tentacles and pulled it out with force. The big flower dragon was pulled out from the crevice in an instant.
He held the colorful prawns in both hands and looked at the big flower dragon with sparkling eyes.
"Kill the armor, there are such beautiful prawns."
Before Li Changle could shout out, he saw that the lobster had been pulled out by him. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the tentacles were still well attached to the tentacles and had not been torn off at all.
"You little bastard, you almost scared me to death."
"Hey hey!" Li Xiaoyang held up a large flower dragon that was longer than his forearm, "Uncle San, how much can one like this sell for?"
"Those over 30 centimeters are only 15 yuan per pound, so the difference is not enough. It should be no problem to sell it for 10 or 20 yuan."
Li Changle looked at the smug little fellow and suddenly remembered the saying that the older you are in the martial arts world, the less courageous you become.
Thanks to my friends for your support! Thank you!
(End of this chapter)