I Can Fish Up Everything!

Chapter 7: Chapter 7: So Ornamental Fish Can Be This Expensive

He’d been hoping for a big fish, but the float only dipped slightly, and the rod tip just gave a little nod.

’Clearly, after buying a new rod and getting a guaranteed catch, I ended up with a tiny little thing.’

The feel of the line was about the same as when he’d been catching the clownfish.

’Twenty yuan a fish.’ Gu Nan was very disappointed.

However, when the fish broke the surface and he saw it wasn’t another clownfish, his expression brightened.

The fish was small, only about ten centimeters long, but at least he had unlocked a new species and would get a decent amount of Gold Coins.

It looked a bit like a filefish—another species Gu Nan didn’t recognize.

He unhooked it, placed it in his fish creel, and then opened the game to check.

The moment he opened the game, Gu Nan’s eyes lit up. ’Daily Quest Three is complete?’

[Daily Quest Three: Catch a three-star fish. Reward: 5 EXP, 200 Gold Coins (Completed)]

He now had ten experience points, but he still needed ninety more to level up. The progression wasn’t fast.

He successfully claimed the 200 Gold Coins. After spending 500 on the fishing rod, he had been left with only 50 Gold Coins, so this brought his total back up to 250.

’An unlucky number?’

No matter. Gu Nan went straight to the Fish-dex and collected the 200-Gold-Coin reward for logging a three-star fish. His balance jumped to 450. He was just 50 Gold Coins short of buying the matching Fengqi fishing reel.

After opening the Fish-dex, he finally learned the name of the little three-star fish: Five-colored Hanging Fish.

The name was a little strange, but after reading the description, he learned it was a type of Stab-tailed Fish, an ornamental species.

Furthermore, this Fish-dex entry was very different from the others. Below the description were rows of question marks, suggesting there was more information for him to unlock.

But that wasn’t important. What mattered was that the price of the Five-colored Hanging Fish was beyond his wildest dreams. The suggested selling price for one over ten centimeters long was a staggering 180 yuan.

These fish don’t grow large, generally maxing out at around thirteen centimeters, and they are a fairly popular type of ornamental fish.

The price varied with size. For instance, a five-to-seven-centimeter fish was cheaper, costing around 120 yuan.

An eight-to-ten-centimeter one sold for 150 yuan, while anything over ten centimeters went for 180.

This completely shattered Gu Nan’s worldview. He never imagined that these seemingly ordinary ornamental fish could be so expensive.

If he could sell a few of these a day, he figured he’d be financially independent in no time. He wouldn’t have to worry about not having silver in his pocket when treating friends.

Palace Jade Nectar, one hundred eighty a cup.

Five-colored Stab-tailed Fish, one hundred eighty apiece.

The beautiful price of the fish completely erased the pressure weighing on Gu Nan’s heart.

’I can finally start living!’

He glanced at the sea centipede bait. It was still firmly on the hook. The small fish couldn’t really eat it; they had only managed to nibble a bit off the hook’s tip. He repositioned the sea centipede and was ready to cast again.

He noticed that since binding to the Fengqi Coast, the fishing had gotten a lot better.

From then on, he was getting a bite every thirty seconds to two minutes.

He caught black porgy and scorpionfish, species native to the local coast, as well as Star Chicken Fish and Bushi Golden Needlefish from the Fengqi Coast.

’I didn’t catch another three-star Five-colored Hanging Fish. To catch them regularly, I’ll probably need to buy at least green-tier gear,’ he figured.

Fortunately, his luck held out, and he caught two more Black-striped Small Stripes Buri. One was about three or four jin, while the other was even bigger than the one in his shop, weighing over eight jin.

Gu Nan was extremely careful while reeling them in, terrified of breaking the rod. After all, it had cost him 500 Gold Coins.

Since becoming a fishing addict, he’d never had a session this good. The feeling of getting constant bites was just incredible!

Normally, the shop had to open at 5:30 AM, because many of his older customers would come by to buy their groceries around 6:00.

That’s why Gu Nan usually went to bed early, typically falling asleep around ten o’clock.

But right now, he wasn’t the least bit sleepy!

It was almost midnight, but Gu Nan didn’t want to go back at all.

He had kept fishing until now not just because the bites were good, but also because he wanted to see if the daily quests would refresh after midnight.

He was only fifty Gold Coins away from buying the fishing reel, which would give him another guaranteed catch.

However, when the clock struck midnight, the daily quests didn’t refresh at all. The daily guaranteed catch count didn’t reset either.

’Don’t tell me it resets at six in the morning?’ Gu Nan’s face fell. He had wanted to press his advantage while the fish were still biting!

With that, his desire to keep fishing instantly evaporated.

He had to open the shop at 5:30 AM, which meant getting up by 5:00 at the latest. Running on no sleep would be tough.

So he packed up his rod and put the leftover Antarctica shrimp groundbait and bait into his tackle box.

Lifting the fish creel, its weight brought a wide smile to his face. He’d be able to make a good bit of money tomorrow.

During the fishing ban, regular frozen fish might be hard to sell, but there was almost always a market for live ones.

Returning to the shop with his haul, Gu Nan let the fish acclimate to the water temperature in the new environment before sorting them into the tanks.

He had caught several more clownfish that night, and they looked quite nice when placed in the same tank as the Five-colored Hanging Fish.

Here, the difference between the fish from the Fengqi Coast and the local species was obvious.

All the fish from the Fengqi Coast were incredibly energetic; it felt like they could thrive in the tank for a week without any issues.

But the tilapia, black porgy, and scorpionfish he’d caught, while decent in number, were clearly much less vigorous.

Gu Nan scooped out a black porgy that had gone belly-up and two of the scorpionfish, placing them in the freezer.

These fish wouldn’t last until morning. It was better to remove them now than to leave them in the tank and risk a chain reaction that could harm the others.

Once he finished up, Gu Nan locked up the shop and headed back to his rental apartment to rest.

He rented a room in a self-built house owned by a Yangjiang Port local. A lot of migrant workers came here for jobs, so the rental market was pretty active.

In the six-story building where he lived, at least, all the rooms were already rented out.

It was only a five or six-minute trip from his shop to his apartment; they were very close.

He rented a one-bedroom, one-living-room apartment with a kitchen, bathroom, and balcony for one thousand yuan a month.

For an out-of-town worker, the rent wasn’t cheap; the average salary in the area was only around five thousand a month.

But there was nothing to be done. Gu Nan had been living quite comfortably before, so he had high standards for his living situation. He’d rented this one-bedroom apartment on a one-year lease.

Back then, he never would have imagined his aquatics shop would fail. He had been full of ambition at the time.

He parked his electric scooter. It was safe enough to leave it outside these days. For one, there were surveillance cameras on the street, and for another, battery theft had become less common.

Gu Nan’s apartment was on the fifth floor. The one-bedroom units were all on the fifth and sixth floors, the highest ones in the building.

The floors below were all single-room studios, which were cheaper.

He stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Before the doors could close, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed from the hallway.

Gu Nan’s expression tensed. Thinking he was about to be robbed in the middle of the night, he quickly jabbed the ’close door’ button.

"Wait, wait!" a pleasant female voice called out.

Then, a young woman in rather formal attire, but wearing a pair of simple white sneakers, appeared at the entrance. She quickly pressed the call button, successfully stopping the doors from closing.

When they saw each other’s faces, both of them froze in surprise.

"Gu Nan?"

"Qiaoya?"