As Jiang Hexi drove, she asked Chu Yang:

Did you bring bait?

"I brought it."

Chu Yang also pulled out a solar-powered flashlight from his pocket, "Sis, I even brought you the ultimate night fishing gear."

Jiang Hexi nodded firmly at him, then turned to ask the three large men sitting in a row behind her:

"Why did the three of you follow us here? Do you even know what we're going to the rocky beach for?"

"Fishing?"

Xie Wanyi's question immediately drew a retort from Yu Xiangwan:

“We went to catch river crabs, and you didn’t bring any tools, and I don’t even know what you were going to do outside. I really can’t understand what the point was of you squeezing onto the van.”

Xie Wanyi looked at the other people who were also empty-handed and squeezed into the van, and suddenly realized what it meant to be silent. He pursed his lips into a thin line and shut up as well.

Yan Jie and Xie Wanyi hurriedly followed, solely for the sake of Jiang Hexi and Yu Xiangwan.

Shen Yingyu squeezed into the van because he had fallen behind while playing mahjong last time. He was sitting alone on the sofa drinking tea when the live camera was right in his face all night. The production team even set up a separate live broadcast room for him to be completely isolated. How could he dare to "go against the group" now?

The van stopped on the dirt road.

Jiang Hexi got out of the car and saw scattered lights on both sides of the rocky beach. Some villagers had already rushed ahead of them to catch river crabs by the water.

She rolled up her trouser legs and followed Li Youtian down to the rocky beach.

"The river crabs hide under the rocks and only come out to forage at night. We use chicken intestines as bait and just float them in the water. They will come when they smell the fishy smell."

The group placed bait in several locations along the riverbank and then waited quietly for the crabs to take the bait.

Chu Yang turned on his flashlight. The river water was crystal clear, and the current flowed slowly forward. Crabs with bared claws crawled out from under the moss and pebbles.

"Sis, the crabs are out."

"It's a bit small, it doesn't even weigh an ounce."

"Let's put them in the bucket first. We'll release the big ones later. If we don't catch any big ones, we can still eat these small crabs."

Chu Yang crouched down in the water, spotted the crab lying there, and scooped it up with the net.

Jiang Hexi suspected that the river crabs had already been caught here.

That's why so many misshapen fruits and jujubes were left, far less than the river crabs Li Youtian gave her.

She looked around and saw Li Youtian walking towards the dark water. She took out her phone for light and followed him.

Yan Jie followed closely behind her.

Li Youtian pressed the chicken intestines under the pile of stones and gave an instruction:

"Xi-mei, you stay here and see if you can catch a big crab."

"Uncle, you keep looking for a place ahead. I'll keep an eye on things here."

Just as Jiang Hexi saw Li Youtian off, someone cleared away some weeds and placed a piece of meat in the water about a meter away from her to lure crabs.

The visitor was the same old face, the same Uncle Ge who had given himself a buzz cut with two cabbages back then.

Jiang Hexi smiled slightly at Grandpa Ge, giving him a silent greeting.

Catching crabs requires little skill; all you need is bait and a net.

The key is the location. If you choose the right location, you can catch a lot of crabs in the net. If you choose the wrong location, you can only pick up the crabs that others have left over.

Jiang Hexi had finally found a good spot, and she would not leave unless no crabs took the bait.

Grandpa Ge also squatted on the riverbank, looking like he was going to wait for her to leave.

The two stood a meter apart, each occupying their own patch of ground, staring intently at the movements in the water.

A crab the size of a palm poked its head out from a crack in the rock, slowly crawled onto the bluestone, and landed squarely on the "38th parallel" in the middle.

Jiang Hexi picked up the net and stood up straight. Over there, Grandpa Ge had already rolled up his trousers and was ready to go into the water. The two looked at each other across the water, so embarrassed that they kept digging their toes into the ground.

Yan Jieqing's long cough broke the stalemate between the two.

Jiang Hexi chuckled dryly twice. "Grandpa, how about this? Let's guess whether this crab is male or female. Whoever guesses correctly gets to keep it."

Grandpa Ge stared at the plump river crab and readily agreed, "Okay."

Jiang Hexi answered quickly: "Female."

"Then I'll guess it's male."

Grandpa Ge tiptoed into the water, deftly grabbed the crab's back and belly with one hand, flipped it over, and sighed mournfully, "Female."

Jiang Hexi handed over the bucket, repeatedly saying "thank you," and happily accepted the river crabs.

Yan Jie asked her casually, "How do you know this crab is female?"

"I want to eat female crabs."

Jiang Hexi's eyes shone with a bright smile. "Of course I guessed it was female."

Yan Jie was defeated by her playfulness; that's a valid reason.

[(I never knew you could guess whether a crab is male or female like this! I learned something new!)]

[The moment Xi Mei and Uncle Ge looked up and stared at each other, God knows, I was so embarrassed for them I felt like I was splitting in two.]

[One thing I absolutely love about Xi Mei is that when Ge You took half of her territory, she didn't say anything. But when Ge You tried to steal her censorship, she cleverly got it back, doing so with reason, composure, and neither servility nor arrogance.]

No wonder Yan Wang is still clinging to Xi Mei even after their breakup, constantly hovering around her. I can't even bear to watch it through the screen; he's such a pathetic person!

Jiang Hexi squatted back in her previous spot, quietly waiting for the crab to take the bait.

"Here they come! Three river crabs have crawled over, and they're all big ones, each weighing two or three ounces."

Yan Jie picked up the net and scooped up the crabs with ease, emptying them all into the bucket. When he turned around, six more river crabs emerged from the cracks in the rocks and slowly surrounded the bait.

"You've... stirred up a hornet's nest—"

"There, look, there are more there!"

Jiang Hexi grabbed Yan Jie's T-shirt and exclaimed in surprise.

Even in places where the phone flashlight couldn't reach, river crabs had already crawled out, drawn by the fishy smell. Once they reached the shiny rocky beach and gathered together, their numbers became visibly greater.

Yan Jie took a net and went into the water, specifically targeting the large crabs to scoop them up from the bottom.

Jiang Hexi couldn't catch crabs empty-handed. Seeing the crabs swarming around and biting into the chicken intestines, she immediately panicked.

"I only have this one chicken intestine. What am I going to use as bait after I finish eating it?"

While busy catching crabs with his bare hands in the water, Grandpa Ge called out to her:

"Lift up the rope, hang that pile of crabs above the bucket, and shake them down hard."

"Thank you, sir, I understand."

Jiang Hexi did as he said, and when she lifted the fishing line along with the long string of crabs, all the viewers in the live stream were envious.

I don't know what to say, but Xi-mei's good fortune has continued from fishing in the shallows to catching crabs on the rocky beach...

This half-bucket of river crabs has made me so jealous I'm unrecognizable.

Little White Poplar catches crabs, but they're all tiny, barely any meat on them. Xi Mei catches crabs, and a long string of large river crabs keeps coming. How can the difference between people be so vast?