Evening. The setting sun melted into gold, and the tide had receded farther than usual.
Jiang Yu found a few broken stones by a tidal pool, and with a dead branch, managed to rig up a crude but stable phone stand.
She opened the live-streaming app, and the screen lit up.
Viewers online in the top right corner: 0.
In the frame, she wore an old T-shirt and jeans, her long hair slightly tousled by the sea breeze.
Her plain, clean face carried no extra expression—just a cold indifference toward everything in the world.
She stood stiffly in front of the camera for a good ten seconds.
Just as the system was about to flag the stream as invalid, she finally spoke, her voice clear and cool: “…We’re starting.”
With those three words, she turned without looking back and headed straight for the reef flats that had just been exposed.
No greeting, no begging for follows, no “hey family” nonsense. This opening—a mudslide in the world of live-streaming—radiated a keep-your-distance vibe.
Five minutes passed, and the platform’s random traffic pushed a few real viewers in.
A handful of comments drifted across the screen.
[A nature documentary?]
[Where’s the streamer? Lagging?]
[Can’t talk? Mic broken, type 1.]
Jiang Yu was prying at a rock with a bamboo pole. She glanced at the screen from the corner of her eye, didn’t even lift her head, and spat out two words: “Tide-pooling.”
Then, another long silence.
A few people got bored and swiped away, but three or four stuck around—mostly because the island sunset in the frame was genuinely easy on the eyes, and the streamer’s aloof vibe was refreshingly off-script.
Passing a massive rock covered in barnacles, Jiang Yu caught a faint golden glow shimmering at the bottom of a shallow puddle.
She bypassed the easy-to-dig boulder, crouched down, and casually flipped over an unremarkable slab of stone beside it—
Splash.
The black mud beneath instantly clouded, and a flower crab bigger than a washbasin scuttled out sideways, brandishing its massive claws with all the menace of a tiny tyrant.
Jiang Yu didn’t even blink. Two fingers locked onto the joint at the back of the crab’s shell, she lifted it, weighed it in her hand, and tossed it into the old plastic bucket behind her.
A dull thud.
The stream went quiet for two seconds, then the comments exploded.
[???]
[Holy shit, that size? I’ve been tide-pooling for three years and never even seen a claw that big!]
[Beginner’s luck! What kind of insane luck is this?]
The viewer count jumped from 5 to over a dozen.
For the next fifteen minutes, those dozen or so viewers got an education, watching what real hauling looked like.
Jiang Yu’s route zigzagged left and right, completely random—but every single grab was dead-on.
A jab of the bamboo pole into the sandy bottom brought up a lively, flopping giant grouper.
A bare hand slipped into a crevice and pulled out a wild sea snail the size of an adult’s fist.
Flipping over a patch of seaweed revealed four or five plump abalones nestled neatly underneath.
In a little over half an hour, the bucket was a third full.
The comments, which had started with “666,” slowly turned sour.
[This isn’t right. Is this catch rate even normal?]
[Definitely pre-buried! Who tide-pools like they’re pulling radishes out of a field?]
[Just bought from a seafood market, right? Too perfect to be real. It’s staged.]
[Boring. Scripted trash. Unfollowing.]
Facing the flood of fraud accusations, Jiang Yu straightened up, wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, and gave the screen a flat look.
“It is pretty abnormal.”
Her tone was eerily calm, not a hint of flustered defensiveness. “But I just flipped them out. Believe it or not.”
With that, she picked up the bucket and kept walking toward deeper water.
This refusal to explain actually stunned a few viewers who’d been about to leave.
Which guilty, scripted streamer wouldn’t be scrambling to prove themselves or firing back at the comments? Why was she acting so unbothered?
At the far edge of the receded tide lay a deep pit carved out by the sea.
Jiang Yu stopped. In her vision, a dazzling golden glow coiled at the bottom of the pit.
Brighter than the flower crab by a long shot.
She crouched down and reached her bare hand into the water.
The touch was soft and slick.
A second later, she pulled the thing out, breaking the surface—
A living blue-ringed octopus!
Small in size, but stunningly vivid.
The dense blue rings across its body caught the dying sunlight like premium sapphires, radiating the lethal danger unique to a venomous creature.
Jiang Yu pinched the octopus by its non-venomous safe zone and casually waved it in front of the camera.
The stream erupted. Comments flooded the screen instantly.
[Holy shit, a blue-ring!! A LIVE blue-ringed octopus!!]
[Throw it away NOW! Extremely venomous! One bite and the whole village is eating at your funeral!!]
[Are you insane?! Sure, it’s a top-tier prize for the aquarium trade—starting at fifty grand with no market supply—but this thing can literally kill you!]
[It’s definitely fake! There’s no recorded distribution of blue-ringed octopuses in this sea! One hundred percent bought from a fish store for the show!]
The viewer count rocketed past two hundred.
Facing a screen full of exclamation marks, Jiang Yu still didn’t say much. She picked up a discarded large mineral water bottle from nearby, filled it with seawater, and with a deft twist of her wrist, securely placed the blue-ringed octopus inside.
Her movements were clean and decisive, with none of the panic of an amateur.
[Streamer, do you work in marine biology research? That handling was so professional?]
Jiang Yu set the bottle down and replied with two words: “Instinct.”
The barrage of question marks was just about to flood the screen when a commotion erupted not far away.
A-Wang came sprinting over with his phone held high, crashing straight into the frame, his voice thundering:
“Sis!! You scored another big catch today?? Even more badass than those geoducks from yesterday!”
His shout carried without restraint, and the entire livestream heard it loud and clear.
The chat direction took an immediate turn.
[?? There were geoducks yesterday too? Damn, geoducks don’t even exist in this sea!]
[So according to this guy, this streamer gets big hauls every day??]
[I’m starting to believe this streamer really does have some freakish luck…]
A-Wang, the natural hype man, had solidly corroborated Jiang Yu’s track record.
The sky had fully darkened.
Jiang Yu hoisted the heavy bucket and gave a deadpan sign-off to the camera: “No more light. I’ll stream again next time.”
With a snap, the screen went black—the stream cut off as punctually as clocking out of work.
The backend data popped up: peak viewers 237, new followers 186, tip income 42.3 yuan.
The money wasn’t much to look at, but the retention rate and conversion rate were terrifying for a first-time streamer account.
That night, Jiang Yu leaned against the wooden bed in her stone hut scrolling through her phone. She spotted a trending post at the tail end of the platform’s “Beachcombing Wonders” topic board.
The top comment was boosted high: “A newly registered beachcombing streamer pulled out a live blue-ring plus a bunch of wild big catches within an hour of starting. Freakish luck, but the person is super cold. Either heaven is feeding her, or it’s top-tier scripting. I’m betting on heaven.”
Right beneath it, a professional beachcombing influencer with a yellow V badge appeared in person to reply:
“Don’t pay the IQ tax. I’ve swept that mudflat over a dozen times—can’t even find a decent-sized ark clam, let alone a blue-ring, a species that doesn’t even belong to that sea area. One hundred percent bought props and faked it. These young streamers nowadays will stage anything for traffic, even risking their lives.”
This debunking comment’s like count was visibly climbing.
Below it, netizens were all waiting for the follow-up.
[Sitting here waiting for tomorrow’s debunk! If this streamer can pull out another impossible big catch two days in a row, I’ll drink seawater doing a handstand!]
Jiang Yu stared at the hot comment for a while, her fingertip hovering over the screen. Her original intention to exit paused.
After a long moment, she used her newly registered account to silently like the comment, then turned off her phone.
Tomorrow, the providential luck of this sea area would be gathering anew. Drink seawater doing a handstand, huh? She’d remember that.