A fishing boat nearby had yet to leave. When the older man aboard saw him holding the hand net, ready to scoop up more, he kindly called out to dissuade him.
"Don't catch those. They should be jellyfish. They're poisonous, so there's no use taking them back."
"I know they're poisonous. I'll be careful. I'm just trying my luck."
Farther away, other fishing boats had been drawn by the cluster of boats that had gathered here earlier and were heading over. Although most of those boats had already dispersed, the newcomers still came this way.
Some had just left the typhoon shelter and needed to head ashore anyway, so it made no difference which direction they took. Others had finished working, or, like Ye Yaodong, had just set their nets and were heading back, so they came over for a look along the way.
The older man who had warned him saw him repeatedly pushing aside the blue jellyfish on the sea with his hand net, as though searching for something. Curious himself, he simply stayed to watch a while and see what he was planning to do.
He also studied the water closely to see whether there really was anything different there.
The fishing boats that arrived one after another also spotted the blue balls floating on the sea. Curious, they asked the others about them.
Ye Yaodong had no time to pay them any attention. He had just scooped up another edible jellyfish.
But their attention was not on him. It was all on the patch of blue balls on the water and the older man explaining things to them.
The older man did notice what he was doing, but he was too far away to see clearly. What Ye Yaodong caught looked much the same as those