Chapter 83: Chapter 81: Opening Pearls
Five people wasn’t a huge number. Since her group had guns and the incredibly powerful Qin Shen, Jiang Si didn’t think it was too dangerous, but they still needed to be vigilant.
Jiang Si slipped back into the yacht. "People are coming," she told everyone. "Stay alert."
The moment she spoke, everyone put down their chopsticks in unison, drew their weapons, and cautiously peered outside the yacht.
A moment later, the five people appeared on the hilltop.
They saw the moored yacht and stopped in their tracks.
Jiang Si couldn’t hear what they were discussing, so she sidled up to Qin Shen. "Can you make out what they’re saying?"
With Qin Shen’s superhuman hearing, their conversation held no secrets.
As expected, Qin Shen replied, "They want to take over our yacht. They’re discussing how to get us off of it."
Jiang Si’s brow furrowed. "They’re courting death."
After a moment of silence, Qin Shen added, "One of them has connections at the Northern Base. They’re saying if we don’t cooperate, they’ll have people come and take us away."
Jiang Si’s brow furrowed even deeper. ’If they really have connections to the Northern Base, we can’t just kill them off quietly.’
Jiang Si said, "At the end of the day, this yacht is ours. It won’t be so easy for them to just take it."
’If worst comes to worst, we’ll just take the yacht out to sea. I’d like to see if the Northern Base is really going to act like a bunch of bandits and just take it by force.’
’This yacht is legally mine.’
’And even if the law doesn’t mean anything anymore, we were here first.’
The five men spent a rough night in the dilapidated fishing village.
At the crack of dawn, they got up to see the yacht slowly heading out to sea.
They scrambled after it, shouting, "Stop! Stop!"
Jiang Si stopped the yacht about two hundred meters away, curious to see what sort of brilliant plan they had cooked up after a whole night of scheming.
The tallest of them, who seemed to be their leader, said, "We’re from the Northern Base! You’ve gone to sea without authorization and must return with us to register!"
Jiang Si arched an eyebrow. "And if we don’t?"
The man was taken aback by Jiang Si’s defiant tone, then said, flustered, "Everyone has to obey the Northern Base’s orders! If you don’t, and something happens to you, no one will come to your aid!"
Jiang Si laughed. "We’ve been in trouble before, and I don’t recall the Northern Base showing up to help us then!"
The man’s expression turned foul. He suddenly realized that since Jiang Si’s group had never registered with the Northern Base, they were effectively undocumented.
His arrogance swelled. "If you don’t come over here right now, I’ll go get people to drag you back. Anyone who doesn’t register voluntarily is considered an outlaw by the Northern Base. You’ll all be punished."
"There’s still time if you register now, of your own accord."
He was threatening them, trying to make them hand over the yacht.
’As if she’d be scared by such a lame excuse.’ If registration at the Northern Base was truly mandatory, Kuang Jiaying would never have let them go.
’She hadn’t even confiscated their guns, so why would she care if they registered?’
In her past life, people who entered the Northern Base were just given an ID number. It allowed them to accept missions within the base and exchange the points they earned for medical supplies and other provisions.
For those who weren’t short on supplies, the Northern Base was just an extra layer of security.
But later on, when resources at the Northern Base became severely imbalanced and the psychological defenses of its inhabitants crumbled under the harsh conditions, it devolved into a dog-eat-dog world.
Those with supplies but no strength to protect them immediately became prey for looters.
Seeing that Jiang Si was completely unmoved, the men’s expressions grew darker. But with several hundred meters of water between them, they were helpless.
It seemed their only option was to go back, report them to the Northern Base for suspicious activity, and hope to get the yacht that way.
The five men left. Jiang Si and the others didn’t rush back to shore. Instead, they took the yacht for a cruise around the area.
They pulled up a few random lobster pots they found in the sea, and they were filled with a good amount of seafood.
Suddenly, Shen Baoying cried out excitedly, "Sisi, come quick! Look! Aren’t these the kind of oysters they use for farming pearls?"
Jiang Si went over to look. A pile of large oysters tumbled out of the pot. "I think so," she guessed. "We’ll know for sure when we open them."
In the apocalypse, a single pearl wasn’t worth as much as a mouthful of sugar.
But what woman doesn’t love pretty things? Besides, it was the first time any of them had experienced the joy of shucking oysters.
Shen Baoying pried an oyster open with a small knife. She felt around inside, touched something hard and round, and immediately shouted, "A pearl! There’s really a pearl!"
Everyone’s eyes widened. Shen Baoying tossed the pearl into a small basin, and it turned out to be a rather large golden pearl.
When washed and pulled from the water, its luster was beautiful. It was large and perfectly round—the kind of top-quality gem you’d find in a high-end jewelry case.
Jiang Si smiled. "We scored. That pearl looks like it’s worth a fortune."
Shen Baoying happily pried open a second oyster, while Jiang Linhai worked faster to haul in the traps.
Shen Baoying set some aside for Niu Niu and Jiang Si, letting everyone join in the fun and enjoy the rare, happy moment.
Jiang Si opened a total of six oysters. The pearl in each one was different. Some were oddly shaped baroque pearls, while others were large, lustrous, and perfectly round—white ones, purple ones, all of them big.
The traps had been tossed about, and many of the oysters inside were dead, with loose pearls mixed in among the shells.
But there was no denying the pearls were absolutely gorgeous.
Shen Baoying muttered to herself that she would save them up to make a pearl necklace for Jiang Si to wear on her wedding day.
Jiang Si took a particular liking to a heart-shaped baroque pearl she had found and kept turning it over in her hand.
Seeing this, Qin Shen suddenly held out a handful of them—all heart-shaped.
Jiang Si smiled. "So you can cultivate them into specific shapes."
Qin Shen glanced at her. "They’re still beautiful, though."
For some reason, when he looked at her with his deep-set eyes and said those words, she found herself holding a pearl in her hand, but it was her heart that felt warm.
Jiang Si ground up the oddly shaped and flawed pearls into powder and made a "limited edition" pearl face mask. It was such a luxury that Shen Baoying exclaimed, "A real pearl mask! Don’t let any of it go to waste."
When she got too much on her hands, she smeared the excess on Jiang Linhai’s face.
Jiang Linhai tried to dodge, but Shen Baoying held him down and smeared it all over his face, making him look like a spotted puppy and sending everyone into fits of laughter.
The Northern Base must have been a long way off. Days passed after the five men left, and they never returned with reinforcements.
Near the fishing village, Jiang Si discovered a small, deserted island with only a lighthouse on it.
The group moored the yacht at the island, where they foraged for shellfish, caught fish, and then processed and dried their haul.
The island also had some wild pineapples. They were a brilliant gold, and everyone loved them, though eating too much would cause inflammation.
So, Shen Baoying led the group in making them into preserved fruit, pineapple jam, and canned pineapple.
Lu Zhifeng, who was always worrying that their sugar would run out, was ecstatic when he stumbled upon some sugarcane. "We can make our own sugar!" he yelled.
