Chapter 134: A Golden Treasure
The hook fell in the water with a plop, making the water ripple around it. A few seconds later, however, the water calmed down and started to move along with the waves. For ten minutes, the only sound was the roar of the ocean. Then, the sea scanning system went wild. Han Ruochen looked at the screen and noticed that a white mass had suddenly appeared on the display, hovering over the hook.
It’s too dense... It’s certainly not a fish.
Han Ruochen frowned as she watched the thing approach the universal bait.
Suddenly, the fishing pole groaned and started to bend into a terrifying arc. The rope went taut as a bow, and Han Ruochen had to throw her weight back, her heels digging into the wet sand as the thing started to tug the fishing pole.
"Damn it!" Han Ruochen cursed as the pole started to get dragged into the water.
Seeing this, Han Yong rushed forward and caught the pole. His face turned purple with the effort of pulling the thing. But whatever was inside the water was way too strong, making it even harder for Han Ruochen and Han Yong to continue pulling it up. When Zhai Heng saw that the two Han siblings couldn’t pull the thing out, he stepped forward. However, he did not find any place to put his hands on. In the end, he could only grit his teeth and place his hands on Han Ruochen’s waist.
His chest pressed against her back, and for a couple of seconds, the roar of the sea vanished along with the salt spray. He could smell something sweet, with a hint of tanginess and the raw and sheer strength of the tiny woman in front of him. It was worlds apart from the perfumed, hollowed women in their family banquets.
"Pull it together," he cried out.
And so the three of them did just that. With one last final and violent heave, they pulled the hook out of the water, and it slammed on the sand with a thud, dragging a trail of kelp with it. The hook was moving, and it wasn’t just the clicking of the crabs either, which proved that the thing that she caught was not a crab. Han Ruochen pulled the kelp aside and looked at the thing that she caught.
Her breath hitched when she saw the blue-spotted abalone, the size of a human head. Its shell was a swirling galaxy of neon blue and greens. But that was not what made her suck in a breath. It was the scent of the eel oil. She looked down at the spotted moray eel—a rare golden-skinned eel. If she was not wrong, this was called the dragon’s meat.
"Five jin of abalone," Han Yong gasped, as he fell to his knees. "And a golden moray... Ruochen. Do you even know that you have struck a pot of gold?"
Zhai Heng looked at the thing in front of him and pursed his lips. He did not know what it was, but he knew one thing: that it was a really good thing based on Han Yong’s reaction.
"The mayor is hosting a banquet again tomorrow, and this time the host will be the Zhai family." He told the two siblings. "We were looking for something that could outdo the female crab. If you bring this to the Zhai family and I tell my brother that it came from you..."
"Your brother will skin you alive for following me here." Han Ruochen walked past the edge of the shaky terrain. The waves were getting more and more intense, and she did not want to be swallowed by them.
Zhai Heng opened his mouth and then closed it before saying, "I don’t think that we will have to worry about anything. My brother is not an unreasonable man; as long as I explain to him that I was helping you, he will not get angry at me." as he spoke, he looked down at his hands that were holding Han Ruochen’s waist just a few seconds ago. He had never touched a woman despite his thuggish attitude and personality.
This was the first time he had held a woman in his hands, and he could not help but wonder if every woman was as thin and weak as Han Ruochen.
Han Ruochen did not say anything because Zhai Heng had indeed saved her life just now. She packed the spotted moray eel in the icebox with the abalone and said to her brother, "Brother Yong, go and tell second uncle that I need to transport something important to the city. Ask him to take his truck out."
As she spoke, she started to pack the gear.
The sun behind them started to rise over the horizon, turning the grey sea into sheets of hammered gold. Han Ruochen straightened up and looked behind her. She was a woman with no boat and no status on this island, but now she had the fortune in her hands to buy a motorboat.
With this golden moray eel, the motorboat was no longer just a dream.
*
The courtyard of the Han family was thick with the smell of the drying pork jerky and woodsmoke. Meng Yunhan sat on a low wooden stool, and her face was pinched like a dried plum as she vigorously scrubbed a pile of laundry. Every splash of water was an expression of her resentment.
"That damned wretched girl! Clearly, we have a washing machine, but she won’t let me use it. She is determined to go against me," Meng Yunhan muttered angrily as she dumped her shirt in the vat and turned her attention to the front door when she heard it creak. She saw Han Ruochen walking inside the house with Han Yong following behind her. The two of them were supporting the aerated container as if it held some sort of treasure within it.
"What did you bring now?" Meng Yunhan asked with resentment bursting through her eyes. She expected that the box contained something useless. No matter how lucky Han Ruochen was, there was no way she was bound to be lucky every day. "I am telling you if it is something useless, throw it away; we do not have the space to keep trash at home."
