Han Xiaorui was not in a rush, however. From time to time, she would gently pull up on the bait, making it move around as if it were alive.
After moving it up and down like this for a while, a giant grouper that was nearly a meter long finally couldn’t help itself. It rushed over, opened its large mouth, and swallowed the bait.
It had gotten the delicious food, but it also got the hook.
The giant grouper struggled violently, churning up the mud and sand around the reef, scaring the other groupers into fleeing and hiding deep within the reef.
After a struggle, Han Xiaorui finally pulled the large giant grouper out of the water and into a live fish tank.
One fish took up an entire live fish tank!
She didn’t want to cause a stir, nor did she plan to catch more giant groupers. She changed locations and discovered, to her surprise, that there were brightly colored ornamental fish in the seawater.
Ornamental fish are also small animals, and their bright colors are visually striking.
Han Xiaorui immediately decided to catch this clown triggerfish and put it in a fish tank at home.
Good things come in pairs, so she caught two and placed them in a special tank.
Han Xiaorui cruised around the reef again and was lucky enough to catch another fifty-centimeter giant grouper.
She decided to sell the big one and keep the small one to eat.
In her past life, her father was a chef who was particularly skilled at cooking seafood. Having been influenced by him, she knew how to cook as well.
She had already thought of five ways to prepare giant grouper.
It was both delicious and nutritious.
Han Xiaorui was not greedy and prepared to head home. After all, there would be plenty of time in the future; whenever the weather was good, she would come out to the sea to fish.
In fact, there were many lobsters and crabs near this patch of reef, but she didn’t have any lobster cages, so she would come back to get them once she had acquired the proper tools.
Just as she was preparing to return, she suddenly noticed a regular cylinder protruding from a patch of silt on the reef.
Han Xiaorui saw at a glance that this was not something from the seabed; it looked like a reconnaissance device of some sort.
Looking more closely, she was surprised to see English letters on it.
Han Xiaorui was essentially certain that this was a seabed reconnaissance device deployed by a foreign country.
As a patriotic and law-abiding citizen, how could she stand by and do nothing after seeing this?
Han Xiaorui took off her coat and jumped into the water!
One of her water-based superpowers was that she could breathe underwater. Her body seemed capable of blocking the pressure of the seawater, and she was more agile than the fish!
She dove down more than twenty meters, looped the rope in her hand over the reconnaissance device, which had tail fins, and pulled.
Han Xiaorui had thought it wouldn’t be very long, but she hadn’t expected it to be over twenty centimeters in diameter and a full meter and a half long, with two-thirds of it buried in the mud and sand.
Han Xiaorui dragged the object onto the boat and found two large snake-skin bags to cover it.
She headed to the county pier once again.
Unlike yesterday, when people thought Han Xiaorui was just a woman and wouldn’t have any good fish on her boat, everyone remembered the woman who had “stung the hornet’s nest” of groupers after she brought in over two hundred jin of groupers yesterday.
Seeing Han Xiaorui’s boat approach, people immediately swarmed around. “Sister, what kind of fish today?”
“Giant grouper,” Han Xiaorui replied. “I just weighed it, it’s about eighty or ninety jin. Do you want it?”
When the crowd heard this, they gasped. “G…giant grouper? No way? You, on a small fishing boat, can catch a giant grouper?”
Han Xiaorui, wearing a veil, felt that these people didn’t look like they were buying fish, and she didn’t want to waste words. She stood on her tiptoes and saw Boss Zhang, who had bought fish from her yesterday. “Boss Zhang, I have an eighty or ninety-jin giant grouper here. Do you want it?”
When Boss Zhang heard this, he brought his staff and rushed over. “I do, I want it all!”
The other fish buyers also reacted.
“I want it too!”
“Let me have it, I asked first, sell it to me!”
Seeing that all these people were about to rush up, Han Xiaorui quickly steered the boat backward; otherwise, her small boat wouldn’t be able to hold so many people.
“Make your offers, the highest bidder gets it!” Han Xiaorui said. Fishing was about making money.
Boss Zhang was in a hurry; he wanted to establish a cooperative relationship with this woman. He wanted her to sell all the fish she caught to him in the future.
The fish he had bought yesterday hadn’t all been sold yet, and when he put them in the fish tank at the entrance, they immediately drew a crowd.
Today, those groupers had already been claimed.
With such top-quality fish, even at a high price, there was no worry about selling them.
A fishmonger shouted, “Ten yuan per jin.”
“I’ll bid twelve!”
“I’ll bid fifteen!”
“I’ll bid sixteen!”
This price was already very high, and everyone wanted to secure this fish.
Boss Zhang shouted, “I’ll bid twenty, sister, sell it to me! That is the highest price.”
It was 1985, after all!
In a time when the average monthly wage was less than a few dozen yuan, less than one hundred yuan, the giant grouper Han Xiaorui had caught could sell for over a thousand.
The others looked at Boss Zhang with resentment; they couldn’t afford a higher price than him.
“I’ll count to three; if no one bids higher, this giant grouper is Boss Zhang’s,” Han Xiaorui said upon seeing this. “One… two… three! Boss Zhang, come over and lift the fish.”
This fish was very large, and it was difficult to weigh it on the boat, so it had to be lifted to the shore.
Boss Zhang came onto the boat and saw the giant grouper was huge. His eyes sparkled with surprise, more captivated than if he were seeing the most beautiful girl. “A fine fish, my goodness!”
When they lifted it up to weigh it, it turned out to be ninety-five jin.
At twenty yuan per jin, that was one thousand nine hundred yuan.
Boss Zhang hurriedly ran back to the boat, where there was another smaller one, which must have weighed thirty jin. “I want this small one too!”
Han Xiaorui waved her hand. “I’m not selling the small one! It’s for my family to eat. It’s getting late, Boss Zhang, hurry up and settle the bill.”
Boss Zhang’s eyes revealed disappointment; not buying the small giant grouper felt like having a piece of flesh cut off.
However, he was prompt with the money, counting out one thousand nine hundred yuan and handing it to Han Xiaorui.
“Sister, what should I call you?” Boss Zhang asked. “I told you yesterday that I run a hotel. As long as it’s fish you’ve caught at sea, sell them all to me. I guarantee the price will be higher than what you get from the wholesalers.”
Han Xiaorui thought for a moment and nodded. “I’m on my own, it’s not convenient for me to deliver them to you. If I catch fish, I’ll come here to sell them. If you’re here, I’ll sell them to you.”
Boss Zhang was relieved. “Then it’s a deal, sister. Will you be coming every day?”
“Not necessarily,” Han Xiaorui replied. “But as long as the weather is good, I will go out to sea.”
Shencheng was already developing rapidly, and housing prices were constantly increasing.
She wanted to take the opportunity to earn more money and buy more property; that was the best and most worry-free investment she could think of right now.
“Good, it’s getting dark, sister, hurry home.” Having received her word, Boss Zhang was relieved.
In the future, as long as the weather was good, he would come to the pier. If he couldn’t make it, he would have his restaurant staff come instead.
Han Xiaorui was concerned about the reconnaissance device she had retrieved from the reef in the cabin and hurried back.
Han Xiaorui couldn’t spare the time to greet the people on the pier; she locked the cabin and headed home carrying the two clown triggerfish.
The first thing she did when she got home was to call the police. “Hello, is this 110? I am a fisherman from Jinshan Bay, my name is Han Xiaorui. I went to sea today and, oh, I discovered something that looks like a cylinder with English letters on it; it looks like the reconnaissance device mentioned during the safety education campaign in our village last year.”
“Thank you for your call, I will report this immediately, and we will get there as soon as possible.” The dispatcher recorded her address and name seriously, hung up, and immediately reported it.
The relevant department received the call and immediately made arrangements. A tall man with a stern face led a team and quickly drove over.