1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 461 Prodigal Behavior
"Wife, you are so lucky, this is a butter crab!"

Liang Ziqiang looked at it again and again. This crab was very different from all the crabs he had seen before. Its abdomen was golden yellow, its legs were very hard, and its legs were so yellow that they were transparent. Especially the joint of the second leg, which was almost transparent, with butter soaking in it, oozing out bit by bit!

"Butter crab?" Chen Xiangbei frowned. "I've never heard of it. Is it valuable?"

In fact, Liang Ziqiang really wanted to say that butter crabs were a mutation of blue crabs, but very few blue crabs could suddenly undergo such a mutation.

The chance is probably only one in a few thousand. After the mutation, it has a rich and fresh fragrance, and the taste is completely different from that of blue crab.

Since the probability of a blue crab transforming into a butter crab is extremely low, and why this mutation occurs has not been thoroughly studied, it is quite difficult to control artificially and basically depends entirely on nature, so it is a rare opportunity.

Of course he thought about it and realized that if he mentioned the word mutation, his wife would definitely ask him what mutation meant.

After thinking about it, he simply said:

"There's only one blue crab out of thousands, so of course it's valuable. One pound can sell for thirty or forty yuan!"

In fact, it was only in later times that it was really expensive. A pound of butter crab could cost over two thousand yuan.

But butter crabs were not discovered later, but were discovered by Hong Kong diners in the 1970s and 1980s. They found that their taste was much better than ordinary blue crabs, so many people wanted to try them. Liang Ziqiang heard from Du Ziteng that even now, they can still be sold for more than 30 yuan per catty.

"So expensive? I'm afraid it's only a few taels, and can be sold for more than ten yuan?" Chen Xiangbei quickly converted it into banknotes with his eyes.

"Forget about this. If there are more, I can sell them. Who would go to the city for this one for more than ten yuan? It's better to cook it yourself and see what the high-end food that rich people are scrambling to eat tastes like!"

In the past, he would definitely save the crabs that cost a dozen yuan each to sell at Yuehai Restaurant, but now, he really can't muster the energy to buy them for a dozen yuan each.

"You eat crabs that cost more than ten yuan each? I won't say anything to you, but what will your mother say to you when she sees you?" Chen Xiangbei began to feel that this man was a bit of a spendthrift.

Although her family and her parents-in-law had already settled their own financial accounts, she felt that her mother-in-law would definitely not be able to help but criticize her when she encountered such wasteful behavior.

"Silly, I'm eating a crab and I told mom that it's more than ten yuan a piece? No, what's that look in your eyes? You won't tell mom about it, right? No, my wife is the most caring, she can't do that, for sure!"

"That's not necessarily true!" Chen Xiangbei glanced at him and couldn't help laughing, "Seeing how greedy you are, I won't sue you this time!"

Liang Ziqiang looked around in the water again, trying to see if he could pick up one or two more butter crabs, but unfortunately it was not easy to find something that was one in a thousand. He did find a few common blue crabs and red flower crabs.

Seeing that it was getting late, the couple got on the boat and returned with their abundant harvest.

We got so many mussels and clams on the island, so we definitely won’t sell them. We’ll just soak them in water for a few days at home to thoroughly remove the mud and sand, and then eat them slowly.

There were indeed a lot of chicken cage pomfret. After reaching the shore, he pushed the cart to Zheng Liu and sold it for some money.

When we got home, we had butter crabs and chicken snails that night.

The meat of the chicken claw snail is specially cut and then fried. When eating it, Liang's father and mother both said that the meat was so tender and sweet.

Liang Ziqiang said that this was a kind of conch meat picked up from the sea, and Liang's father and mother didn't think it was a chicken claw conch.

Everyone just praised Chen Xiangbei for her increasingly good cooking skills and how she could cook snail meat so deliciously. She felt guilty because of all the praise and kept glancing at her man.

After two days of rest, Liang Ziqiang is going out to sea again.

This time the goal was clear. He personally drove the "Zi Qiang" at the front, seemingly heading in a random direction, but in fact he was heading towards one place.

Two very special points on that pencil map of the sea.

However, even if he noticed those two points, the directions were relatively fixed and not precise, so it was not that easy to find. He searched for a long time and found that the sea area he had reached should be roughly close to one of the points on the map, but the sea surface was clear at a glance, and he didn't find anything special.

He didn't say anything, and ordered all three boats to start lowering their trawls. They continued to search while carrying out the trawl operation. To be honest, he couldn't tell what the point on the original picture that turned gray due to frequent finger touches meant.

After trawling for more than two hours, a relatively round island finally appeared in front.

Liang Ziqiang ordered the three boats to drop anchor near the island. While lunch was being prepared on the boats, he took a few people off the boats and went to the island.

After walking along the edge of the island for a while, I found some strange figures.

With its head down and its tail pointing upward, its entire body is small, thin, and looks particularly fragile, like pieces of razor standing upright in the water.

"What kind of fish is this? Isn't it tired to stay upright like this?" Lin Baixian asked curiously.

They had never seen this kind of fish before, so they were amazed. However, Liang Ziqiang had not only seen it, but he had also caught a batch of them before and sold them to Jiang Wenang. In the process of fishing, a small half of them were broken off.

That’s right, this is the strange fish whose whole body is transparent and easy to break, called the “Glass Knife”.

This fish can be used for viewing, but it is not expensive. In addition, it is easy to break during fishing and transportation, so Liang Ziqiang didn't even have the interest to fish for it this time.

"Glass cutter, not worth much money." He replied and continued walking along the island.

The strange thing is that after walking around the entire island, I didn't find any valuable fish or any other special signs.

But he carefully recalled the location of the gray mass on the sea chart, which should be this place. Apart from this island, there are no other islands in this area!

After returning to the boat from the island, we drove the boat around the waters around the island again. When we collected the net, we didn't find any particularly eye-catching fish in the trawl, just some common deep-sea fish and shrimp.

This made Liang Ziqiang even more confused. Could it be that the captain of Qingyi Group often came here just because of the strange-looking "glass knife" fish?

This doesn't make sense. The economic value of that fish is not that high. It can't be that attractive no matter how you look at it, right?
Liang Ziqiang even began to wonder if he was overthinking it. The two gray marks on the drawing might not have any other meaning. It was just that the other party habitually liked to keep his fingers there.

Unable to figure it out, he decided to look for it at another location on the blueprint.

On the third day, the ship sailed to that sea area while working.

Still searching for traces of islands in the vast ocean.

At this time, Li Liang came over and shouted with a mysterious expression:

"Brother Qiang, are you looking for somewhere?"

"Yeah, did you see that?"

Liang Ziqiang didn't deny it at all. He seemed to be looking for something, and the crew members on the three ships could see it. There was no need to hide it, and there was no need for Li Liang to hide it.

"Then you must have come to the right place today!" Li Liang's face became even more mysterious.

"How can you be so sure? I've been searching the sea for quite some time and haven't seen anything, not even the shadow of an island!"

"Keep looking, and an island will appear soon!" Li Liang judged.

Liang Ziqiang was puzzled. Why was Li Liang so sure that he would find the island and even said "we have come to the right place"?
What on earth did he discover? He acted like a prophet...

(End of this chapter)