Undersea Cleaner

Blue Island City was a coastal city in Huaxia Nation. 520 Official Website

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At six in the morning, Ye Yuan could no longer sleep. He stared blankly out the window.

He had been in this city for nearly five years. He attended university here and stayed after graduation.

Ye Yuan had attended Blue Island City's best school, Blue Island Ocean University, where he majored in marine science.

Because of his major, he had struggled to find work after graduating.

Having grown up in a fishing village, he was a strong swimmer and had also studied diving professionally at university.

The teacher who taught him diving had introduced him to a job cleaning underwater areas at a marine amusement park.

Though the job did not sound like much, the boss offered a base salary of six thousand a month. Six thousand might not have counted as a high salary in a major city, but it was already a decent amount for someone fresh out of university. More importantly, they provided accommodation.

As he looked out at the sea, he recalled what his mother had said on the phone the night before.

Ye Yuan's home was on an island more than two hundred kilometers from Blue Island City.

Due to overfishing in previous years, offshore fishing resources had nearly dried up. Many young fishermen no longer went out to sea and instead traveled to medium and large cities for work, leaving only middle-aged and elderly people behind at home.

In response to this situation, the county government had decided to relocate the fishing village where Ye Yuan's family lived. After the relocation, the entire island would be put out to public tender.

Mother Ye had called Ye Yuan yesterday because of the relocation. She wanted him to return home, since he was a university graduate. The older generation still tended to trust educated people more.

This was what troubled Ye Yuan. The relocation would not begin until the fishing ban period, which was still more than two months away. However, because the local government wanted to settle the matter as soon as possible, they had begun signing pre-relocation contracts in recent days. Families that signed relocation agreements within the month would receive compensation.

Going back would be easy, but what would happen after signing the agreement? Although there was a two-month buffer, housing and other matters could not be settled in just a few days.

The marine amusement park where he worked was relatively small and did not receive many visitors, so it did not need many people to clear underwater trash.

The entire park had only Ye Yuan and Brother Zhao, who was a few years older than him.

Brother Zhao was also from the countryside around Blue Island. Because of his age, his family had arranged a marriage for him, and he had taken a week off to return home.

At present, Ye Yuan was practically the only person cleaning the entire amusement park's seabed. Cleaning underwater trash was not an easy task; it was completely different from cleaning on land. If he took leave to go home as well, would the amusement park agree?

Many people did not understand what underwater cleaning involved. It mainly meant salvaging items visitors accidentally dropped into the sea, as well as collecting garbage visitors threw into the ocean. Of course, precise salvage operations were still quite difficult.

For example, a visitor had once accidentally dropped a ring into the sea. Ye Yuan and Brother Zhao searched the area where it fell for three days but could not find it. Later, the visitor could not wait any longer and left. Half a month afterward, Brother Zhao found the ring one kilometer from where it had been dropped, then mailed it to the visitor.

That was only one minor incident among their many salvage jobs. Ye Yuan had worked here for nearly ten months, and he had recovered countless phones, cameras, DV cameras, selfie sticks, and more.

Since these items could not be used again after getting soaked, few visitors requested that they be recovered. But valuable jewelry still had to be salvaged. Of course, not everything could be retrieved; after all, the seabed was not the same as land.

He decided not to think about it for now. At worst, he would quit. He could not let his parents worry. Seeing that it was nearly seven, Ye Yuan got up, washed up, and went to the amusement park staff cafeteria for breakfast. He had wanted to speak with the manager, but the manager was not there, so he could only wait until evening.

He arrived at the shore and changed into his diving suit. Yesterday, in Sea Area Four, a visitor had accidentally dropped a diamond bracelet while taking a selfie beside a yacht. Today, Ye Yuan would clean the seabed in Sea Area Four and search for the bracelet while he was at it.

He drove a speedboat to Sea Area Four, put on his diving equipment, and fell straight backward into the sea. Sea Area Four was one of the deeper parts of the entire marine amusement park, reaching around thirty meters at its deepest point.

On the seabed, Ye Yuan watched the brightly colored little fish swimming around him, and his mood improved considerably. Perhaps because he had grown up in a fishing village, he felt deeply attached to the sea.

As Ye Yuan carefully observed the seabed, he spotted a Red Crab passing nearby. Seeing a crab on the seabed was perfectly normal, but this crab's size caught his attention.

Red Crabs looked very different from other crabs, so they were easy to identify. Their shells were smooth and marked with yellow patterns, while their two claws extended outward. An ordinary Red Crab was only as large as an adult's palm, but this one was as large as two palms. Most importantly, it was clutching a round stone bead in its pincers.

Ye Yuan slowly moved closer and lightly tapped the large Red Crab with the iron rod in his hand. He had thought it would drop the stone bead and flee, but instead, it sped up without any intention of releasing the bead.

Children who grew up by the sea generally did not like eating Red Crab. They had little roe, and their meat was not especially good, which was why Ye Yuan had not planned to catch it immediately.

But when he saw the Red Crab gripping the bead so tightly, his interest was piqued. He followed behind it and kept tapping at it until the Red Crab finally had no choice but to loosen its pincers.

Ye Yuan reached into the sand and picked up the stone bead the Red Crab had dropped. Since the light on the seabed was poor, he did not examine it closely and simply placed it in the net bag at his waist before continuing his work.

Before he knew it, he had spent thirty minutes underwater, and it was time to head up and rest. During that time, Ye Yuan found three phones and several metal bottles on the seabed. Those bottles were packaging for expensive drinks, which some visitors casually tossed into the sea.

Back on the speedboat, he removed his oxygen tank, opened a bottle of mineral water stored on the boat, and gulped it down.

After resting for a while, he took out the stone bead he had found underwater.

The stone bead felt cool in his hand, an exceptionally pleasant sensation.

But at that moment, he felt an indescribable force, as though something were being drawn out of his body. An unprecedented exhaustion swept over him. Then his vision went black, and he knew nothing more.

In the final instant before Ye Yuan lost consciousness, a cold mechanical voice sounded beside his ear: "Host binding successful."