April Fool's Day Surprise

April 1st, April Fool's Day.

Ryukyu, Jiayi County.

A few dark clouds drifted through the sky, and the ground was still damp from the recent rain.

Wang Da Fu had just returned home from paying respects to his ancestors. Before he had even warmed his seat, the ringing phone gave him a start. He checked the number and saw that it was his son calling.

"Hello? Yongli, what is it?"

"Dad! Something terrible happened! The eels are in trouble!"

"What?!" Wang Da Fu sprang from the sofa as if he had been jabbed in the backside with a needle. He anxiously pressed, "What happened?"

"The eels are dying! I went to feed them just now and found eels floating in several ponds."

"What? I'm coming right away!"

Wang Da Fu did not even spare a glance for the meal his wife had just prepared. He grabbed his car keys and hurriedly drove to the farm.

His heart sank along the way as all kinds of possibilities ran through his mind.

Twenty minutes later, the sedan screeched to a stop at the entrance to the breeding base, leaving behind a black skid mark that carried a faint burnt smell.

The moment he got out, he saw that he was not the only one who had arrived.

The cars of the other two shareholders had appeared almost at the same time.

The bald-headed brute's fleshy face was as dark as the bottom of a pot.

The balding old man with glasses was trembling all over. He could barely stand steadily as he walked, and his eyes were full of unease.

The three men had no time for greetings and rushed straight into the farm.

Wang Da Fu's eldest son, Wang Yongli, was standing beside the fishpond with six or seven employees. His face was filled with anxiety, along with a trace of helplessness and despair.

"What's going on?!" Wang Da Fu shoved aside several employees and hurried to the edge of the pond.

Sure enough, a large number of eels floated belly-up on the water's surface. They were already dead, while the ones that remained alive looked half-dead, slowly gasping near the surface.

"Wang Yongli! Is this how you watch over the place?" The bald-headed brute grabbed Wang Yongli by the collar and roared.

Wang Yongli looked innocent and dejected as he hastily explained, "Uncle Zhang, I don't know either! Everything was fine when I came this morning."

The old man with glasses stared at the mass of dead fish on the water, his face ugly. "Could someone have poisoned them? Change the water immediately! And send samples for testing right away. Find out what poison it is!"

"Yes, yes, hurry!" Wang Da Fu seemed to have seized a lifeline. "Yongli, arrange for the eels to be sent for testing. Everyone else, come change the water with me."

Though the bald-headed brute was burning with fury, he had not completely lost his mind. He could only release Wang Yongli, but he warned Wang Da Fu, "We don't know the cause yet, but Wang Yongli was responsible for watching the farm. No matter what, he has to take responsibility."

"Bullshit!" Wang Yongli's temper flared as well. "Would I sabotage my own family's business? Zhang Biao, stop slandering me!"

"Hmph! The fact remains that you failed to keep watch properly."

Seeing Zhang Biao and his son about to come to blows, Wang Da Fu immediately roared, "What are you arguing about? We're all in the same boat now! Hurry up and change the water!"

"Uh... uh..." Wang Yongli glanced at his father's expression again and could only hurry to collect fish. He filled several bottles with pond water, sealed up the feed from the past few days, and took a portion of it as a sample.

He then hurried off with two employees. As he walked, he called his contacts, trying to find someone who could conduct the tests as soon as possible.

"Hmph!" Although Zhang Biao was still angry, he knew that this was not the time for infighting.

Wang Da Fu had already called over all the other employees. With more than fifty people facing over four hundred mu of fishponds, the water-changing work could not possibly go quickly.

Yet the eels kept surfacing one after another, turning belly-up.

More than a dozen pumps worked without pause.

Puff, puff, puff...

The noise of the diesel engines made everyone present increasingly agitated.

In less than an hour, the water in the first three-mu fishpond had been changed, and several water-lifting aerators were running nonstop as well.

Several company technicians gritted their teeth and prepared some antibiotics and nutrients to boost resistance.

Inside large plastic barrels were more than a dozen eels that had just been scooped up, all in a half-dead state. Several technicians began attempting treatment, while small aerators made the water in the barrels bubble continuously.

Seeing this pace, Wang Da Fu's face turned deathly pale.

Under the blazing sun.

He had not had time to eat lunch, and after his earlier emotional outburst and helping the others move things, his body suddenly gave out. His mind grew hazy.

"Boss, have some juice and take a breather!" His assistant hurriedly handed Wang Da Fu a bottle of orange juice.

"Huff... huff..." Wang Da Fu's gaze was vacant, and even the hand he used to take the orange juice was trembling. The assistant did not know how to comfort him and feared saying the wrong thing, so he could only fade into the background.

The other two shareholders were not doing much better either.

Zhang Biao checked the conditions in the other fishponds while cursing from time to time.

The old man with glasses had suffered a blood sugar crash. Coupled with his excessive agitation, he was now lying in the breeding base's break room.

As they watched dead fish being hauled up nonstop, the total had already reached tens of thousands of jin. No one was in a good mood. After all, many employees had worked at Xihai Company for more than a decade, and seeing such devastating losses naturally left them miserable.

At this point, Wang Da Fu and the employees all subconsciously believed that someone had poisoned the ponds, causing the mass eel deaths.

Until the sun began to set.

The hauled-up dead fish had piled up like mountains. Under the dying light of the sunset, they gave off a foul stench and an intense fishy smell.

But after five or six hours, the water-changing work had progressed very slowly. They had only changed the water in a little over twenty mu of fishponds.

Wang Da Fu, Zhang Biao, and the old man with glasses stood on the embankment of the first pond whose water had been changed, their eyes fixed on another layer of dead fish surfacing on the water.

Clearly, changing the water had no effect at all.

"What do we do? What do we do?" Zhang Biao clenched his fists, his voice trembling slightly. Then he turned toward the technicians and shouted through gritted teeth, "Your technical department needs to think of something!"

The technicians inwardly cursed their bad luck and could only shake their heads helplessly. "Deputy General Manager Zhang, it's not that we aren't trying to save them. We just don't know the cause. From noon until evening, I tried more than a dozen methods, but the eels kept dying. We need time to find the cause."

"Time?" Zhang Biao roared through clenched teeth. "How long will it take you to find the cause? In another day or two, all the fish will be dead. What the hell will be the point of finding the cause then?!"

The eels they had pulled out now accounted for around a quarter of the total, while the remaining fish continued gasping half-dead at the surface.

They had very little time left.

Unfortunately for them, they did not know that the formula Jiang Miao had deliberately leaked to them was one that had been specially altered.

Some might have found this puzzling. As a fry breeding company, Xihai Company had previously attempted to cultivate eel fry. By all rights, they should have known what eels could not be fed.

The reason this had happened was that they had encountered the exception known as Jiang Miao.

Jiang Miao's Appraisal Panel could not only reveal every condition needed for eel reproduction, but also identify the eels' genetic flaws.

Just as dogs could not eat chocolate, and some people were lactose intolerant.

Eels likewise had their own genetic flaws. In the wild, eels would not eat foods that might cause their deaths.

But artificial feeding was different.

Jiang Miao had merely added two seemingly useful nutrients and minerals to the formula. Once the eels ate this feed, those two components would undergo a series of biochemical reactions within their bodies and form a chronic toxin. Once its concentration accumulated to a critical point, the eels would suffer acute poisoning and die.

This was "poison bait" designed specifically around the eels' genetic flaws.

In other words, Wang Da Fu had personally poisoned the eels himself.

That was the terrifying part of being able to read biological genes.

If Jiang Miao wanted to, he could even create customized versions of "allergic foods" and "genetic toxins" for every kind of organism.

Such customization could target an entire species, or a single individual.

Jiang Miao's things were not so easy to steal.