Chapter 3: It Hurts So Much!

In his previous life, all he cared about was fooling around with his friends. He never paid attention to what was happening at home.

Every day, he’d wake up and go out drinking and messing around with his buddies. By dinnertime, he’d stumble home drunk. He only vaguely remembered hearing that they’d caught a net full of large yellow croakers. As for the exact price they sold for, he hadn’t listened carefully before drunkenly returning to his room to sleep.

At this time, although large yellow croakers were rare, ordinary people’s living standards were limited, so they weren’t outrageously expensive yet. They only sold for several times the price of normal fish.

Unlike in later years, when they were hyped to astronomical prices.

In 2022, wild large yellow croakers weighing around one jin sold for about 600 yuan per jin.

A wild large yellow croaker weighing one jin and three liang would cost around 800 yuan per jin, while one weighing one jin and eight liang would exceed 1,000 yuan per jin.

If it weighed around two jin, the price would be about 1,500 to 1,600 yuan per jin.

Anything over two jin generally sold for more than 3,000 yuan per jin.

And those were the prices offered directly by seafood collection boats at sea. Once the fish entered port, the prices for one- to two-jin large yellow croakers would double again!

If the quantity was large, prices would fluctuate too.

Even though he’d never been ambitious and had spent much of his life as a bum, he was still a native fisherman who grew up by the sea. He knew fish and understood the market.

Thinking of this, he couldn’t help slapping his thigh.

Damn it, if he could’ve hauled in this net several decades later, how amazing would that have been!

He’d lost out on millions!

The entire Ye family frowned as they watched him strangely slap his thigh while looking utterly regretful.

What nonsense was the third son stirring up now?

Mother Ye knitted her brows and asked, “What are you doing, Third Son? Why are you smacking your thigh so hard out of nowhere? Did you take the wrong medicine?”

“Mom, how much did that net of large yellow croakers sell for yesterday? I went back to sleep before I heard clearly.”

Mother Ye glanced at Father Ye. Since the whole family already knew anyway, even if she didn’t say it, Ye Yaodong’s wife would tell him later. So she simply answered directly.

“One thousand two hundred yuan! They bought them at five yuan per jin. The weight was a tiny bit short, but the boss was generous and rounded it up.”

They got massively ripped off, and she was praising the buyer for being generous!?

Ye Yaodong beat his chest in agony.

“Mom! You sold them way too cheap! That’s a huge loss!”

Everyone in the room, young and old alike, frowned and exchanged looks. The eldest brother couldn’t help anxiously asking:

“Third Brother, how do you know we sold them too cheaply?”

“I spend all day wandering around outside. Of course I know how valuable large yellow croakers are!”

That was true.

Even though the third son was a bit of a scoundrel, he was still the most knowledgeable person in the family.

After all, he spent every day wandering around the city with all sorts of people and knew all kinds of shady characters from every walk of life. How could he not know more than them?

Mother Ye’s heart tightened.

“What do you mean? How much are they selling for outside? Our village always sells fish directly to the dock buyers. It’s only because yesterday’s catch was so huge that the dock contacted a boss to come buy it personally.”

“If you’d packed them in ice and hired a tractor to deliver them to the county town, the price would’ve doubled immediately!”

Ye Yaodong’s heart ached terribly.

And that was only doubling the price. In the future, those two hundred-plus jin of fish would’ve been worth several million yuan!

The moment he said it, everyone regretted it too.

They’d acted too rashly…

Double the price…

That was a difference of twelve hundred yuan right there.

It hurt…

Father Ye’s heart bled as well. Even the hand holding the water pipe trembled.

One thousand two hundred yuan…

At this time, an ordinary worker’s monthly wage was only forty or fifty yuan. Thinking about it was enough to make someone cough up blood.

Father Ye’s chest rose and fell violently as he cursed at him.

“You little bastard! All you do every day is wander around doing nothing useful! If you’d gone out to sea with us, we wouldn’t have sold them off so cheaply at five yuan per jin!”

“How’s that my fault? I didn’t know you’d catch large yellow croakers! If I’d known, I would’ve gone to wait at the dock ahead of time! No, I would’ve found a rich boss and brought him there beforehand!”

It really pissed him off.

Over two hundred jin of wild large yellow croakers!

If only he’d died one day earlier, wouldn’t he have been reborn one day earlier too?

…Wait, was he cursing himself now?

Father Ye’s chest heaved with anger, but in the end, he could only sigh.

“Forget it. What’s done is done. There’s no point regretting it now. Maybe our family’s luck only amounts to this much for now. If we catch more in the future, we’ll have experience and won’t sell them off so carelessly again.”

That was true.

The fish had already been sold. Regretting it now was useless.

The Ye family’s good mood was completely ruined by Ye Yaodong.

Originally, when Eldest Uncle and Second Uncle came over trying to grab a share, everyone had only felt a little annoyed, but they’d still been happy overall.

Now…

Sigh…

Everyone just felt it was a shame. They could’ve earned so much more money.

After feeling heartbroken for a while, the family gradually accepted it. No matter what, they’d still made a fortune.

The most depressed person remained Ye Yaodong.

“Dad, do you think large yellow croakers are cabbages? You’re talking like we can just catch another net next time once we have experience…”

“Don’t you know that after several rounds of drum-net fishing, the population of large yellow croakers sharply declined and they’ve practically disappeared now?”

“In 1954, the drum-net fishing method spread from Guangdong Province to Fujian Province. Because this fishing method was extremely efficient and produced massive catches, it quickly became widespread, and large yellow croakers were heavily harvested from the sea…”

“In 1974, Zhoushan in Zhejiang Province carried out a massive large-scale fishing operation that nearly drove large yellow croakers to extinction. In recent years, wild yellow croakers have basically become impossible to find on the market…”

“Dad, do you really think you’ll have this kind of luck again in your lifetime?”

This was even harder than winning the lottery!

The boat left behind by his grandfather was only a small vessel a little over ten meters long. It could only operate in coastal waters and couldn’t go far offshore. Being able to catch this net of large yellow croakers was already like smoke rising from the ancestral graves.

As the family listened to him talk nonstop with saliva flying everywhere, they were all stunned.

When had the third son… learned so much?

As for the drum-net fishing method, only Father Ye had ever heard of it. Their family didn’t own a large boat capable of offshore operations, and they survived mostly by gathering seafood, making fishing nets, and doing labor work, so they’d never paid much attention to such things.

Information didn’t spread easily these days. Even the eldest and second brothers had never heard of it before, yet the third brother was speaking fluently and logically about it.

For the first time, the parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law all looked at him differently.

Perhaps…

Perhaps the third son wasn’t actually that useless…

Even Lin Xiuqing stared at him blankly.

It was the first time she’d realized that when her husband spoke seriously, he actually looked rather… rather…

What was the word?

The brightness between his brows—that confident glow he gave off when talking about something familiar.

Maybe her man wasn’t completely worthless after all?

Father Ye also put away some of the contempt he normally held toward his third son and seriously asked:

“How do you know about the drum-net fishing method? And how do you know about what happened in 1954 and 1974?”

Father Ye had only heard of the fishing method itself. He knew nothing about the major fishing events that occurred between 1954 and 1974. After all, there was no developed internet or widespread flow of information nowadays.

In truth, Ye Yaodong had only learned about these things in his later years while working on large fishing boats and listening to other crew members chat.

Otherwise, with the way he’d spent the first half of his life lazily living off others, there was no way he would’ve paid attention to such things.

But he absolutely couldn’t reveal that.

Seeing everyone’s expressions, he knew he’d managed to recover a little of his image. That was a good thing, and he unconsciously straightened his back a bit.

He’d muddled through more than half his life in confusion. Only in the last ten or so years had he finally matured and developed some sense of responsibility.

Now that he had another chance, he didn’t want to remain a useless bum anymore. Even if he still wasn’t particularly capable, at the very least he could work, gather seafood, and support his wife and children if he became diligent enough.

He never again wanted to rely on his wife sacrificing her life to support him.

But changing himself would take time.

Otherwise, he feared people might think he’d been possessed by a ghost.

(End of Chapter)