As a Fisherman, My Fish Can Level Up
Chapter 300 - Chapter 300 Chapter 255 The Ship is Crawling with Crabs

Chapter 300: Chapter 255: The Ship is Crawling with Crabs Chapter 300: Chapter 255: The Ship is Crawling with Crabs The next morning, Chu Mingcheng set off with two tools in hand and arrived at the dock.

The fishing captain who lived on the boat noticed the activity of Chu’s supplies before long, so they immediately got busy. After having breakfast, they were ready to set out to sea.

Chu Mingcheng was no longer worried about the fisheries authorities coming to make trouble, considering several days had passed. If they were going to cause problems, they would have done so by now.

He guessed that the extraordinary effect was at play. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be just these two crabbing boats coming to trouble him.

For now, it seemed that the people on the crab boats didn’t plan to use firearms and only intended to cause some minor trouble. Luckily, his extraordinary effect easily diffused the situation.

Having made ready to set out, Chu Mingcheng started up his fishing boat and departed.

It was only seven in the morning. By the time he arrived at the crabbing spot, it would be around two in the afternoon. When the crab cages were set down, he could dive and transfer the crabs at the crack of dawn.

He’d also leave behind the other people’s crab cages as a small lesson for them, to show them that selfishness could attract a lightning strike.

Seven hours later, he reached the crabbing spot and immediately deployed ten crab cages.

He then steered the boat out of that area to a side, freeing up space for the following crab boats to deploy their cages.

“Huh, such a big fuss?” After a while, Chu Mingcheng, who glanced up to survey the situation by chance, was taken aback to see both boats on the water surface deploying crab cages.

In fact, for the past few days, the two crab boats had been following him, which was not a small expense.

Usually, when they blocked boats, they could simultaneously catch some Emperor Crabs and other seafood to sell, earning a bit economically and not incurring losses.

But during these two deployments of the crab cages, they had hardly caught any Emperor Crabs of the required size.

The daily operational costs of the ship, consumption of food, and the wages of the boat workers all needed to be shared among the two captains and their crabbing teams behind them, resulting already in substantial monetary loss.

Despite the fact that they earn a lot from crabbing every year, these people also spend extravagantly.

Just the annual maintenance of the crabbing boats is a significant expense, not to mention their lifestyle of lavish spending. Generally, it’s only when they run out of money do they prepare to go to sea to catch Emperor Crabs or gather other seafood.

Therefore, this time blocking Chu Mingcheng applied considerable pressure on this group of crabbers, because the company was hands-off, and they had to rely on themselves.

They also had to be mindful of not going too far, as the only hot-headed one among them was currently lying in the hospital with a moderate concussion, temporarily unable to go to sea.

The rest didn’t want to stand out and try to get rid of Chu Mingcheng, sending themselves to jail and benefiting others in the process.

They didn’t even dare touch the opponent’s ten crab cages rashly, for fear of being recorded and accused of theft or robbery.

Now, facing Chu Mingcheng, they had no choice but to swallow their frustrations.

Deploying two hundred crab cages in one go was their all-in gamble.

And their posture made Chu Mingcheng consider whether he should really leave all of their crab cages behind.

If he left two hundred crab cages behind, he estimated he would have to have a talk at the police station.

Of course, this didn’t scare him. Even the strongest divers in the world couldn’t cut the ropes off two hundred crab cages overnight, even with oxygen tanks.

He simply found the idea of having to talk at the police station troublesome. But thinking of the crabbers’ behavior, in the end, he still thought they needed a punishment, to teach them not to be too arrogant.

At midnight, Chu Mingcheng put on his diving suit and, just like before, slipped into the water stealthily.

Just as he was swimming over the top of the crab cages, he was shocked to discover one of his cages was slowly ascending.

‘Someone’s stealing my crab cage?’

Chu Mingcheng had swum over from the deep-water zone, hence he was unaware that there was a boat above the crab cages.

Seeing the situation with the cage, he immediately followed it and grabbed onto the cage, then turned off his headlamp.

As the crab cage was about to break the surface, he let go.

Even though there was little light at night, he could still see a crabbing boat on the water’s surface.

Claude didn’t dare to turn on any lights but fortunately, the moonlight was decent that night. And with intermittent use of a flashlight, he managed to successfully haul up one of the crab cages Chu Mingcheng had deployed.

When the cage came up without a single Emperor Crab inside, he immediately broke into a smile.

Although he still couldn’t figure out why he came up empty while his adversary was successful on the previous occasions, this time the adversary had come up empty too.

If this situation persisted for a few more days, Claude believed Chu Mingcheng would give up on catching Emperor Crabs.

Now his thoughts had changed. He didn’t care how many Emperor Crabs the other party caught, as long as Chu Mingcheng was chased away and never returned.

Lest this mishap would lead other covetous people to believe they too had a shot at the Emperor Crabs. If the company continued to ignore the situation like it did this time, that would be the real trouble.

Chu Mingcheng was not far away, watching. When he saw the empty crab cage being redeployed then them continuing to haul up his other cages, he quickly understood why they did this.

With the corners of his mouth turned up, he didn’t watch any longer and dove back underwater.

The crab cages this time were densely packed, with Emperor Crabs still filling the outermost circle. Occasionally, you could see one or two unlucky ones trapped under a cage.

Chu Mingcheng first picked up the cable cutters and tried to snip the ropes on a cage.

He found this tool indeed efficient; with a squeeze, the rope was cut instantly.

But the cuts weren’t as clean as with the cable, leaving a little remnant not completely severed.

However, that remaining bit was not enough to pull up the cage; as soon as the people on the boat started to retract the rope, it would immediately snap.

Some would break even without retraction, not being able to withstand the force in the ocean currents.

Therefore, after making one cut, Chu Mingcheng stopped paying attention to it and continued with the next one.

Two hundred ropes was not an easy task; not to mention the pressure of diving, just the continuous use of the wire cutters could make one’s hands tired.

It was only because of Chu Mingcheng’s excellent physical condition that he was able to cut all these ropes in one go.

The crab cages used for catching Emperor Crab are very expensive, his small crab cage already costs one thousand Australian dollars each, and these larger ones probably cost two thousand Australian dollars, amounting to four hundred thousand Australian dollars for two hundred.

Of course, these crab cages had been used for a long time and at most could be considered second-hand. But they could still be valued at more than one hundred and fifty thousand Australian dollars, a loss substantial enough to hurt the other party.

It was just unknown whether they would find a suitable way to salvage them. Of course, the premise of salvaging is that the cost does not exceed the value of the crab cages; otherwise, there would be no need to salvage them.

After cutting all the ropes, he conveniently transferred the Emperor Crabs into his own crab cages.

While cutting ropes and transferring Emperor Crabs, he had been underwater, holding his breath for quite a long time, which made him feel suffocated underwater for the first time.

Chu Mingcheng immediately began swimming to the surface while checking the time on his diving watch: two hours and forty-three minutes.

According to the current situation, his limit for underwater activity was probably three hours.

He remembered that when he first acquired the ability “Swim Freely,” the information given by the Seafood Handbook was two hours underwater.

Now that it had increased by an hour, was this change due to improved physical fitness?

Chu Mingcheng didn’t particularly care about this detail. He returned to the fishing boat, took a shower, cleaned his diving suit and hung it to dry, then went back to playing games.

He intended to collect the crab cages in the morning, by then seeing the astonished expressions of the crab catchers would probably be very interesting.

At 6:30 a.m., the sun had already risen.

Chu Mingcheng used the life transformation to refresh himself once, had some breakfast to fill his belly, and then started the fishing boat to collect the crab cages.

When the first crab cage filled with Emperor Crabs was pulled up, unsurprisingly, the captains on the two crab boats couldn’t believe their eyes and rubbed them repeatedly.

A series of impossibles came from their mouths!

The abundant haul that Chu Mingcheng once again collected made them dejected, and besides intentionally causing sabotage, they seemed to find no other way to stop him.

Subsequently, they instructed their crew to retrieve all the crab cages, ready to leave; they needed to consult with others on what to do next.

However, when retrieving the crab cages, something panicked them occurred: the ropes on three consecutive crab cages were broken.

“What’s going on? Why are these ropes broken?”

Claude inspected the broken ends of the ropes, but the cuts had already frayed like hemp ropes due to soaking in seawater.

In fact, it was because Chu Mingcheng had tampered with them, obscuring how they were broken.

The tool used for the deed had already been buried by him in a bed of sand at the bottom of the sea, potentially becoming evidence of an ancient civilization millions of years from now?

But Claude did not need to know how they were broken; a series of broken ropes was enough for anyone to realize it was done on purpose.

Could it be that Chu Mingcheng had secretly gone underwater with an oxygen tank to cut them?

Was he also a diving expert?

But when they pulled up all the remaining cages to find just broken ropes, Claude and the other captain immediately fell into despair.

At the same time, they ruled out the possibility of Chu Mingcheng being the perpetrator; cutting the ropes of two hundred crab cages would require an immense number of diving experts.

They were well aware of the number of people on that fishing boat and had never lost surveillance.

And at night, they had people keeping watch and would certainly know if any boats approached.

So the two captains immediately checked the surveillance, thinking of no other way but the possibility that someone had secretly cut the ropes on board their ship.

But the footage was all normal, nothing out of the ordinary was found.

“Could it be a ghost?”

“Maybe it’s God’s punishment, thinking our actions were too excessive?”

“You might be right, besides God, I don’t know who else could do this.”

But the loss this time was too great, after much consideration, they decided to collect all the ropes back, disregarding the ones that were lost, and immediately decided to report it to the police.

Although they reported it, they didn’t think the authorities would find the cause of the collective rope breaking, as the incident was truly too bizarre.

Meanwhile, Chu Mingcheng had not left; he placed all the Emperor Crabs into the live well and ate his lunch leisurely while watching the two crab boats leave in a panic.

Their departure finally allowed him to go about catching Emperor Crab freely.

After lunch, Chu Mingcheng immediately put on the diving suit and went underwater.

In the outer large crab cages were all Emperor Crabs, and some of the cages had bundles of ropes on them.

He truly cut all two hundred ropes, only leaving about twenty cut at the top, simply discarding the buoys.

His own ten crab cages were indeed a bit small; when there were many Emperor Crabs, these larger cages were more efficient for catching.

Therefore, before five o’clock in the afternoon, the fishing boat was packed with Emperor Crabs even in the turned-off refrigeration compartment.

The deck was covered with them, only the cabin door was shut, preventing the Emperor Crabs from entering.

Chu Mingcheng estimated that this time he had nearly four thousand pounds of Emperor Crabs; another round of catching would allow him to reach his fishing quota.

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