The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 254: The Boat is Crawling with Crabs

The Fish I Catch Can Level Up-Chapter 254: The Boat is Crawling with Crabs

The next morning, Chu Mingcheng set out for the pier with two tools in hand.
It didn't take long for the captain of the crab boat, who lived on board, to notice the commotion of him loading supplies. They immediately got busy, and after a quick breakfast, they were ready to head out to sea.
Chu Mingcheng was no longer worried about the Fisheries Authority causing trouble. Several days had passed—if they were going to come, they would have come already.
He suspected his cheat was at work; otherwise, it wouldn't have just been these two crab boats harassing him.
For now, it seemed the men on the crab boats had no intention of using firearms and were just trying to stir up trouble. Fortunately, his cheat had easily diffused the situation.
With all the preparations for departure complete, Chu Mingcheng started the fishing yacht and set off.
It was only seven in the morning. He would reach the crabbing spot around two in the afternoon. He could drop the cages then and dive at midnight to move the crabs.
He'd also leave their crab cages behind as a little lesson, to teach them that being greedy gets you struck by lightning.
Seven hours later, he arrived at the crabbing location and immediately dropped his ten cages.
Then he moved the boat out of the area to make way for the crab boats that had followed him, letting them set their own cages.
"Whoa, they're going all out?" A short while later, Chu Mingcheng, who had casually looked up to observe the situation, was surprised to see both boats dropping cages into the sea.
In truth, the two crab boats had been following him for several days, and the expense was not insignificant.
In the past, when they blocked other boats, they could also catch some Giant Tasmanian King Crabs and other seafood to sell, making a small profit and avoiding a loss.
But in the last two drops, they hadn't caught a single regulation-sized king crab.
The cost of taking the boat out, the daily food consumption, the crew's wages—all of it had to be split between the two captains and their crabbing teams. They had already lost a considerable amount of money.
Don't be fooled by the large sums they made from crabbing each year—these guys spent just as much.
The annual maintenance on the crab boats alone was a huge expense, not to mention their daily debauchery. They usually only prepared to go out for king crabs or other seafood when they were broke.
Therefore, this mission to block Chu Mingcheng was putting a lot of pressure on this group of crabbers. The company wasn't involved, so they had to bear the costs themselves.
They also had to be careful. The only hothead among them was currently lying in a hospital with a moderate concussion, temporarily unable to go out to sea.
The rest of them had no desire to stick their necks out, only to end up in prison while someone else reaped the benefits.
They didn't even dare to touch his ten crab cages, fearing he would record them and accuse them of theft or robbery.
Faced with Chu Mingcheng, they were now completely helpless.
Dropping two hundred cages at once was a desperate gamble.
Their aggressive posture also made Chu Mingcheng reconsider whether he should really leave all their cages behind.
If he left two hundred cages, he'd probably have to pay a visit to the police station for a chat.
Of course, he wasn't afraid of that. Even the world's best diver couldn't cut the ropes of two hundred crab cages in one night, not even with an oxygen tank.
He just found the idea of a police station chat troublesome. But thinking about the crabbers' behavior, he ultimately decided they deserved to be punished, to be taught that they couldn't be so arrogant.
At twelve o'clock at night, Chu Mingcheng changed into his wetsuit and slipped into the water, just as he had the past few times.
As he was swimming above the cages, he was shocked to find one of his own cages slowly rising.
Someone's stealing my cage?
Chu Mingcheng had swum over from the deep-water area, so he hadn't known there was a boat above the cages.
Seeing what was happening, he immediately swam up, grabbed hold of the cage, and turned off his headlamp.
When the cage was about to break the surface, he let go.
Even with the dim light of the night, he could see a crab boat on the water.
Claude didn't dare turn on the lights. Fortunately, the moonlight was good today, and with the occasional use of a flashlight, he had successfully managed to haul up one of Chu Mingcheng's cages.
When he pulled the cage up and saw there wasn't a single king crab inside, a smile spread across his face.
Although he still couldn't figure out why the other guy had come back with a full load the last two times while they had come up empty, this time, the other guy was empty-handed too.
If this continued for a few more days, Claude was confident Chu Mingcheng would give up on king crabs.
His thinking had changed. He didn't care how many king crabs the other guy caught, as long as he was driven away and never came back.
He was afraid that this incident would make others who were eyeing the king crabs think they could also get a piece of the action. If the company stayed out of it again, that would be the real trouble.
Chu Mingcheng was not far away. When he saw the empty cage being thrown back and them starting to haul up his other cages, he immediately understood their motive.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He didn't watch any longer but dived back to the bottom.
The cages this time were set very densely. The outermost circle was still covered in king crabs, and he could occasionally see one or two unlucky ones pinned under a cage.
Chu Mingcheng first took out his bolt cutters and tried to cut the rope on a cage.
He found the tool worked quite well. With one squeeze, the rope was cut.
It didn't sever it completely like a cable—a small bit remained, not cut through entirely.
But that little bit wouldn't be enough to pull up the cage. The moment the men on the boat started reeling, the rope would snap.
Some of them wouldn't even need to be reeled in—they would snap under the force of the ocean currents.
So after making one cut, Chu Mingcheng didn't bother with it further and moved on to the next one.
Two hundred ropes were no simple task. Never mind the pressure of diving, just the repeated use of the bolt cutters would tire out his hands.
It was only thanks to Chu Mingcheng's exceptional physical condition that he was able to cut all these ropes in one go.
These king crab cages were very expensive. His small ones cost a thousand Australian dollars each, so these larger ones probably cost two thousand. Two hundred of them would be four hundred thousand Australian dollars.
Of course, these cages had been used for a long time and would be considered second-hand at best. Still, they were worth over one hundred and fifty thousand Australian dollars. This loss would be enough to make them feel the sting.
He just didn't know if they would find a suitable way to retrieve them. Of course, retrieval was only worth it if the cost was less than the value of the cages; otherwise, there was no point.
After cutting all the ropes, he moved the king crabs into his own cages.
He had been in the water the entire time, cutting ropes and moving king crabs. He had held his breath for so long that for the first time, he felt a sense of suffocation underwater.
Chu Mingcheng immediately started swimming toward the surface, checking his dive watch as he went: two hours and forty-three minutes.
Based on his current condition, his maximum active time underwater should be about three hours.
He remembered that when he first got the Effortless Swim ability, the Aquatic Species Codex had said he could be active underwater for two hours.
Now it had increased by an hour. Could this be a change brought about by his improved physical fitness?
Chu Mingcheng didn't pay much attention to this detail. He returned to the fishing yacht, showered, washed his wetsuit, and hung it out to dry, then went back to playing games.
He would collect his cages in the morning. Seeing the shocked expressions on those crabbers' faces would probably be quite amusing.
At six-thirty in the morning, the sun had already risen.
Chu Mingcheng used a Life Conversion to refresh himself, then made some breakfast to fill his stomach before starting the fishing yacht to collect his cages.
When the first cage, crawling with king crabs, was hauled up, as expected, the captains on the two crab boats rubbed their eyes in disbelief.
A string of "impossible!" escaped their lips.
Chu Mingcheng's full haul once again left them dejected. Apart from deliberately causing damage, it seemed there was no other way to stop him.
They then had the crew pull in the cages, preparing to leave. They had to find others to discuss what to do next.
But as they were pulling in the cages, something alarming happened—the ropes of three cages in a row snapped.
"What's going on? Why are these ropes breaking?"
Claude examined the frayed ends of the ropes, but after being soaked in seawater, they had unraveled like twisted dough.
This was actually partly because Chu Mingcheng had rubbed them a bit, making it impossible to see how they had been cut.
As for the tool he had used, he had already buried it in a sandbar on the seabed. Perhaps in a few hundred million years, it would become evidence of a prehistoric civilization?
But Claude didn't need to know how they were cut. A series of snapped ropes—even a fool would know it was deliberate.
Could Chu Mingcheng have secretly put on an oxygen tank and gone down to cut them?
Is he a master diver too?
But as they continued to pull, all that came up were snapped ropes, and Claude and the other captain finally broke down.
At the same time, they immediately ruled out Chu Mingcheng as the culprit. How many master divers would it take to cut the ropes of two hundred crab cages?
They knew exactly how many people were on that fishing yacht—they had never stopped watching it.
And they had people on watch at night, so they would have known if any boats had approached.
So the two captains immediately went to check the surveillance footage. Other than someone secretly cutting the ropes on the boat, they couldn't think of any other way.
But the surveillance footage was all normal—they couldn't find anything strange at all.
"Could it be a ghost?"
"Perhaps it's God's punishment. He thinks our actions have gone too far?"
"You might be right. Other than God, I don't know who else could have done it."
But the loss this time was too great. After much deliberation, they decided to pull in all the ropes first, not bothering with the few that were lost, and immediately decided to call the police.
However, even though they called the police, they didn't think those civil servants would be able to find the reason for all the ropes snapping at once, because the whole thing was just too bizarre.
Meanwhile, Chu Mingcheng hadn't left. He put all the king crabs in the live well, then leisurely ate his lunch, watching the two crab boats leave in a panic.
Their departure meant he could finally go all out and catch king crabs.
After lunch, Chu Mingcheng immediately changed into his wetsuit and went to the bottom of the sea.
The large cages on the outer perimeter were all full of king crabs, and some of them had bundles of rope on top.
He had indeed cut all two hundred ropes, but for about twenty of them, he had cut the tops, just sacrificing the buoys.
The ten cages he had bought were a bit too small. When there were a lot of king crabs, these larger cages caught them much faster.
Therefore, before five o'clock in the afternoon, the fishing yacht was filled with king crabs, even in the switched-off refrigerated hold.
They were everywhere on the deck. Only the cockpit door was closed, preventing the king crabs from crawling inside.
Chu Mingcheng estimated he had nearly four thousand jin of king crabs this time. One more trip and he would have caught his full quota.

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Chapter 254: The Boat is Crawling with Crabs