Before dawn broke, the sea breeze carried a salty, fishy dampness that felt cold and sticky against the skin.
The dock at Deer Antler Island was quiet, a few dim yellow lights bleeding through the thin mist, illuminating rows of fishing boats bobbing gently with the waves.
By the time Jiang Yu arrived, Old Chen was already on his second pipe of tobacco.
He wore an old training uniform and a pair of canvas shoes splattered with mud, puffing away on his pipe. His eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s as he sized Jiang Yu up from head to toe.
A black action camera was strapped to his chest, its lens pointed straight ahead.
“Girl, we agreed—I pick the spot today.”
Old Chen blew out a thick plume of smoke and jabbed his pipe toward the camera on his chest. “This thing records everything. No tricks. If you can pull out a fish over half a catty from a spot I choose, I’ll kowtow to you on the spot!”
Jiang Yu set down her tool bag and looked up at him, her gaze clear and calm.
“…No need to kowtow.”
She replied flatly, “Just admit you’re wrong.”
Old Chen’s jaw tightened. He let out a heavy snort through his nose and turned to board a battered little skiff.
The engine roared to life with a sound like a tractor, and the boat cut through the water, bypassing all the familiar foraging grounds, heading east toward the open sea.
The water shifted from shallow green to deep blue, and jagged rocks grew more numerous. Finally, the skiff came to a stop beside a cluster of bare, barren rocks.
The islanders called this place Bald Reef.
As the name suggested, there wasn’t even a scrap of oyster or a patch of moss on those rocks—just smooth, bare stone, with only the occasional seabird stopping by to leave a dropping.
For generations, people had said the rocks at Bald Reef were dead stone, not even a crack in them, and that fish and crabs swam around them.
Old Chen dropped anchor and jerked his chin toward the lifeless rocks, his tone brimming with certainty.
“Right here. If you can dig anything up on this spot, then the Dragon King himself must be blind.”
Jiang Yu said nothing. She slung her bamboo basket over her back and hopped lightly onto the rocks.
The moment her feet touched down, she froze completely, her heart skipping a beat.
The world around her shed its mundane colors. This place Old Chen called a godforsaken wasteland—in her eyes, it was a dazzling sea of light!
Golden specks clustered like dense stars, hidden in the shadows beneath every stone; thick clusters of violet halos drifted slowly in the deep crevices between the rocks. And in the farthest tide pool, a pure white light flashed and vanished, carrying an ancient, overwhelming presence.
She had never seen the Light of Fortune so dense, so powerful!
Jiang Yu took a deep breath, forcing down the surge of emotion in her chest, careful not to let Old Chen notice anything unusual. She simply uttered three words.
“Let’s begin.”
She walked over to the most ordinary-looking rock, bent down, and pried it up with her oyster knife.
A flower crab, claws waving, appeared beneath it. She caught it precisely by the back of its shell and tossed it into her basket.
From the boat, Old Chen let out a scoff, dismissing it as beginner’s luck.
Jiang Yu ignored him. She flipped over the next rock. Another crab.
A third… When the sixth equally plump flower crab went into her basket, the smile had already vanished from Old Chen’s face.
She walked to a shallow, waterlogged patch, crouched down, and reached into the murky water. After a moment of feeling around, she pulled out a wild abalone the size of her palm.
Then a second, a third… As if she were pulling radishes from her own vegetable patch, she hauled out a dozen wild abalones in one go, each one so uniform in size they might have come off an assembly line.
Old Chen’s mouth, clamped around his pipe, forgot to close.
But she wasn’t done. From an unremarkable crack in the rocks, she dragged out two lively lobsters, their long antennae whipping through the air.
Old Chen’s pipe nearly fell into the sea. He’d been foraging for thirty years and had passed Bald Reef countless times, never even bothering to look twice because it wasn’t worth the fuel.
When the hell… had all this stuff gotten here?
Jiang Yu’s attention was completely drawn by the light. She walked to a deep tide pool at the edge of the rock cluster, where the violet glow was thickest.
She crouched down and reached into the icy seawater.
Soon, she pulled out something wrapped in seaweed and mud.
After rinsing it in the water, a bronze-colored ancient coin emerged.
Old Chen couldn’t stay seated any longer. He jumped off the boat and hurried over in two or three strides. Leaning in for a closer look, his voice came out as if his throat were clogged with sand: “This… this is a Han dynasty wuzhu coin!”
Jiang Yu didn’t answer. She pocketed the coin and reached back into the pool, pulling out a second, then a third…
Old Chen fell completely silent. He crouched beside Jiang Yu, staring intently at her hands, watching this young girl—no tricks, no gimmicks—simply flip rocks and dig through pools, and one after another, things that defied everything he knew surfaced.
“…This is cursed.”
Old Chen took the pipe from his mouth, rubbed his eyes hard, and muttered to himself.
As the time approached, Jiang Yu stood up and walked toward the deepest crevice in the reef.
The golden light there was almost blinding.
She turned sideways and reached her arm deep into the crack.
Suddenly, she felt her hand touch something slippery—something struggling!
She yanked hard and pulled outward.
With a loud splash, a large fish covered in magnificent patterns was dragged out of the crevice, flopping wildly on the reef.
Under the sunlight, its scales shimmered with a golden glow.
It was a wild tiger grouper—the king of groupers!
Judging by its size, it weighed at least five or six pounds, worth at least three thousand yuan on the market!
Old Chen’s mind went blank, leaving only the words he’d said before they set out: “If you can pull out a fish over half a pound, I’ll kowtow to you on the spot.”
This one was over ten times that.
The air froze instantly.
After a long silence, Old Chen quietly took off the action camera still recording on his chest and handed it to Jiang Yu, his voice dry as if scraped by sandpaper.
“I’ve been beachcombing for thirty years, and you’ve outdone me with a single overturned rock… I’m convinced.”
With that, he turned and walked away, his back carrying the desolation of a shattered belief.
After two steps, he seemed to remember something and turned back to ask, a hint of hope in his voice that he himself hadn’t noticed.
“…Coming back tomorrow? If you are, give me a call.”
Watching Old Chen’s slightly retreating figure, Jiang Yu finally let a smile show—this time, not a secret one.
Back at the courtyard, Jiang Yu packaged the full footage along with a timestamped location screenshot and sent it to Liu Qinghe.
Before long, Old Chen also sent over a video he’d recorded himself.
In the video, he faced the camera with an awkward expression but a resolute tone: “I, Old Chen, vouch with my old face—this girl didn’t cheat at all today! If anyone doesn’t believe it, come to Lujiao Island with me, and I’ll walk you through it again!”
That afternoon, Liu Qinghe’s call came through.
“Evidence received, perfect. The review has been expedited and approved—your account will be restored by tomorrow morning at the latest.”
On the other end of the line, Liu Qinghe’s voice carried a hint of excitement. “Also, I’ve secured a great opportunity for you.”
She paused, lowering her voice as if whispering a secret.
“The platform wants to turn this into a show. A… public execution of a show. We’re going to invite you and Su Niannian to compete on the same stretch of sea, at the same time, in a live broadcast. Let the entire internet see with their own eyes who’s the real lucky fish and who’s the fake script.”
On the other end, Jiang Yu was silent for three seconds.
Liu Qinghe’s voice carried a hint of amusement and challenge: “So, do you dare to come?”
“Okay.”