Chinese Medicine: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 542: Chapter 542: Worth a King’s Ransom

"Yeah, what if something happened to him?"

Lin Xiaoyu grew tense as well.

"Don’t let your imagination run wild." Though Ding Kaifang offered words of comfort, his own brow furrowed. "He’s a very fast swimmer. Maybe he swam off after some rare, big fish?"

Just as everyone was discussing whether to gear up again and go look for him,

Suddenly, with a loud SPLASH!

The calm surface of the sea erupted as if something had exploded, sending water flying everywhere.

A massive, shimmering silver Spanish mackerel, well over half a meter long, shot out of the water and traced a graceful arc through the air.

An arm, gripping the fish’s body tightly, broke through the surface right after it.

Li Xu had surfaced.

He held the large, struggling fish in one hand and flung it with a flick of his wrist.

"Catch."

Dripping with salty seawater, the large mackerel landed squarely on the deck. It continued to flop about wildly, making the two girls shriek and jump away.

"Hahaha." Ding Kaifang laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. "Doctor Li, you really went fishing? That’s incredible! How did you catch it with your bare hands? These things are slipperier than an eel in the water."

Of course, a person can’t outswim a fish. Even though the schools of fish on the seabed looked oblivious, as if you could scoop them up by the armful, the moment you actually tried, you’d find you couldn’t even touch a single scale.

They had all tried it just a moment ago while underwater, only to give up in frustration.

The smaller fish were too slippery to hold, and the larger ones were surprisingly strong—impossible to pin down.

Catching fish with your bare hands was an incredibly advanced skill—one might even call it an art form.

Li Xu took off his goggles and shook the water from his hair. He grinned. "I just nabbed this fish on my way up. It swam right into me, so it was just unlucky. But... the main thing I found was this."

As he spoke, he slowly extended his other hand.

In the sunlight, an enormous, dazzlingly bright white Pearl broke through the water’s surface.

For a moment, it seemed as if the entire deck was lit up by the Pearl’s radiance.

"Holy shit."

Ding Kaifang’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head, and he couldn’t help but curse.

Everyone gasped in astonishment.

The Pearl in Li Xu’s hand was as large as a ping-pong ball, perfectly round and full-bodied. Its surface was as smooth as a mirror, and under the sun, you could even see the undried water droplets on it refracting a rainbow-colored halo.

"You... You actually found a Pearl that big?"

Song Sisi gasped, covering her mouth. She could hardly believe her eyes.

Ding Kaifang leaned in for a closer look. "Size isn’t everything. I’ve seen bigger—some baroque pearls are larger than a fist. But... one this round, this perfectly spherical... now that’s what’s truly valuable. This is a perfect ’Walking Disc Bead.’"

Everyone scrambled to pull Li Xu aboard, then crowded around him as if he were an alien, their eyes glued to the Pearl.

"Can I hold it?" Lin Xiaoyu asked gingerly.

"Of course." Li Xu casually handed it to her.

Song Sisi and Lin Xiaoyu took turns cradling it in their palms, unable to part with it.

The warm, smooth, weighty sensation was intoxicating.

"The color, the luster... It’s absolutely first-rate,"

Lin Xiaoyu marveled.

Ding Kaifang said with envy, "Doctor Li, you’ve got some incredible luck. A pure, natural, wild Pearl this large is a one-in-a-million find. I can’t believe you found it in these deep waters. People don’t normally dive for pearls here; it’s too deep."

This was a typical deep-sea area; the nearest shallows were over two hundred kilometers away. Who would have thought a massive bed of pearl oysters would be hidden down here?

"There have to be more down there, right? It can’t have come from a single oyster,"

Lin Xiaoyu suddenly realized and asked with curiosity.

Li Xu smiled and pointed in the direction he’d surfaced from. "There are hundreds more. A huge bed of them. None are as big as this one, though. I pried a few open to check—some have pearls, some don’t, and some are tiny. If you’re interested, you can go try your luck."

"What? Hundreds of them?"

The group was ecstatic, feeling as if they’d just heard the door to Alibaba’s cave of treasures swing open.

Ding Kaifang immediately ordered the captain to move the boat over there.

"Bring tools," Li Xu reminded them. "Those shells clamp shut with incredible force. You’ll wear yourselves out trying to open them by hand. I have a special prying tool in my bag."

He had, in fact, already sorted through them. A gem like the one in his hand was unique, found only in a true "Shell King."

He’d spent a good while searching but hadn’t found a second one that could rival it.

But even so, the remaining oysters were sure to contain plenty of other decent-quality Pearls.

Though they couldn’t compare to this "Treasure of the Sea," they still represented a considerable windfall.

With Li Xu pointing the way, how could any of them possibly sit still?

Even the two girls, who had just been complaining that their ears hurt and couldn’t go deeper than ten meters, were now acting as if they’d been shot full of adrenaline. They changed back into their wetsuits and, gritting their teeth, forced themselves to dive more than twenty meters deep.

Such was the allure of treasure hunting.

None of them were actually short on cash. Ding Kaifang was worth hundreds of millions, and Li Xu even more so.

But this wasn’t just about the money. It was about the thrill of exploring the unknown, the sense of accomplishment that came from pulling treasure from the depths of the sea with their own two hands.

For the next few hours, that quiet patch of seabed was bustling with activity.

The four of them made a dozen trips up and down, buzzing like busy little bees, and managed to "pillage" more than half of the entire oyster bed.

By the time they climbed back onto the boat, utterly exhausted, the buckets on deck were already filled with Pearls of all sizes.

There were hundreds in total.

Some were as white as snow, some were a delicate pink, and there were even a few exceedingly rare black and golden Pearls.

"Phew... I’m dead tired."

Lin Xiaoyu collapsed into a chair. Though exhausted, she couldn’t help but beam as she looked at their bucket of spoils.

But a moment later, she asked with some concern, "Hey, what we’re doing... isn’t it going too far? This is the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, and we’re harvesting on such a massive scale..."

After all, this could be considered "transnational poaching."

Ding Kaifang scoffed and lit a cigarette. "What’s there to be afraid of? In this vast ocean, who’s going to know it was us? Besides, this place is in the middle of nowhere. Their own fishing boats probably can’t even find it."

"We’ll rest up for a bit, then cut back through international waters. No one will be the wiser."

Li Xu nodded as well, adding with a smirk, "If it were anywhere else, or even in our own territorial waters, I might feel a little guilty. You know, for the sake of protecting the ecosystem."

"But the Philippines? Heh."

"If anything, I’m disappointed we didn’t do more damage."

At his words, everyone burst out laughing, and the tiny bit of guilt they felt instantly vanished into thin air.

...

「A short rest later.」

Inside the cabin, the four of them gathered around a table to take stock of their haul.

As the general manager of the Ding Group, Ding Kaifang was a man of the world, with considerable knowledge of the jewelry market.

He took out a magnifying glass and began to sort through the Pearls one by one.

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