Father Ye had been born and raised by the sea. In his fifty-odd years, he had heard some of the local legends. Though he had never seen this fish himself, he could match it to what he had heard.
This fucking oarfish was known as the earthquake fish!
It was not a hairtail!
Most people who saw an oarfish might mistake it for an enormous hairtail. But although oarfish and hairtail looked similar, they were actually completely unrelated.
Officially, oarfish belonged to the order Lampriformes, while hairtail belonged to Perciformes.
Besides their different body shapes, their appearances differed too.
A hairtail was clad entirely in silver and looked quite plain.
An oarfish was far more striking. Besides its silver covering, it had a beautiful "trim"-those flashy, beautiful red fin rays.
The long fin rays on its head resembled a dazzling red crown, which was how it got its Chinese name, "royal ribbonfish."
People lived off what their surroundings provided, and fishermen living by the sea naturally made their living fishing.
For fishermen, discovering a big fish was something to celebrate, because it meant their labor had yielded a handsome reward.
But what they had discovered was an oarfish...
An inexplicable trace of fear rose in Father Ye's heart.
According to folklore, the oarfish was a "devil's messenger" that brought earthquakes.
Seeing his father's expression keep shifting, Ye Yaodong patted his shoulder to reassure him. "We're always hearing about earthquakes over in Taiwan. We only get affected by the aftershocks occasionally. Maybe this fish fled here from the Taiwan Strait in a blind panic after an earthquake. Or maybe the legend's false."
Though he thought it could very well be true, because in his previous life, he had seen news reports about oarfish being discovered on beaches, often followed shortly afterward