They ate breakfast before dawn the next day. By the time Li Jianguo led the horse-drawn cart over, Li Long and the others were ready. Li Long even went to check the storeroom, and sure enough, the fish had frozen. There had been no snow these past two days; otherwise, he would have covered the fish with snow. Without snow, he could only fetch cold water and splash it over them, coating their surfaces with a thin layer of ice to preserve their quality and freshness.
The six of them rode north on the cart and soon joined Tao Daqiang and his father, along with Yang Yongqiang and his father. Hardly anyone spoke as they tacitly formed a convoy.
Li Long had not ridden his bicycle. They needed to go deep into Big Haizi to get fish this time, so a bicycle would have to be left on the south bank, where it could easily be stolen.
By the time they reached Big Haizi, dawn was just breaking, and what lay before them was a huge pit.
Li Long had been here several times already, watching the waterline drop day by day, so he had been mentally prepared.
Li Jianguo and the other four had come last night and seen it, so they did not react much either.
But Tao Daqiang and his father, and Yang Yongqiang and his father, all looked stunned-had Big Haizi simply vanished like that?
Because the lakebed was uneven, even though the water was nearly drained, small amounts remained in the hollows. Water still flowed through a few channels toward the northern floodgate, but the rest was nothing but mud.
The mud had frozen solid by now, and several people were carrying sacks and picking up fish.
Yes, simply picking them up.
Almost every hollow