Xiao Xiao's eyes widened. "You deliberately dove to the seabed to gather these?"
"I saw them when I went down, so I picked some up."
"No... I mean, going underwater like that, how long did you have to hold your breath? How many trips did it take to dig up this many?"
Ye Yaodong smiled without answering.
It wasn't that he wouldn't tell them, but this involved Lin Jishang's smuggling. He couldn't go blabbing about that.
"Tch, suit yourself. We'll try going underwater later too. The weather's getting warmer anyway. Once we're done catching squid, we can go for a swim in the sea and cool off."
He hurriedly warned them, "Don't go too deep. The pressure underwater is strong. You can look around the nearby waters. There might be some there, and there might be some in the intertidal zone too."
The intertidal zone was the stretch of shore between the highest and lowest water levels during spring tides, extending from where the sea covered the land at its highest to what was exposed when the tide receded to its lowest.
The intertidal zone was also a major habitat for shellfish, where the tides played a more important role than the waves.
"All right, we'll try next time."
Once they went ashore, Ye Yaodong gave each of them ten large ones to try. Each weighed a jin, some even more. He also kept a dozen or so smaller ones for his own family.
"No, just give us some small ones to try. Sell the big ones. They'll fetch more money. We're not outsiders."
"All right."
He had gone underwater five times and gathered nearly three hundred jin. The large ones should fetch about fifteen fen each, while the small ones would sell by weight at ten fen a jin.