The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 177: No Coffin, But Here's a Fish King

The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 177: No Coffin, But Here's a Fish King

"It's just a coffin lid—what's there to be afraid of?" Chu Mingcheng calmly reeled in his hook, then moved over to grab the wooden board before it could sink.
This spot was close to where he'd been fishing for mandarin fish. He had swum through this area before while diving and hadn't noticed anything unusual.
Besides, if there really was a coffin, the lid should have been nailed shut. There's no way he could have pulled it up so easily.
But after lifting the board slightly, he let out a soft sound of surprise.
It wasn't the thick, slightly curved type of sliding lid—it was flat like a door panel and caked in mud.
However, when he lifted the entire board out of the water, his heart skipped a beat. Could it really be a coffin lid?
A door panel wouldn't be this narrow. In both length and width, it was a dead ringer for a standard, rectangular coffin lid.
Seeing the board in his hands, Chen Yang hesitated for a moment. "Ah Cheng, should we call the police?"
Chu Mingcheng shook his head. "Let's not call them just yet. Let's take this board to shore first. I'll change into my wetsuit and go check what's on the bottom."
"Whoa! You're going down there yourself? Aren't you afraid of... you know?" Zhang Wei sucked in a sharp breath when he heard that Chu Mingcheng was going to dive. What if there really was a coffin down there? Wouldn't that be creepy as hell?
"It's not that scary. I've wandered around the deep sea in the middle of the night. The environment is way more frightening than seeing a coffin or something," Chu Mingcheng said with a dismissive wave and a smile.
He'd gone spearfishing dozens of meters deep in the dead of night. If that kind of dark, deep environment didn't scare him, why would a body?
He steered the boat back to shore, tossed the suspected coffin lid aside, and told Chen Yang and the others to do as they pleased.
Chu Mingcheng himself drove to the pier, boarded his own boat, and changed into his wetsuit.
He had washed and stored it on his boat after returning with Wei Jianguo and the others.
He returned to the lake. Chen Yang and Zhang Wei were standing on the bank, smoking and chatting.
Seeing him back, they asked again, looking worried.
"Ah Cheng, are you really going in?"
"If you see anything scary, don't worry—I'll sleep with you tonight."
"Get lost!"
Chu Mingcheng gave Zhang Wei the middle finger for his offer. If he were really scared, wouldn't he find Jiang Luoluo? Did he need this guy ruining his chances?
But Zhang Wei's joke did give him an idea. Still, he had to check the water first. Everything else could wait.
Chu Mingcheng piloted the boat back to the spot, asking Chen Yang and the others to stay aboard as backup. He put on his gear and jumped straight into the water.
Once in, he dove headfirst.
The water here was only about six or seven meters deep—a piece of cake for a freediver.
In the blink of an eye, Chu Mingcheng was hovering two meters off the bottom, scanning his surroundings. He saw no big fish and no coffin.
But they couldn't possibly find the exact spot where he'd hooked the board; they only had a general idea of the location, so he'd have to search the bottom slowly.
Chu Mingcheng remembered hooking the board on the northwest side. He oriented himself and began swimming in that direction.
After a short while, he found drag marks on the bottom.
He confirmed it was where the board had been, but there was nothing else there. It was clear the board had been carried here by the current before sinking.
It was just as he'd thought. If there had been a coffin, the lid would have been nailed shut.
In that case, he would have either pulled up the whole coffin or snapped his line. The former was basically impossible.
Shaking his head slightly, Chu Mingcheng was about to head back when he noticed some movement in a patch of weeds nearby.
He saw a mandarin fish larger than a washbasin suddenly dart out from the weeds and swallow a small river shrimp that had strayed too close.
Holy shit!
Despite his college education, Chu Mingcheng's vocabulary failed him, and that was the only thought that came to mind.
A mandarin fish this big must have been growing for over a decade, right?
He didn't make any rash moves, instead returning to the side of the bass boat.
The moment his head broke the surface, Chen Yang asked, "Well? Find anything?"
Chu Mingcheng shook his head. "No coffin or anything. The board must have been carried here by the current, and I just happened to hook it. But I did find a big surprise."
"Ah Wei, get me the heaviest line you can find, tie on a big hook, and put a soft lure on it. I'm about to bring up a real monster for you."
"Oh? What kind of monster has you this excited?" Zhang Wei was slightly surprised, but his hands moved quickly, rigging the line just as requested.
Chu Mingcheng took the line and, as before, wrapped it directly around his hand.
Whether fishing or diving, he always wore gloves, so he wasn't worried about the line cutting him.
Returning to the patch of weeds where he'd seen the mandarin fish, Chu Mingcheng floated on the surface and dropped the baited hook right where the fish had ambushed the shrimp.
He tugged the line gently with his left hand, making the soft lure imitate the lively movements of a small fish in the water.
Sure enough, he saw a large dark shadow slowly approaching the lure from below.
The next moment, the mandarin fish appeared and swallowed the lure in one aggressive bite.
Chu Mingcheng immediately yanked his right hand hard, and the hook sank deep into the fish's mouth.
He then tried to pull the fish back, but found its strength was immense—he couldn't budge it at all.
Seeing this, Chu Mingcheng held the line with his left hand and started coiling it with his right.
He reeled in the line loop by loop, slowly descending into the water himself.
He couldn't pull it back, but the fish wasn't getting away either. This mandarin fish was big, but it looked to be twenty or thirty jin at most.
A fish of this size was extremely rare for a wild mandarin fish. Anyone who caught one would usually be seen carrying it around, wandering the streets as if they'd forgotten how to get home, before ending up in a local news story.
But it was no match for the kind of giant fish that could drag a person around.
As Chu Mingcheng reeled in more and more line, he slowly closed the distance with the mandarin fish.
Its body was long and slender, but its belly was slightly swollen.
Fish preparing for winter always ate until they were plump.
Chu Mingcheng drew near, pulling hard on the line with his right hand while reaching for its tail with his left.
The shorter the line, the better his control over the fish. Although it struggled, after a few attempts, he successfully grabbed its tail.
With both ends controlled, the mandarin fish lost most of its ability to resist.
But the mandarin fish wasn't ready to give up. It wasn't completely exhausted. With a twist of its body and a flick of its tail, it broke free from Chu Mingcheng's grasp.
He was also afraid that a sudden burst of strength might cause the fish to tear the hook out, so he didn't fight it with brute force. Instead, he followed it, playing the fish to wear down its stamina.
He followed it for a while. The mandarin fish spotted a few large rocks ahead and hid beside them.
Chu Mingcheng didn't want it to rest. Just as he was about to tug the line and make it run again, he suddenly noticed a flash of red under the rocks.
Looking closer, it was a faint, dark red, interspersed with white.
Red was a color that was hard to see clearly in the lake water, but this rock was unmistakably showing other colors.
Chu Mingcheng didn't have much geological knowledge and didn't recognize the rock, but he suspected it might be something special.
But he was still fighting a fish, so he focused on that first.
He had been in the water for two minutes already. Now that Chen Yang and Zhang Wei also knew about spearfishing, he didn't stay down any longer. He surfaced to pretend to catch his breath, then continued playing the fish to wear it down.
After a dozen or so minutes, the fish was nearly exhausted. Chu Mingcheng finally went in and grabbed it again, then swam back with his prize.
A mandarin fish too big to fit in a washbasin. The two men on the boat naturally let out a series of amazed exclamations.
Zhang Wei tried to weigh the fish with a fish gripper and found it was twenty-seven jin and seven liang. The gripper had a thirty-jin limit and was just able to display the weight.
"Amazing. I've never even seen a mandarin fish this big. Ah Cheng, hurry up and look for more. A lake this big has to have more than one."
"There's definitely more, but finding them is the problem. It's still early, so I'll look around a bit more."
Chu Mingcheng glanced at the time. It was only nine-thirty in the morning—he still had an hour to play.
Since he was already in the water, he might as well continue looking for big fish.
But Chu Mingcheng was still thinking about those rocks. He returned to the spot, dove down, and dug them all out.
One was the size of a duck egg, one the size of a chicken egg, and another was as big as a football. It was quite heavy, so he didn't take it.
Returning to the surface, he first examined the chicken-egg-sized rock in his right hand.
He was surprised to find that what had been just a hint of red underwater was now a series of blood-red patterns on the rock's surface.
The rest of it was milky white, like nephrite jade, with a smooth surface like a river stone—not like an ordinary rock at all.
The duck-egg-sized rock in his left hand was completely red, but its surface was rough, with many parts still muddy yellow, making it look quite unattractive.
He returned to the bass boat and handed the rocks to the two on board. "What kind of rocks are these? Do you recognize them?"
Zhang Wei curiously picked up a rock and looked it over, but didn't recognize it.
When Chen Yang saw the color and luster of the rocks, he let out a "Holy crap."
"Could this be Chicken Blood Stone?"
"Chicken Blood Stone?"
Chu Mingcheng felt he had heard of it, but had little recollection.
"Well, Chicken Blood Stone is one of China's four great national stones. A single gram can sell for a few yuan to over a hundred, depending on the quality."
Chen Yang didn't actually know much about Chicken Blood Stone either, but he knew more than the other two, who were completely clueless.
He picked up the red and white stone. "This one isn't just beautiful in color—it's also very translucent. You can tell at a glance it's high quality."
Then he pointed to the other one. "This one, on the other hand, is clearly poor quality. It's hard to even say if it's really Chicken Blood Stone."
"Over a hundred per gram?" Chu Mingcheng was stunned. Never mind the poor-quality one, but this red and white stone—he felt the price would definitely not be low.
But then he thought of the football-sized one at the bottom of the lake. He immediately said, "You guys wait a minute—there's a huge one at the bottom."
"A huge one?" Chen Yang and Zhang Wei exchanged a look. Could it be that just by going fishing, their brother was about to become a millionaire from finding some rocks?
Shortly after, they saw Chu Mingcheng carrying a large red rock.
Chen Yang pondered for a moment. "This one... is probably granite?"
"Uh..." Chu Mingcheng was speechless.
But in the end, whether they were valuable or not, they'd have to get them appraised to know for sure, so they took all the rocks with them when they left.

.
!
Chapter 177: No Coffin, But Here's a Fish King