Side hustle

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Chapter 17: Side hustle

After hesitating for a moment, Chen Beiwu decided to pretend he knew nothing. He finished dinner as usual, then got up and headed upstairs.

"Aren't we going to tell Beiwu?" Chen Dong murmured.

"There's no need. Telling him would only give one more person something to worry about." Huang Xiaoling shook her head. "Besides, Chen Beiwu is at a critical stage in his cultivation right now. We can't disturb him."

At that, she looked at Chen Dong and couldn't help asking, "Can't you listen to me just once and quit your brick-firing job at the factory?"

Chen Dong's brows furrowed involuntarily, his voice heavy. "You said we couldn't touch a cultivation loan, that it would drag Beiwu down. Fine, I listened to you and didn't borrow any money.

"Now you're trying to stop me from working to earn money, too. What are you saying? That I should just stand by and watch you die?"

Huang Xiaoling fell silent.

Only after a long while did she reply, "All right, stop talking. Go ahead and keep being stubborn. Once we're both gone, I'll have Beiwu bury us close together so we can sleep side by side. Then, when I have nothing to do in the middle of the night, I'll eat your offerings."

Chen Dong: "..."

Meanwhile, Chen Beiwu changed his original plans, grabbed his filming equipment, and headed straight out.

The Pan River was also known as the Pearl River, a name it had earned by flowing through Pearl Island.

Unlike the tributary of Still Abyss West Lake, the Pearl River allowed fishing. It was an excellent fishing spot for Far Sky County locals, with no need to flee the poison zone. Chen Beiwu usually streamed his fishing sessions here.

Once his preparations were complete, Chen Beiwu started his livestream.

[Damn, I waited three days for you to finally go live. Can't you be a little more diligent, streamer?!]

[The guy above is asking too much. He's a student. It's already good enough that he hasn't stopped streaming.]

[Checking in. Keep it up, streamer.]

Chen Beiwu was long accustomed to the handful of comments drifting across his phone screen.

Earning money was nothing to be ashamed of.

Independent online content paid well these days. Even though he wasn't particularly popular and his livestream audience numbered only a little over ten thousand, the spirit stones he earned from streaming each month far exceeded his earnings from his side hustle of reporting illegal fishing.

Over the course of a year, Chen Beiwu's streaming income could cover not only his tuition at Shouhe No. 2 Middle School, but also his mother's annual medicine expenses.

"Good evening, fellow Daoists. This is Heavenly Origin Fishing Fortune. Tonight, I'll try fishing with a pole and see whether I can fill my keepnet to bursting." After delivering his usual opening greeting, Chen Beiwu aimed the camera at the ink-black Pearl River beneath the moonlight.

[Fill your keepnet? You'll be lucky not to hook a corpse. Looks like the streamer's still half asleep today.]

[I bet a packet of spicy strips this guy won't catch a single fish tonight.]

[I bet two packets.]

[Go all in. I bet ten packets of spicy strips.]

Chen Beiwu remained perfectly calm about the audience's reactions.

Not catching fish was exactly the point!

Chen Beiwu had streamed over a hundred fishing sessions by now. Aside from fish, he had caught almost everything imaginable.

Unusual artifacts, pills, corpses, jade slips, iron boxes, pocket watches, stones, shoes, weeds, condoms, freshwater mussels, snakes, and so on.

At first, his failure to catch fish had been an accident. Later, once he discovered that streaming this way attracted attention and earned spirit stones, Chen Beiwu deliberately started hooking all sorts of miscellaneous objects-anything but fish.

Over time, his viewers had dubbed him "Fish Runner."

As the name suggested, even fish ran away at the sight of him.

[I'm a Future Inspector of the Law Enforcement Bureau gifted the streamer Membership Card ×1-dropping a follow]

As this gift notification appeared, the stream's popularity rapidly surged.

[It's over! The Law Enforcement Bureau has its eye on the streamer!]

[Holy shit, is that really someone from the Law Enforcement Bureau?]

[Buddy, trust me. In other streams, you might have to question it, but people from the Law Enforcement Bureau showing up in Heavenly Origin's stream is perfectly normal.]

[Brothers, you've got to believe in the mystical stuff. This guy catches everything except fish. He's even fished up corpses three times. Scared the hell out of me.]

;psme&;psme&

[So the streamer's a corpse fisherman. No wonder the Law Enforcement Bureau has its eye on him.]

[No, he should be a treasure fisherman. He's caught at least five discarded magical artifacts.]

Seeing these comments, Chen Beiwu felt rather helpless.

What a mess this had stirred up!

It wasn't that he wanted to put on a show and court attention. The evil cultivators in Fallen Dragon Prefecture simply had no code of conduct and not a shred of professionalism. They couldn't even destroy a body and erase the evidence. After killing someone and stealing their treasures, they dumped the corpse straight into the Pan River-and, as ill luck would have it, he had hooked it.

"Ahem. I'm a professional fishing streamer. Please don't spread nonsense in the chat." While reining in the chatter, Chen Beiwu cast his hook.

]???[;psme&;psme&

[LMAO, you haven't caught a single fish in a year, and you still have the nerve to call yourself a professional angler.]

[Streamer, can you share your secret fishing spots so we know where to avoid?]

;psme&;psme& After posting her comment, Xu Ziqing lay smiling on a cloud-silkworm silk couch, then lightly tapped her phone screen with her bare foot,

enlarging the display as she curiously watched her classmate's performance.

Ten minutes passed.

Aside from a few weeds, Chen Beiwu caught nothing.

"This is ridiculous. How can that dummy fail to catch even one fish?" Xu Ziqing couldn't help laughing.

Gazing idly at the room's lotus-shaped domed ceiling, Xu Lingling speculated, "Do you think this could be something Chen Beiwu scripted?"

"It isn't scripted." Xu Ziqing shook her head. "If that dummy hadn't discovered those bodies, those murderers wouldn't have been caught."

Just then, she seemed to notice something and abruptly sat upright, giving Xu Lingling a fright.

"What's wrong?"

"Shh! Don't talk. Watch closely."

Xu Ziqing wagged her index finger, her eyes fixed on the iron box snagged by the hook on the screen.

The iron box's surface was mottled with rust. A small section of serrated leaf protruded from its edge, with sparse red hairs growing on it.

[Holy shit, streamer, something's up!]

[What's up? Isn't that just a battered iron box?]

[The iron box isn't worth anything. The bloodface vine is!]

[Huh? You mean the streamer fished up a tier-two spirit herb?!]

In an instant, densely packed question marks covered half the screen.

"What bloodface vine? This is obviously red algae from the riverbed." Chen Beiwu deliberately closed the iron box, preventing any more details of the spirit herb inside from being revealed.

[??? Streamer, I'll offer five hundred spirit stones. Will you sell me that 'red algae' of yours?]

[Sell it to me, streamer. I'll offer eight hundred spirit stones!]

[Streamer, I'll offer two thousand spirit stones. If you're actually selling, pretend I never said anything (smirk).]

Some viewers believed Chen Beiwu had fished up the tier-two spirit herb bloodface vine, while others thought people were deliberately playing along with a joke and whipping up the chat.

"Lingling, did you get a clear look?" Xu Ziqing asked without turning around.

"I did. It should be bloodface vine," Xu Lingling said hesitantly.

Although she had only caught a brief glimpse through the screen, as a tier-one mid-grade Alchemist, knowing the myriad herbs was her most fundamental skill. She could tell at a glance that the contents of the iron box weren't red algae, but bloodface vine leaves and branches.

Seriously, how could ordinary weeds possess such a rich, hazy sheen of spiritual energy? It looked unmistakably genuine.

Grandpa was right. Chen Beiwu does have a little good fortune on his side, Xu Ziqing thought.

(End of chapter)