Chapter 427

In this weather, in this environment, several large ships had come over without a sound. He could tell with his toes that these people were definitely up to no good.

If they were doing something legitimate, they would not have sneaked over in the middle of the night. They could have come at dusk.

Coming at dusk would also have made it easier to survey the waters and reduce the risk of running aground.

The two stood on the shore for quite a while.

The three ships were still some distance from shore, and no one noticed their presence.

At around 3:50, a rhythmic knocking suddenly came from the ships, then gradually moved in a certain direction.

Lu Ao froze for a moment. He was a fisherman too, and he understood what that knocking meant—it was being used to startle and drive the fish.

After nets were cast into the sea, they had to wait for a certain amount of time for fish to swim into them. Often, fishermen did not have time to head out early, so they would set their nets that day and haul them up an hour or two later.

At times like this, they used this method—throwing the nets into the sea, then striking the hull hard with iron rods from aboard the ship. Startled by the noise, the fish would flee in a panic, unable to tell east from west, and would easily crash straight into the nets.

Whenever they used this method, their catch for the day was generally quite good.

If these people were fishing like this in the open sea in the middle of the night, there would be nothing to criticize. But this was not the open sea—it was the Marine Ranch he had leased!

Judging by how they had