Chapter 180 - Sea Cucumber Mountain
Chapter 180: Sea Cucumber Mountain
“F*** me! What a large starfish!”
Chu Xian discovered that he could detect so much more at the bottom of the sea than he could while he was on the ship, both with his sonar and his mind’s eye.
While using sonar from the deck, he could only see very general outlines of things, and the speed of the fishing ship was very fast as well, so he had a hard time focusing on the creatures on the seabed.
But while swimming around in his fish form, he could clearly see each individual fish or crab or starfish or coral.
And Chu Xian was focusing on all these seabed creatures because he suspected that the more precious finds would be on the seafloor. What if he found something like the red corals again?!
With that thought, Chu Xian kept observing his surroundings as he swam along and left the fish school lookout to Old Mu with the ship’s equipment so that he could focus on his treasure hunt.
And in fact, there are many many treasures in the ocean – at the very least, many things were worth more than a thousand RMB. For example, even normal coral was quite expensive, and some beautiful coral was worth over a thousand RMB.
But it was quite troublesome to collect coral, the market for them was also quite small, and there weren’t that many buyers, so Chu Xian didn’t collect and sell the coral he found.
The underwater world was quite strange and not at all monotonous and had different scenery, just like on land. Some places were endless plains of seaweed while others had rolling hills with colorful plants and sudden drops.
Just now, Chu Xian had swum by a deep pit over forty or fifty meters deeper than everything in its surroundings. The hole was thirty meters in area, quite like a basin.
Chu Xian swam inside to satisfy his curiosity but didn’t find anything special.
“Eh? What a huge mountain over there!” Suddenly, a mountain appeared in the distance.
Of course, this hill only looked this big because it was underwater. It was only around thirty or so meters high, and if it were on land, it would only be a small hill. However, from a distance underwater, it was quite shocking.
However, the thirty-meter-or-so little hill was still fifty or sixty meters below the surface.
“The underwater world is so mysterious!” Chu Xian exclaimed and swam towards the little mountain.
There wasn’t much vegetation growing on the hill, but even from a distance, Chu Xian could spot different colors of rocks. What shocked him was the dozen or so rays swimming around the hill.
Rays were a type of flat, cartilaginous fish. Their inner bones were completely made of cartilage with the harder parts calcified to some degree of toughness, but they were still different from bone tissue formed from ossification. Placoid scales covered their bodies.
But these rays weren’t the cheap little rays found in the market; each of the dozen or so rays were huge creatures. The largest one was at least eight meters long, and the smaller ones were still a very formidable four or five meters. They appeared like creatures from a legend.
These dozen or so huge rays swam around this hill, lending the small water mountain a mysterious air.
The rays were gentle creatures, but their impressive size and the huge energy levels hidden within their bodies still worried Chu Xian, so he turned into his human form so they wouldn’t become aggressive.
Back in his human form, Chu Xian lost all the comfortable freedom of his fish form in the water, and his strength and speed fell dramatically.
Still swimming quickly, Chu Xian approached the hill. He looked around to case the joint, and the hill covered a diameter of a hundred or so meters.
After reaching the hill, Chu Xian suddenly felt a childish urge and swam to the peak of the hill to pose at the top and gaze out like a king over his domain.
Chu Xian laughed to himself before miming rock climbing and climbing downwards.
“Sh**!” All of a sudden, when Chu Xian grabbed the hill, instead of rough rock, he grasped something soft and nearly jumped out of his skin.
This strange soft material startled Chu Xian and made him cautious.
Snatching back his hand, Chu Xian peered forward at the part of the hill that he had grabbed and his expression changed into one of pleasant surprise.
He had touched this caterpillar-like creature, all black with fleshy thorns, a soft and ugly creature that a timid person probably wouldn’t dare to touch.
But this thing had a famous name—the sea cucumber.
Together with ginseng, bird’s nest and fish fin, it was one of the world’s eight treasures.
“This is a great thing, very good for your health!” Chu Xian picked up the sea cucumber and looked it over.
Sea cucumbers were good for both men and women—they were good for the kidney, bone marrow, urinary system, and also had the effects of an aphrodisiac. They were gentle and nourishing and were often compared to ginseng. Sea ginseng could help improve your memory, had anti-aging effects on your sexual organs, and helped prevent arteriosclerosis and cancer.
In our age, 99% of all sea cucumbers in the market were farmed, and the qualities varied.
Wild sea cucumbers were extremely rare and expensive. The sea cucumber in Chu Xian’s hand was about thirty centimeters long—very large for a sea cucumber.
“Sea cucumbers usually live in crevices in the rock. I should check the other places to see if there are more!” With the cucumber in hand, Chu Xian searched the other places with some hope and expectation in his heart.
“There really are more!” Very quickly, Chu Xian found another sea cucumber in a cranny about a meter below where he had found the first, and this one was even larger—at least fifty centimeters long.
“Fifty centimeters long! This is huge!” Chu Xian examined this large rock-sized sea cucumber with amazement. The sea cucumbers on the market were only a few centimeters long, barely over ten centimeters in length at most—almost a different species compared to the specimens in front of his eyes.
“How much would such a large sea cucumber be worth?” Chu Xian thought with growing excitement.
“If I found one so easily, doesn’t that mean there are many more sea cucumbers still hidden throughout this hill?” Chu Xian thought expectantly.
Chu Xian immediately looked around again, and as expected, he very quickly found another sea cucumber.
“One two three… ten eleven…”
Chu Xian opened up his god’s eye view and his eyes fell open. He stared around carefully and counted.
“F***, there are so many. They’re countless! This couldn’t be a mountain of sea cucumbers?” Chu Xian was very surprised.
“Jackpot! Jackpot! I’m rich again! Treasure mountain! A real treasure mountain!” Chu Xian’s face was covered with his excitement.
So many sea cucumbers! If I collect them all, they will be worth more than the red coral. Even if I just eat them myself, I would have enough for more than half a lifetime and be nourished every day!
“I should have Sword One and the others come down. We’ll make money faster than robbing a bank!” Chu Xian thought to himself and commanded Sword One, Sword Two and the others to come over and had Sail One and Sail Two, the newly remolded mermen, follow as well.
Chu Xian held the fifty-centimeter sea cucumber in his hand and couldn’t resist lightly squeezing it.
The Mermaid was right above Chu Xian, so Sword One and the others very quickly arrived.
With a thought, Chu Xian ordered them to start collecting the sea cucumbers.
Sea cucumbers could be sun-dried to make dry sea cucumbers, and although this would lose some of the nutritional value, it would make them more easy to eat and easier to store and transport so Chu Xian could grab as many of these sea cucumbers as he wanted.