As a Fisherman, My Fish Can Level Up
Chapter 468 - Chapter 468 Chapter 316 The 90-Year-Old Wine

Chapter 468: Chapter 316: The 90-Year-Old Wine Chapter 468: Chapter 316: The 90-Year-Old Wine Chu Mingcheng picked up the wooden box, but as he moved, his waist and abdomen suddenly loosened.

Looking down, he realized that the rope tied around his waist had snapped when he exerted force.

No matter how sturdy these ropes had been originally, having soaked for so long, they had rotted away.

A gentle tug might allow for their use, but any significant effort would break them.

By now, Chu Mingcheng somewhat regretted not bringing either a fishnet buckle or a safety rope; with those two items, he could have packed up everything here in one go.

With no other choice, he had to put the box down and return with the two fish first.

As he swam up the stairs and had moved only a few meters up to the position of the ship’s side, Chu Mingcheng suddenly expelled a few bubbles from his mouth in shock.

Two bubbles represented the words “Holy shit~”, for there was a mammoth creature before him that he was seeing for the second time.

Under the light, there lay a massive creature across the hull, a Lei’s Emperor Fish that was on its last breath.

Chu Mingcheng felt that this Emperor Fish was very similar to the one he had encountered before; its size and length seemed to be about the same, but he wasn’t sure if it was the same one.

Traveling from the southern part of Treasure Island to the northern part was too far, and he didn’t believe such a coincidence was likely, yet reality was strangely coincidental.

However, those details were not important. What was important was that this Emperor Fish seemed to have reached the end of its life, lying still except for the occasional breathing motion of its mouth.

Chu Mingcheng came in front of it, placed the two fish he brought aside, and then tried to lift it by the head using both hands.

The Emperor Fish didn’t resist, and its head was easily lifted by him.

Despite the Emperor Fish’s length, its weight wasn’t much.

The world record for the longest Emperor Fish is fifteen meters, but its weight is only just over 500 pounds.

This Emperor Fish was approximately ten meters long and probably weighed close to 400 pounds.

Of course, Chu Mingcheng had only taken a glance and estimated roughly.

He could lift up a 400-pound Golden Spearfish; naturally, the Emperor Fish was a breeze for him.

But Emperor Fish meat is not tasty and has a low economic value.

Luckily, he had never caught one before, so this one delivered to his doorstep could add a bit of experience, and he could make a specimen to take back.

Chu Mingcheng himself was not interested in specimens, but he wasn’t sure if Wei Jiaguo would be.

Even if Wei was not interested, he could donate it to the state or Xiamen University.

But he could not take it with him now, so he grabbed his two fish and hurried back to the ship.

By now, the sky was very bright, and the sun had already risen halfway.

Chu Mingcheng hurried back to the ship, threw the fish into the cold storage unit, and immediately went to get the safety rope.

The safety rope was long enough, hopefully to bring back all the items in one trip.

To be on the safe side, Chu Mingcheng also brought along the live fish rope.

This time he left the net pocket on the deck, where there were two flashlights, two watches, and a platinum necklace inside.

He definitely brought along the two weapons–the spear gun and the dive knife–since encountering danger in the ocean was always a possibility, and having weapons made a big difference.

When he returned to the sunken ship, the Emperor Fish was still lying there, its mouth hardly moving at all.

Chu Mingcheng ignored it, first running into the cabin and using the safety rope to tie up the suitcase and trunk, then dragging the boxes out with the rope.

After getting the boxes out of the cabin, he attached the safety rope to himself.

He went over to the Emperor Fish and used the fishnet buckle to secure the recently deceased Emperor Fish.

Then, with the long Emperor Fish on his left and a string of boxes on his right, and holding a wooden box that was open on one side, he swam toward the Sea God.

Though he was carrying a lot, the buoyancy of the seawater made it less exhausting to swim.

By the time he got back up to the ship, the day had already fully dawned, and the time was a little past six.

Chu Mingcheng first pulled up the items in his hands as well as the boxes, placing them on the deck.

Afterward, he pulled up the Emperor Fish, which wasn’t very important, stuffing it directly into the cold storage.

It was only because his cold storage was big enough–though there were about a dozen Golden Spearfish, he was able to fit the Emperor Fish when rolled up.

After storing the fish, he shivered as he climbed out and closed the door of the cold storage unit, his wet body going into the cold storage was nearly the end of him.

In that short time, the water on him almost froze.

After coming out, he immediately jumped into the sea; with the external heater, he didn’t feel cold in the water, quickly restoring his body temperature.

If it hadn’t been for the daylight and the urgency to open the box, he wouldn’t have rushed into the cold storage.

Once warm, Chu Mingcheng climbed onto the ship and brought out a few empty foam boxes.

Next, he picked up the mysterious item wrapped in oil paper and unwrapped it layer by layer.

The item was hefty, containing a liquid that sloshed within, feeling as if it weighed a good fifteen pounds or so.

He wasn’t sure whether it was waterlogged or actually wine.

After unwrapping three large sheets of oil paper, the item inside finally revealed its true face.

It was indeed wine, a bottle of red wine.

Such a large bottle of red wine, Chu Mingcheng had only seen once in an exorbitantly priced supermarket, and he had even fiddled with that large bottle at the time.

The standard volume for a bottle of red wine is seven hundred fifty milliliters, but this bottle was huge–six liters.

No wonder there was just one bottle in such a large box. By the standard bottle calculation, this large bottle was the equivalent of eight normal ones.

Chu Mingcheng didn’t understand red wine at all, only occasionally drinking cheap brands at banquets.

He looked at the letters on the wine bottle. Except for the numbers 1990, he didn’t recognize the rest.

From the vintage year on the red wine, it could be inferred that it was produced in the 90s, doesn’t that mean the sunken ship also sank after the 90s?

It should be about right, after all, it was also guessed to likely originate from the 90s based on the watch.

Chu Mingcheng set aside his urge to look up the origin of the red wine online for the moment, carefully placing it into a foam box to measure.

The red wine bottles were somewhat large, barely fitting two bottles in one foam box.

Chu Mingcheng decided to rewrap the red wine in wax paper, took out the sponge from the wooden box to squeeze out the seawater, rinsed it with fresh water on both sides, squeezed out the water again, and then laid it at the bottom of the foam box.

This way, when two bottles of red wine were placed in it, they wouldn’t knock against each other.

The smuggled red wine mustn’t be cheap, so it had to be preserved properly.

Chu Mingcheng then sped up his work, taking tools to dismantle all the wooden crates.

As expected, the contents of the remaining four wooden crates all had the shape of wine bottles and were all the same size.

Chu Mingcheng didn’t unwrap the wax paper but instead directly placed these bottles of red wine into foam boxes, padding them with the cleaned sponges.

After that, he immediately moved three foam boxes into the dance room inside the cabin and placed them in the corner.

Back on deck, Chu Mingcheng threw all the wooden boxes back into the water as a means of “destroying the evidence.”

With the wooden boxes taken care of, it was time to move on to the three suitcases.

So far, there were five bottles of what obviously looked like high-end red wine, so his expectations for the contents of the suitcases were even higher now.

Busying himself with the tools, he soon cracked open the first suitcase.

Upon opening it, he found it was filled with bags of flour that had absorbed water?

Who smuggles flour…

“Fuck!”

The next moment, realizing what he had, Chu Mingcheng let out an exclamation and hurriedly tossed the entire box of flour into the sea.

At that moment, he didn’t care about polluting the environment, his life was at stake!

The kind of stuff that could make one sing “Tears behind bars” appearing in whole boxes right in front of him, even if he was bold enough to not fear the ghost and the floating angler in the water, now felt somewhat unnerving.

This assured him even more that the boat was destined for Treasure Island for smuggling activities, to transport such a massive quantity domestically would be extraordinarily difficult.

It could only be said that Treasure Island was just too chaotic back in the day, and perhaps Hong Kong had something to do with it as well.

So, could the corpse in that room have been a victim of foul play?

Chu Mingcheng felt that was highly possible; otherwise, it made no sense for just that one person to die in there. It was very likely that the person was already dead before the ship sank.

In normal circumstances, even if someone were locked in, the instinct to survive would lead them to try and break the door, but the door was intact, which explained everything.

However, this had nothing to do with him. After snapping back to reality, he immediately opened the second suitcase and lowered his expectations for its contents.

Surely enough, the second one also contained flour, which he likewise threw into the ocean.

It was only with the third suitcase that an unexpected discovery was made. Seeing bottles and jars inside, Chu Mingcheng thought, if he wasn’t mistaken, these things should be some Indian oil?

Chu Mingcheng knew about it because Zhang Wei had used it in his conquests of wealthy women!

Zhang had even specifically brought a bottle for him once, and although he never used it, the appearance of the stuff hadn’t changed much.

Moreover, there was proof on the packaging, even though most of it had turned to mush. Still, a few blurry letters were visible, indicating their origin.

Zhang Wei would probably really like these things, right?

After hesitating for three seconds, Chu Mingcheng eventually chucked the box of oils into the sea.

Zhang Wei now had a serious girlfriend, and if this decades-old oil proved too effective, it wouldn’t just be harmful to him.

Chu Mingcheng took the hose to wash the deck thoroughly and then immediately went to take a shower.

After showering and having breakfast, he went to the cockpit to start the Sea God and leave the area.

He continued sailing until twelve o’clock at noon when he temporarily stopped the boat.

Staying too long near the waters around Treasure Island risked an encounter with their patrol boats, which would be a bit troublesome.

By now he had reached China’s exclusive fishing grounds, and Chu Mingcheng could relax.

After a hasty lunch, he went to the dance room in the cabin.

First, he unwrapped the wax paper around the wine to verify that all five bottles were the same.

Then, he took out his smartphone and started searching online using the letters on the bottles.

The search results revealed that the red wine was a Romanee Conti from the Burgundy region, the world’s most prestigious wine.

Chu Mingcheng’s heart began to pound immediately, realizing he might have stumbled upon a treasure.

He immediately checked the quality of this batch from the 90s and found that in a 2012 auction, a case of red wine had fetched over one million eight hundred thousand Hong Kong Dollars.

A case meant twelve standard bottles, and his one bottle was equivalent to eight standard bottles, which is two-thirds of a case.

By that auction price, one bottle would be about one million two hundred twenty thousand Hong Kong Dollars.

Converted to RMB, that is also over one million.

An auction in 2016 also saw a case go for one million three hundred and forty thousand RMB; thus his bottle would be worth nine hundred thousand.

Of course, an auction price isn’t the actual value of the wine; but his large, single bottles might be more expensive than a case of standard bottles.

Are big single bottles rarer than whole cases of standard bottles, hence having a higher collectible value?

Regardless, the collectible value of these five bottles of wine is extremely high, with a total value of at least four million.

Chu Mingcheng promptly took his phone to call his dad, telling him to set up another wine storage room.

From now on, he’d need to pay more attention to sunken cargo ships and yachts – who knows, maybe he’ll fill an entire wine room with collections?

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