I Can Turn into a Fish

On the Dragon Mastiff Mark One, the middle-aged captain stood on deck inspecting the fishing ship in the not-so-far distance with a cold gaze as it ignored his warning and continued chasing the school of fish.

The sea around China was very large, but to fishing companies like theirs, it still wasn’t large enough. For instance, the triangular area between China, Korea, and Japan could be passed through in a bit over a day. If you took away the national waters of Japan and Korea, the fishing locations shrank even further, and many fishing companies competed for the remaining locations.

At any rate, their medium to small sized fishing ships didn’t have the ability to go out to the deep seas, and those areas were fought over by the larger companies anyway.

Dragon Mastiff’s fleet of five ships, each over thirty meters long, allowed their company to establish some power in the area, and it could be said that they had control of this territory.

Although the sea wasn’t truly divided into separate territories, there were some implicit rules. In fact, all seas and oceans had implicit rules, and few people argued with the division of the high seas under the dozen or so powerful fishing companies. Of course, these divisions didn’t stop fishermen from coming out to fish, but each company mostly stayed within their own territory, not competing with others.

As for the regular folks who entered their territories, some black-hearted companies either chased them away or forced them to pay for the right to fish. Of course, you could fish secretly; after all, the waters were wide and vast and there wasn’t much chance of randomly stumbling upon another ship, and even if it did happen, you could always just sail away before they approached.

Dragon Mastiff Fishing Group encountered other fishing ships in this area before, but they had always fled upon seeing them approach, showing an appropriate amount of fear.

Of course, many people might view this as unfair, but did fairness really exist in reality? There were only natural laws – the big fish ate the small fish, and the strong survived.

They were powerful, so they were able to claim this territory. As long as they didn’t kill anyone or covered up the murders, there wouldn’t be any problems. These were the seas, the great and wide waters. Laws didn’t stretch out far enough here.

“How dare they try to steal our fish! Arrogant! They’re courting death!” The middle aged captain glared angrily at the ship. “Signal them again. If they don’t leave, they can’t blame us for being discourteous!”

“Captain, the cruise ship is beside us. Our boss is on deck with other rich and powerful people. Are you sure we should do this?” The captain’s assistant reminded him in a whisper.

“Don’t worry.” The middle aged captain shook his head decisively. “As long as we don’t kill or injure them, there won’t be any problems. They should understand the law of the jungle better than us anyway!”

“Yes!”

“Boss, they signaled us again. If we don’t leave, they won’t be courteous.” Back on the Mermaid, Old Mu called out to Chu Xian.

“Discourteous?” Chu Xian looked at the two fishing ships two or three hundred meters from them. “Ignore them. If they dare try anything, they’ll see what our capabilities are!”

At sea, Chu Xian had the courage to challenge anyone. Even if a warship came, he would only run but he wouldn’t be afraid, but if a submarine came… let’s just pretend those didn’t exist.

“Yes, boss.” Old Mu nodded and didn’t take heed of the message.

Old Huang signaled to Sword One and Sword Two and had them stand at the ready.

“Captain, they didn’t reply. It looks like they aren’t going to leave. Should we attack?” On Dragon Mastiff Mark One, the assistant asked as he stood beside the middle-aged captain.

The middle-aged captain had seen the fishing ship completely ignoring their warning and looking down on their capabilities.

“This must be a new ship, and the captain doesn’t know the rules. Since they don’t understand, we’ll just have to teach them!” The middle aged captain spat.

“Yes, Captain!” The assistant understood his meaning and nodded. He turned and signaled the rest of the crew.

Meanwhile, on the deck of the cruise ship nearby was a group of people. Many of them looked excitedly at the dark teeming mass of fish in the distance, but others had their attention on the fishing ships competing to catch the fish.

“Pa pa pa!” At that moment, a young man in a cruise ship uniform walked out and clapped to attract everyone’s attention. “We’re quite lucky and have encountered a school of fish today. If everything goes well, we’ll be able to watch our ships catching this school. I am sure you are all very excited.”

“According to our staff’s estimates, this is a medium sized school of Spanish mackerels with twenty to thirty thousand fish, each weighing at least fifty to sixty catties. They’re over a million RMB, but of course we have to catch them first!”

“Two of these three fishing ships belong to Dragon Mastiff Fishing Group, and the ship in the distance is unfamiliar. Perhaps we might even get to see some competition between the groups!”

The staff of the cruise ship obviously understood the rules of the sea.

When two fishing ships encountered a single school of fish, conflict was inevitable.

“Director Xu, aren’t those your ships? How lucky that they found a school!”

On the cruise ship, a couple of middle-aged men gathered around. One bald middle-aged man was talking to another middle-aged man with a beauty on his arm and laughed.

“Hai, our luck is pretty good to have stumbled upon a school. We can’t have such good luck every day.” The middle-aged man called Director Xu was courteous, but the smile on his face was huge. After all, he would be earning a couple hundred thousand RMB here, so he was very happy.

“Director Xu, the staffer said there might be some competition over the school of fish. What will happen?” the old man beside him asked curiously.

“Haha, Director Li, it’ll just be a small conflict with some primitive rules. The winner will be king! They’ll compete with strength, and win with strength!” Director Xu smiled and replied.

“Oh? You’re saying there won’t be a battle?” Director Li replied with some wonder.

“It won’t count as a battle. No one will die, and the weaker one will give up,” Director Xu replied with complete assurance. He wasn’t worried at all about his own ships. After all, he had worked at sea for a very long time – if he wasn’t powerful, others would’ve already taken his place long ago.

“Let’s wait and see!” Director Xu pointed at the three fishing ships gathering in the distance.

“What a beautiful school of fish. How terrifying.”

“Yes, yes. We’re very lucky; we actually encountered a school of fish and even get to watch a fishing ship catching them! How interesting!”

“The three ships don’t seem to be working together, and the crew member said there will be a competition. I wonder what will happen! I’m sure it will be interesting!”

“Are they going to fight? Haha!”

The other people on the cruise watched curiously to see what would happen. For rich people like them, schools of fish, fishing ships at work, and competition all made them curious.