Chapter 277: Shocking Changes, How to Live the Rest of Your Life with a Big Belly
Although Liang Ziqiang and Li Liang were both eager to find the place with many lampreys, recently, they would no longer go that direction.
After all, it was during the search for lampreys that they accidentally entered the porpoise island and had a life-and-death encounter with robbers.
No matter how reckless they are, they are still ordinary fishermen. This kind of thing will leave some shadows in their hearts.
It will take at least a few days, until the shadow is almost digested, before we go to that area to look for lampreys again.
This time, they first went to Guanqi Island and collected a few sea bass.
They had dropped these underwater trolls a few days ago, but because of some unexpected events they hadn't had time to collect them until today.
The catch was not bad. There were some valuable mullets, some worthless dragonhead fish, and quite a few gobies. I could probably make about ten yuan from each net.
After collecting the bottom runners, they threw them back into the water. Then, they continued to sail to other sea areas, casting longlines and nets at the same time.
The catch from casting the net was not great, as we did not encounter any particularly large schools of fish.
After waiting for about two hours, it was time for longline fishing to "reveal" the answer.
"I guess the most likely possibility is a skinned fish. There are quite a few skinned fish under the water in this area!"
"That's not necessarily true. Maybe there's a flathead fish? Flathead fish is better than skinned fish anyway!"
"Why don't you think positively? Maybe today we'll be lucky and get all silver pomfret and golden thread fish?"
Several young men had already started guessing before they even started fishing. Liang's father was the only one present, and he was like an old monk in meditation, unmoved and not saying anything.
"You're already thinking positively. Have you ever thought about what if all the hooks are empty? There are many cases where there are no fish under the water!" Deng Zhaocai suddenly said.
"Shut up! Don't join us in fishing next time!" At this moment, everyone's guns became surprisingly unanimous, pointing at Deng Zhaocai.
"If what you said comes true and there's no fish, I might as well chop you up and use you as bait to catch the big fish!" Li Liang said harshly as he started to fish.
However, the first person to announce the good news was none other than the "Crow's Mouth" Deng Zhaocai.
"Yellow chickens! All the hooks in the middle layer are beautiful yellow chickens!"
Deng Zhaocai was the first to pull the middle hook in one go. Although the upper iron hooks were almost empty and there were few fish, the middle iron hooks were full of brightly colored yellow chickens.
"That's true, we can fish on this boat too!" Liang Tiancheng then shouted.
"Not only the middle layer, but also the lower layer hooks are yellow chickens!"
On Liang Ziqiang's boat, the two people were also excited.
The two of them arrived a little later than Deng Zhaocai, and they found that the iron hooks on the middle layer were all filled with yellow chickens. After pulling a little more, they were delighted to find that there were also quite a few yellow chickens on the hooks on the lower layer.
Huangpoji is actually yellow croaker. Yellow croaker is a close relative of big yellow croaker and small yellow croaker, and is one of the "seven brothers of yellow croaker".
In terms of appearance, although the yellow croaker is generally yellow, it has some copper color in it, which makes it quite different from the big yellow croaker and small yellow croaker.
Yellow croaker belongs to the middle and lower layer fish. Except for the occasional times when it floats to the surface, most of the time it swims between the middle and lower layers.
So just now, they didn't find any signs of yellow pheasants on the surface, but when they started longline fishing, they found that they were all yellow pheasants. The "guesses" of several people before were all wrong, and no one guessed correctly!
Of course, they were still very happy about this mistake. The price of yellow chicken is about 40 cents, which is much more expensive than horse-faced pufferfish and sea catfish, and a little more expensive than flathead fish.
Since no one guessed correctly, no one pushed anyone else and everyone was busy picking fish.
After picking the fish this time, I put it back and waited for another round. The second round was still yellow chicken, although not as many as the first round, but it still looked quite pleasing.
It has been a long time since it was like today, and the cabin was once again piled with small hills of gold.
When they returned to the shore, they all decided to continue to come to this place to cast longline fishing tomorrow, because it seemed that the yellow croakers under the water had not been completely caught, and there should be another wave.
This time when he returned to the village to sell fish, Liang Ziqiang's yellow chicken weighed more than 450 kilograms and he earned about 190 yuan! After that, they kept going to that sea area for two or three days, and started longline fishing as soon as they arrived there.
The good news is that the yellow croakers under the water have not been caught out yet, and there have been catches for several consecutive days.
The bad news is that the catch was much less than on the first day.
From more than 190 yuan at the beginning, to more than 90 yuan later, and then to more than 40 yuan, on the last day, I only earned about 20 yuan.
The last yellow chicken weighed only about fifty or sixty kilograms that day and was sold out quickly. After paying Zhu Tianpeng three yuan as wages, there was still a dozen yuan left.
He walked back with a dozen yuan in his pocket, preparing to go to the east of the village to feed the shrimps and then go home to rest.
On the way, he met Zhong Yongrui's wife Xu Ping.
"A Qiang, there is a call from the city asking you to come back early, so call at around 5 or 6 in the afternoon!" Xu Ping told.
"Could it be a call from the city, notifying me to go and collect the reward?" Thinking of this, Liang Ziqiang suddenly perked up.
After all, if the city notifies them to collect the money, they will not tell outsiders clearly. They will only inform him privately on the phone after he calls back.
"By the way, he said you know his number. He works at a restaurant in the city and his surname is Du!" Xu Ping added.
Liang Ziqiang's thought just appeared for a second before it was shattered. The restaurant owner's surname was Du, so wasn't this Du Ziteng?
Yes, there are corresponding procedures for the bounty, and it won’t be available so quickly.
He came back quite early today, and he immediately hurried to Zhong Yongrui's house.
I looked at the clock on the wall of Zhong Yongrui's house. Fortunately, it was only a little after five o'clock.
As soon as the call was connected, Du Ziteng came straight to the point: "Aqiang, please don't spend all your time looking for pearls for Mr. Pang and forget about supplying our restaurant! I have been out of stock of chicken claw snails for two days, otherwise I wouldn't be so anxious to call your village!"
It was rare to see Du Ziteng's tone so sad. Liang Ziqiang calculated the days: "It's still one or two days away from the agreed half month. How come it's digested so quickly this time?"
"It's a good thing that they're consumed quickly. There are quite a lot of customers ordering chicken snails recently. Can you please spare some time tomorrow and send me a batch right away? It's ok if you can't get grouper, but don't run out of chicken snails!" Du Ziteng was very anxious.
Liang Ziqiang still had more than twenty yellow croakers in his bucket. He had originally planned to take a day off tomorrow and not go out to sea. While he was resting, he would go to his father-in-law and mother-in-law's house and give them some yellow croakers.
He had already discussed this matter with Zhu Tianpeng in advance and told Zhu Tianpeng that he didn't need to come tomorrow.
My father-in-law and mother-in-law would bring some fruits to visit Chen Xiangbei from time to time, and I should have sent some fish to Huagu Village a long time ago. This time I caught a lot of yellow croaker, which happened to be the fish my mother-in-law liked to eat, so I planned to send some over.
It seems that I have to find another time to go to Huagu Village. I must go to Wuming Island tomorrow to pick the chicken snails to help Du Ziteng first.
Lin Baixian's wedding day was approaching, and Liang Ziqiang ran to find him. In the end, he decided to set aside a day tomorrow to go to the island with him to pick chicken snails.
The two tried but still failed to catch the grouper, so they threw down their fishing rods and concentrated on catching chicken claw snails and abalone.
The biggest difference from the past was that Lin Baixian's dress did not look like a fisherman at all, and while collecting seafood, he would hum a few lines of the songs he heard from his tape recorder from time to time.
"I finally found some fat snails. This small town has many stories, full of joy and happiness..."
"It seems that there are not as many abalones as before? The mountains are green, the streams are blue..."
Liang Ziqiang really didn't expect that in his lifetime, he would be able to catch snails with such a fisherman...
After all, the supply of chicken claw snails and three-headed abalone had been decreasing, so they took them to Yuehai Restaurant the next day and each person only sold them for more than 200 yuan.
"By the way, Brother Teng, do you know which street sells foam boards?" After receiving the money, Liang Ziqiang asked Du Ziteng.
Liang Ziqiang recently discovered that the mud balls that Xiaohai and Lizhi rubbed together completely dried up after a few days. Now, it is difficult to insert the iron hook into it.
If you want to continue hooking, you have to roll new wet mud balls. This is endless, you have to roll mud balls every few days and put them in dozens of small basins.
In this area, they all use wet mud balls to fish with longlines. But Liang Ziqiang soon realized that this was not a long-term solution and was too troublesome.
He thought of foam boards, and put two pieces in each basin. After putting the bait on the iron hook, he would hang it on the foam. It was very convenient to take it down, and the foam boards could be used for a long time.
"What do you want foam boards for? I really don't know where I can buy them, but I can find a few pieces in my store. I'll ask someone to get them for you. Our restaurant doesn't need them anyway." Du Ziteng casually instructed a hotel employee.
He quickly brought it over, only three pieces, and they were not big. This was obviously not enough for Liang Ziqiang.
But there is no way around it. Although foam boards have begun to be used in this era, they are not yet so common that they are everywhere.
After getting it, I didn’t plan to go out on the street looking for foam boards like a headless fly, but went straight back to the village.
When he got home and put the foam board in the basin, he suddenly had an idea.
Why do you need foam boards or wet mud?
The twenty or so basins I use are all plastic basins! Can't I just make fifty holes on the edge of each basin and use them to hang the fifty iron hooks for each basin?
He did it right away. He heated the wire until it was red, and tried to make a small hole on the edge of the basin that was just big enough to hang the iron hook.
Black smoke came out with a hissing sound, accompanied by a smell of burnt plastic. He quickly asked his wife and Lizhi to move away, fearing that the ingredients in the plastic smoke would be harmful to them.
Seeing this, Liang's father and mother were both heartbroken and poked him with their fingers:
"How can you be such a spendthrift? You deliberately smashed a nice new basin into pieces!"
Liang Ziqiang turned a deaf ear to the advice and insisted on burning a circle of holes in the basin.
After cooling, try to hang the iron hooks into the surrounding holes. There are fifty iron hooks and fifty holes. They are hung neatly and in order.
Liang's father and mother scolded him and stopped caring about him. They turned around and went to look for the wire.
A few minutes later, the twenty or so basins that Liang's father owned were also pressed to the ground by Liang's father and mother, and red-hot iron wires were poked into the edges of the basins.
Several small streams of black smoke floated upward at the same time. Liang's father and mother said happily:
"All solutions depend on people's thinking! As long as you are willing to use your brain, there is nothing you can't do!"
It seemed as if the trick of making trouble was not thought up by Liang Ziqiang, but by the old couple.
In a short moment, dozens of pots in the house were all burned with holes.
From today on, Liang Xiaohai, a clay worker, has come to an end of his career.
It was only noon, and Liang Ziqiang decided to take advantage of the afternoon to pick up a dozen yellow croakers and two large scallops brought back from Wuming Island and go to Huagu Village.
Chen Xiangbei's belly was too big now, so she definitely couldn't go back to her parents' home with him, so she reminded him, "Please ask my parents if they are doing well recently! My dad used to have hemorrhoids sometimes, I wonder if he has had it this year..."
Liang Ziqiang: "..."
The first part was easy to answer. But the latter part was hard for him to ask his father-in-law, "Dad, have you had hemorrhoids this year?"
How presumptuous!
Just after noon, Liang Ziqiang filled buckets with fish and scallops and carried them all the way to Huagu Village.
"Xiao Liang, why are you here today? It should be busy going out to sea at this time of year, right?" Father-in-law Chen Dagang asked as soon as he sat down.
"How is Xiangbei now? Is her appetite good? She is due to give birth in two months!" The mother-in-law asked anxiously about her daughter's condition.
Liang Ziqiang told his mother-in-law about Chen Xiangbei's situation, and then talked about his recent situation and started doing longline fishing.
"By the way, longline fishing has been pretty good recently. I've caught quite a few yellow pheasants for several days in a row and sold them for a lot of money. So today I brought a few here specially for you, mom and dad, to try!" Liang Ziqiang told.
"Why are you bringing so much here? You can just keep it and sell it for money." Mother-in-law Li Jinju said to him, but went to get a basin to catch the fish.
While fishing, my mother-in-law said, "You sit at home and chat with your father for a while. I'm going to the orchard to pick some plums. After dinner, I'll bring some plums back for Xiangbei!"
Liang Ziqiang said a few polite words but did not stop him and continued chatting with his father-in-law.
After a while, he heard a quarrel outside, which became louder and louder. Liang Ziqiang listened and found that Liu Mei's voice was mixed in.
Liu Mei, Chen Xiangbei's second aunt, was the one who spared no effort to poach Liang Ziqiang and Chen Xiangbei last year.
It seems that this woman is really a troublemaker. I wonder who in the village she is quarreling with now.
The quarrel became more and more intense, and the two could no longer talk. Chen Dagang stood up first and went out to look around.
Liang Ziqiang also followed him out. When he looked over, he saw a very thin middle-aged woman arguing with Liu Mei, pointing at each other's noses.
"I'm just a matchmaker, and I have good intentions. I want your daughter Xuehua to live a good life! You are a shrew, you are just a bitch, you don't know what's good for you!" Liu Mei was pointed at the nose, and she angrily pointed at the other person's face. The two village women spit at each other.
"You call this kindhearted? You are such a black-hearted person! You knew your nephew was engaged in smuggling, but you kept it a secret from our family without telling them. Even straw becomes gold in your mouth!"
"Now you know, don't you? We haven't officially gotten married yet, so you let your daughter find someone else to marry? Did I stop you?"
"How dare you say that? Your bastard nephew married Xuehua before he even got married..." The thin woman blushed and couldn't continue. She cried, "Your belly is already showing. Everyone in the village knows it. Why is my Xuehua's life so miserable? It's all because of you, you vicious woman. Why don't you just die? Why don't you get struck to death when it rains and thunders!"
After hearing this, Liang Ziqiang finally understood.
Last year, Liu Mei's nephew fell in love with Chen Xiangbei at first sight, but no matter how Liu Mei came to his house to persuade him, Chen Xiangbei just ignored her.
After Chen Xiangbei and Liang Ziqiang got married quickly, Liang Ziqiang did not expect that Liu Mei shifted her target and found another girl named Xuehua in the village for his nephew.
From what they heard, Liu Mei's nephew never married Xue Hua, but secretly got Xue Hua pregnant.
It seems that smuggling has been cracked down on recently, and with the incident in Longyue Village, Xuehua's family is getting anxious.
"Did Liu Mei find a girl in the village and introduce her to his nephew?" Liang Ziqiang asked his father-in-law.
"How could Liu Mei not know what her nephew is doing? She just deliberately hides it from her! What a pity, it's also Xuehua's parents' fault that they are greedy for her nephew's family's wealth. Now Xuehua is suffering, what a sin..." Chen Dagang shook his head and sighed twice.
"I heard that more than twenty people were arrested. His nephew should have been arrested as well, right?" Liang Ziqiang speculated based on the situation.
"Caught? If he can spend ten years in jail and then get out, he's lucky. He's dead!"
"Ah, so serious?!" Liang Ziqiang was stunned.
"I think her nephew's name is not right!" Father-in-law Chen Dagang concluded, "Why not name him You Zhichuang? I happened to have hemorrhoids at that time, and Liu Mei kept mentioning You Zhichuang in front of me, saying he had hemorrhoids, hemorrhoids! It's annoying to hear! Who would name a normal person like Hemorrhoids? How can such a person be blessed!"
“…”
"Dad, what did you say? Liu Mei's nephew is named... You Zhichuang?!"
This shock was so great that Liang Ziqiang felt his throat was frozen, and the sounds he made did not sound like his own! (The foreshadowing of Chapter 18 of this book has been filled in here.) (End of this chapter)
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