The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 252: A 'Friendly' Visit from the Crabbers

The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 252: A 'Friendly' Visit from the Crabbers

The laws vary from country to country, and in Australia, they even differ from state to state.
Back in China, Chu Mingcheng would always talk it out before throwing a punch.
If the other guy started it, he'd assess the situation. If it was some rich kid, he'd let him land a few hits and walk away feeling proud.
If it was just some regular guy with no money, he'd block the punch and make sure the guy earned himself a few days of free room and board.
It was the twenty-first century—what was face compared to money?
But here in Melbourne, there was no need for that. As long as he was certain it was self-defense, a little counter-attack was perfectly fine.
That's why he'd slapped the troublemaker without a second thought and wasn't worried in the slightest.
Without waiting for the other crabbers to arrange for the big brute on the ground to be taken to a hospital, Chu Mingcheng and Noah left the pier.
They had the evidence. The others could only watch them go.
"Cheng, be careful next time you head out," Noah said. He'd let the truck driver leave ahead of him and was now sitting in the car he'd lent to Chu Mingcheng, his voice tinged with worry. "Those crabbers won't let this go easily."
"What do you think they'll do?"
"I'm not exactly sure, but the company they work for might put pressure on the Fisheries Authority to step in—maybe even revoke your quota. On top of that, the crabbers themselves might try to sabotage you while you're out there. I've heard they've done stuff like that before."
"It's never escalated to sinking a boat or someone getting killed, but you need to be on guard for any extreme behavior. Our local citizens can legally own guns."
Noah's account wasn't detailed—a lot of it was just hearsay. He didn't really know what they would do.
Chu Mingcheng didn't have a great solution either. "Well, let's just take it one step at a time. If it comes to it, we can do bounty missions. The money's not bad there either."
As for the guns, he couldn't guarantee his own safety. If they really took it that far, he'd have no choice but to give up on the Giant Tasmanian King Crabs.
"Huh, I'm surprised you're interested in bounty missions." Noah was a little taken aback. After selling the king crabs, he had planned to do just that with a friend.
Originally, since Chu Mingcheng had Jiang Luoluo with him, he hadn't planned on inviting him, given the potential danger.
But now that he was alone, strong, and not the reckless type, Noah didn't mind bringing him along.
"Of course I am," Chu Mingcheng said with a nod and a smile.
From the looks of it, catching king crabs wouldn't take much time at all. The fishing ban had just started, and he certainly couldn't let his time go to waste.
Maybe he could earn enough for a villa in Australia. Continuing to fleece the Aussies was his best option.
Before long, he drove back home.
Noah didn't go inside with him, heading off to take care of his own business.
So Chu Mingcheng had dinner by himself and rested at home.
The group of crabbers didn't call the police. After taking their man to the hospital, they gathered again to discuss their options.
Since their company wouldn't step in, they had to rely on their own methods to drive him away.
Thus, in the early hours of the next morning, two crab boats from Tasmania appeared at the Melbourne port.
When Chu Mingcheng, fully prepared, set out again on his fishing boat, it wasn't long before he noticed the two crab boats trailing him.
Crab boats were easy to recognize—the crab cages stacked on their decks were a dead giveaway.
Chu Mingcheng knew trouble had arrived. That big brute he'd slapped had seemed so impulsive; he didn't know if the guy planned to just kill him at sea and sink his boat.
He pulled out his crabbing map and studied the water depths marked on it.
His brow furrowed. The waters of the Bass Strait were relatively shallow, with the deepest point on the map only reaching a little over three hundred meters.
With that, he pulled up his navigation and searched for the deepest waters near Tasmania.
If they were really planning to play rough, Chu Mingcheng certainly wouldn't let them off the hook.
Choosing a spot deep enough that humans couldn't dive to it was essential.
He wasn't sure if the Australian authorities could find any clues and arrest him if he sank their boat in shallow water.
Of course, that was the worst-case scenario.
If possible, Chu Mingcheng didn't want to make such a big scene.
After pinpointing a deep-water location, he steered his boat toward the area where the Giant Tasmanian King Crabs gathered, avoiding the waters where the sperm whale carcass was.
This time, the journey took a full seven hours before he stopped. When he saw the two crab boats stop about five hundred meters away, Chu Mingcheng knew they were definitely up to something.
Noah had just gotten a large haul of king crabs, so he was lying low today, sleeping in the living quarters with a speargun and fish spear beside him.
If they dared to sneak onto his boat during the night, he could legally take care of them.
But to his surprise, nothing happened all night. Chu Mingcheng had stayed up for nothing.
This passivity was starting to annoy him. After using a Life Conversion to perk himself up, he decided to start dropping his crab cages. Letting this drag on would definitely affect his and Noah's business.
And his every move was being watched by the men on the two crab boats.
Then, to Chu Mingcheng's utter confusion, one of the crab boats sprang into action. One by one, they dropped their crab cages right next to his, surrounding his cages in the middle, blatantly stealing his fishing spot.
So that's their game…
The density of Giant Tasmanian King Crabs was far lower than that of regular king crabs. If his cages were surrounded by others, he wouldn't be able to catch a single one.
Of course, even if the density were as high as regular king crabs, with his cages boxed in, he wouldn't have much of a harvest.
This scummy tactic was actually quite effective.
They weren't directly confronting him, so there was nothing he could do.
At most, he could yell a few curses, but yelling wouldn't kill anyone.
Chu Mingcheng's crabbing was affected, but theirs wouldn't be. And with the combined number of boats from their several companies, they weren't afraid of an outsider using the same tactic against them.
After figuring out what was happening, Chu Mingcheng actually felt relieved. As long as they didn't bring out firearms, he wasn't worried at all.
This move might be an unsolvable problem for others, but for him, it was a 'friendly' gift.
Thus, Chu Mingcheng leisurely steered his boat to a nearby spot where the water was about two hundred meters deep, took out his electric jigging rod, and prepared to fish for some deep-sea species.
At that moment, on the crab boat following him, two crabbers watching through binoculars were taken aback when they saw him casually fishing.
"Why isn't he angry at all? How is he in the mood to fish?"
"Maybe he doesn't get what we're doing with the cages?"
"…Whatever. Once he pulls up all his empty cages, he should understand the consequences of trying to take a piece of our crabbing quota."
After a brief exchange, they continued to watch him through their binoculars.
A short while later, they saw him pull up a large, brown fish.
Chu Mingcheng looked at the Southern Hake, its eyes bulging and its body feeling a bit soft to the touch, and was somewhat surprised.
This was a type of cod, distributed around Japan, southeastern Australia, and northern New Zealand.
The reason for his surprise was that this cod mostly stayed in waters five hundred meters deep—it was a deep-sea cod.
He hadn't expected to run into one in the Bass Strait today, especially since the water here was only a little over two hundred meters deep.
But the specific living habits of this cod hadn't been fully researched, so its appearance here wasn't all that strange.
Southern Hake weren't normally very large, usually around fifty or sixty centimeters.
But the one in his hands was a meter long and weighed at least forty or fifty jin—it was seriously heavy.
It just wasn't much to look at and didn't seem very appetizing.
He wondered what the price for this fish was in the Melbourne market. It didn't look like it would fetch much.
Placing the fish in the refrigerated hold, Chu Mingcheng baited his hook and continued fishing.
Using an electric reel made fishing much faster than hand-cranking.
It seemed there was a school of Southern Hake below, and he started getting bites one after another.
The crabbers watching him were dumbfounded. At this rate, the guy could make money without even catching king crabs. No wonder he wasn't panicking.
But even so, they had to keep blocking his king crab catch.
The king crab quota was only valid for twenty days. Although there was no fine for not filling the quota, unlike with regular king crabs, if the time ran out and there was still quota left, the remaining amount would be canceled and redistributed.
When that time came, their company would talk to the Fisheries Authority, and they were confident the authority wouldn't be stupid enough to give the quota to him again.
Chu Mingcheng fished all afternoon. By a little after four, the refrigerated hold was full of fish.
Most of them were Southern Hake, with a small portion of red snapper. This snapper was a local Australian specialty, adding a bit of experience to his Aquatic Codex.
Once the hold was full, Chu Mingcheng put away his fishing rod and went back into the cabin to play games.
As night fell, he changed into a wetsuit, turned off the boat's lights, leaving only the warning light flashing.
The men on the crab boat saw this and assumed he was going to rest, so they stopped their surveillance.
As for whether Chu Mingcheng would secretly pull up his cages in the middle of the night, or even pull up theirs, they weren't worried.
They had someone on watch. The moment there was any movement from the other boat, they would react immediately.
However, no one could have imagined that the person they were dealing with this time was no ordinary man, but someone with a cheat system.
Chu Mingcheng had already slipped into the water and was swimming toward the spot where he'd dropped his cages that day.
Why did he say these crabbers were giving him a 'friendly' gift? It was because the cages they'd dropped were just making his job easier.
The cages had been down for nearly seven hours. If the number of Giant Tasmanian King Crabs in this area was decent, the harvest should be good.
However, when he reached the spot where the cages were dropped, he discovered there weren't many king crabs here.
His ten surrounded cages were, as expected, empty. And of the fifty cages dropped by the crab boat, only the outer ones had caught some king crabs.
But no matter how few, he couldn't let them go. So he began his underwater transport work for the night.
First, Chu Mingcheng caught all the king crabs gathered outside the cages and stuffed them into his own. Then, he started grabbing them directly from the crabbers' cages.
After emptying a cage of its king crabs, he would thoughtfully close the side he'd opened and lock it back up.

Chapter 252: A 'Friendly' Visit from the Crabbers