A month later.
Aaron dug into a patch of soil untouched by sunlight and took out grains of fine, sand-like fish bait.
He held them beneath his nose and sniffed lightly, catching a faintly pungent scent.
"Shaped like silkworm droppings, pungent in taste... It's finally done."
"Next, I'll wait until the moon comes out at midnight and give it a try."
Thinking back on all the preparations he had made for this bait over the past month, Aaron's face twitched.
After all, some of the descriptions on that page were rather obscure, while others had to be guessed at.
For instance, he had only learned after several attempts that "earth dragon lure" meant earthworms—and they had to be dried earthworms at that.
Even after figuring out the formula, several attempts at making the bait had ended in failure.
Until this time, when it finally seemed quite close to the finished product described...
Aaron put away the bait and waited eagerly for nightfall.
But then...
Crash!
Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, dark clouds blanketed the sky, and rain began to fall...
Aaron could only huddle inside the covered boat, silently waiting for the rain to pass while lamenting that seven or eight things out of ten in life never went as one wished.
Three days later.
Night.
The sky glittered with stars, without a single cloud in sight.
Aaron moored his boat in the middle of the water and looked up at the bright moon. "The third quarter of the Hour of the Rat... that should be midnight, right?"
Once he judged the time had come, he grabbed a handful of the specially refined bait and scattered it into the lake.
Fish moved and reproduced according to their own patterns. Several large "fish nests" were even heirlooms passed down among certain boat-dwelling