First Voyage

The next day, Ye Yuan woke up and stood on the deck, gazing out at the distant sea.

The sky was a clear blue, dotted with pure white clouds. Beside the fishing boat, flocks of seagulls followed along as it sailed forward.

Ye Yuan used the second level of the Water Control Art to check the situation beneath the boat.

A small school of fish swam against the current toward the vessel. Ye Yuan really wanted to cast a net, but seeing the size of the school, he decided against it.

His very first net of fish had to be a Good Start. The boat continued onward.

Although he spotted quite a few fish chasing the boat, Ye Yuan still wasn't satisfied. The sea fish weren't dense enough—catching them would be difficult.

"Not dropping the net? I think the catch here is decent," Ye Zhuang asked from beside him.

Ye Yuan just shook his head. After sailing for over twenty minutes, he finally gave the order to cast the net.

This modified fishing boat had fully automated equipment. Though there were only a few people on board, most of the work was done by machinery.

After dragging the net for half an hour, Ye Yuan ordered it hauled up. The winch turned, slowly lifting the fishing net. A creaking sound indicated the steel cable was under immense strain, and the stern of the boat was visibly sinking lower.

"This should be a big haul," Ye Zhuang said excitedly from the side. Ding Er stared expressionlessly at the sea surface, while Ding Yi continued piloting the boat.

The net was slowly raised by the crane, and a massive bundle of sea fish appeared before the few of them. This single net weighed at least ten thousand jin.

Inside the net were many barracuda.

Barracuda have long, slender bodies, cylindrical in the front and flattened toward the tail. Their heads are short and wide, the top flat, and their snouts blunt and pointed. They like to leap and often swim upstream in schools against the current, feeding on organic matter in the mud at the bottom. The largest barracuda can grow up to 1.8 meters long.

Barracuda aren't considered premium seafood; on the market, they go for about fifteen to twenty yuan per jin. The best time to eat barracuda is spring, and now it was already early summer—slightly past the season.

By this time, the net had been lowered onto the deck. As the bottom rope was loosened, the barracuda, which had been motionless until now, erupted in aggression. They tried to leap back into the sea, especially the big ones over a meter long, which looked like they might actually take flight.

Ye Yuan and the others quickly stepped forward, moving the large barracuda into the cold storage first. As one meter-long barracuda after another went into the freezer, only the smaller fish remained on the deck. Ye Yuan threw many of the immature fish back into the sea—this was the fishermen's custom.

After working for over three hours, all the catch had been roughly sorted.

There were over a hundred barracuda over a meter long, and two hundred between half a meter and a meter. These alone amounted to more than eight thousand jin of fish.

Ye Yuan really wanted to convert all this catch into points immediately, but since Ye Zhuang was still on the boat, he suppressed his desire.

The boat continued forward. Ye Yuan told Ye Zhuang to go rest and instructed Ding Er to prepare lunch.

Another three days passed at sea for Ye Yuan.

During these three days, he cast the net several times, and each haul was excellent. The biggest catch reached fourteen thousand jin. By now, Ye Yuan's boat held nearly twenty tons of fish.

Ye Yuan picked up the map and found that he was already very close to international waters. The sea depth here should exceed a thousand meters. He told Ding Yi to stop the boat. Ye Yuan had arranged for Ye Zhuang to go into the fish hold to sort the catch—the last net had been good but very mixed, with all kinds of fish. Ye Zhuang and Ding Er would need some time to sort through it. During that time, Ye Yuan planned to go down and take a look underwater.

Ye Yuan entered the sea, and the images of the surrounding waters all flooded into his mind. Various creatures flashed through his thoughts.

He arrived at a sea area lush with aquatic plants, where herbivorous life was abundant. He took a look, found nothing special, and continued swimming farther away.

By now, Ye Yuan had reached over five hundred meters below the surface, feeling no discomfort at all. On the seabed here grew coral clusters of various sizes, among which was a patch of deep red coral. That should be red coral.

Red coral typically has a diameter of 0.5 mm to 2 cm. Each individual has eight feathery tentacles. There are eight unpaired septa, with the septal muscles growing toward the ventral side, and the septal filaments are single-lobed. There is only one siphonoglyph, located on the ventral side. The skeleton is mostly internal, or extends outward from within the body. It has a calcareous axial skeleton, branching like a tree, but not on a single plane. The skeleton ranges from pale pink to deep red. Apart from the axial skeleton, calcareous spicules are distributed throughout the mesoglea, often living together with reef-building corals. The skeleton is dense in texture and bright in color, often used as gemstone or carving material. The court beads of ancient Chinese emperors were made from red coral. It can also be used medicinally, with effects of calming convulsions and improving eyesight. Due to extensive harvesting, its numbers have sharply declined, and it is listed as a national first-class protected animal.

Ye Yuan didn't collect any coral here. He continued swimming downward. He didn't know how far he went, but in this area there were many tall seaweed species, along with some green ribbon-like plants, some reaching several tens of meters in length—taller than most trees on land.

Suddenly, not far away, several kinds of light flickered, multicolored and dazzling. Ye Yuan immediately swam over. Getting closer, he found it was a kind of sparkling glass crystal.

"Are these crystals?" Ye Yuan thought.

Crystals weren't anything precious—many small crafts were made from them.

"Niuniu would definitely like these shiny things."

Anyway, he'd been down here for quite a while. Time to head back. He'd grab a few to take back for the little girl.

He picked out a few he thought were the prettiest and returned to the fishing boat.

After he boarded, Ding Yi handed him a towel and looked at the few pieces of "crystal" in Ye Yuan's hand.

"Boss, where did you find this tourmaline? This stuff is good."

Ding Yi and the others were really human-like. Sometimes Ye Yuan couldn't tell whether they were robots or real humans.

When he heard Ding Yi say that what he held was tourmaline, Ye Yuan also recalled some information about it.

Tourmaline is the most colorful of all gemstones. Since tourmaline is a complex borosilicate mineral, metal ions like iron, magnesium, lithium, manganese, and aluminum can substitute for each other. Differences in the content of each ion directly affect the color and type of tourmaline.

Iron-bearing tourmaline appears black and green;

Magnesium-bearing tourmaline shows yellow or brown;

Lithium-, manganese-, and cesium-bearing tourmaline shows rose red, pink, red, or blue;

Chromium-bearing tourmaline shows dark green.

Among these, azure blue and bright rose red tourmalines are considered top grade.

Sometimes, within the same tourmaline crystal, uneven distribution of components often leads to color variations, resulting in bicolor tourmaline, multicolor tourmaline, or watermelon tourmaline with a red interior and green exterior.

Recalling this, Ye Yuan looked at the few pieces of tourmaline in his hand. Among them was one azure blue, one black, and one pink.

"I wonder how much these pieces of tourmaline can sell for. When we get back to inland waters and I have cell signal, I'll ask Eldest Brother," Ye Yuan muttered softly.

Seeing Ye Zhuang come out, Ye Yuan handed the tourmaline to Ding Yi and told him to put it away for now.

"Captain, the sorting is done."

Ever since coming aboard, Ye Zhuang had been calling Ye Yuan "Captain," which Ye Yuan was quite satisfied with.

"Let's go drop a net in international waters and see what we get. Since we've already come all the way here, it'd be a shame to go back without casting a net." Ding Yi piloted the boat, and it sailed steadily toward international waters.

PS: Thank you all for your support. If any of you brothers have monthly tickets, please vote for Fingertip, because I haven't received a recommendation notice yet. I hope to improve the results a bit and get a recommendation spot sooner.