Chapter 27

"Jing, Jing." Just after receiving a call from Wang Zhuo, several voices were heard at the door.

"I'm coming." Su Jing opened the door and saw Su Liang and Su Xiaolin standing there. From their expressions, Su Jing could roughly guess why they had come. He invited them inside and made them some tea.

"Jing, we've thought about what you said. If you really plan to build a fish farm, we'll work with you. I can do without a salary for now, we can talk about it when we make money, but I can't invest any money," Su Xiaolin said.

"I can invest up to five thousand," Su Liang said bluntly.

Fishing conditions had not improved recently. The village didn't have good boats, and they couldn't go out to the open sea. The situation was not getting better. As Su Jing had said, the near sea was indeed overfished. Continuing like this would mean depleting their resources, but considering their families, they still didn't dare to spend too much money on risky ventures. If things got too bad, they would rather go out and work elsewhere.

"Ha ha, you don't need to invest. I've checked, and it turns out that setting up small shallow sea fish cages doesn't require much money. I plan to start with ten, each about ten meters in diameter. Even with better materials, it will only cost a few ten thousand yuan. You can work for me, with a monthly salary of five thousand for now. We'll see about bonuses and raises in the future. I won't treat you unfairly," Su Jing smiled. He had almost spent all his money on repairing the old house and courtyard, so he had put this plan on hold. However, with the daily profit of over ten thousand yuan from fishing and cooking over the past seven days, he now had about one hundred thousand yuan saved. With the Perfect Pet Park, he would soon have a steady income, so he decided to start building the fish farm.

"Five thousand? No, no, that's too much," Su Liang and Su Xiaolin shook their heads. They weren't unwilling to earn money, but five thousand was clearly Su Jing taking care of them. If they made money at the cost of Su Jing losing money, they would feel guilty.

"If you don't work for me, I'll hire someone else," Su Jing said.

"Damn, do you have to be so generous?" Su Liang and Su Xiaolin were speechless. They eventually agreed, but they decided that if they didn't earn much, they wouldn't take five thousand a month.

"Let's go and do a test run," Su Jing said, leading Su Liang and Su Xiaolin to a sheltered bay near the small dock. They saw two old rectangular fish cages, each two by four meters, which were previously used for fish farming. The Su family village had tried fish farming before, but due to a lack of farming techniques, the profits were average. Later, a storm severely damaged most of the fish cages, and the fish inside escaped. Many people in the village suffered heavy losses that year, and no one farmed fish again after that.

"Whose cages are these?" Su Jing asked.

"My second uncle's," Su Liang said.

"Then let's ask him if we can borrow them," Su Jing said.

"Just two old cages, no need to ask. My second uncle even said he wanted to dismantle them. Use them if you want," Su Liang said casually.

"Then let's modify them," Su Jing smiled. He knew Su Liang had a good relationship with his second uncle, so it wouldn't be a problem. He immediately told Su Liang and Su Xiaolin how to modify the cages, and the three of them got to work.

The cages were full of holes and needed repair, but Su Jing didn't patch up some of the larger holes. Instead, he set up one-way entrances similar to fish traps, with at least one on each side of the cage.

After finishing, Su Jing fixed a fish basket in the center of each cage and placed a meatball inside. The meatballs were made from monster meat and starch. Su Jing had tested them and found that they were not too strong in flavor but still attracted animals without driving them mad.

"I don't quite understand. What's the point of this? Can this catch fish?" Su Xiaolin and Su Liang could roughly guess Su Jing's intentions but felt it was not a good idea, wondering if they had misunderstood.

"Ha ha, you'll see tomorrow," Su Jing teased, leaving Su Xiaolin and Su Liang eager to know.

By the time they parted ways and went home, it was already evening. Su Jing packed the monster meat jerky he had been making for the past few days using a vacuum sealer and stored it in a large refrigerator. He had bought the vacuum sealer and refrigerator a few days ago.

He had tested that making jerky did not reduce the nutritional value of the monster meat. He made about 1,300 pounds of jerky, froze 400 pounds, and kept 200 pounds in soy sauce bottles. He would use the soy sauce bottles for eating and feeding pets, then use the frozen fresh meat, and finally the jerky.

Of course, to be prepared, Su Jing carried some jerky with him. Today at the restaurant, he had placed a piece of jerky in the pepper shaker and in Zhao Jun's pocket. The refined jerky had a strong aroma, quickly attracting rats.

After placing all the jerky, it was already 11 PM, and Su Jing went to sleep.

At around 3 or 4 AM, a long-awaited rumbling sound woke Su Jing up.

"Finally, new garbage."

Su Jing jumped out of bed, not even bothering to put on clothes or shoes, and ran excitedly to the backyard. The vortex he had been waiting for and worrying about for many days finally appeared in the air, just as he had estimated, about five meters high, completely blocked by the six-meter-high wall, so no one outside could see it. There were no buildings over six meters nearby.

"Rustle, rustle"

Garbage poured down, and the vortex quickly disappeared, restoring calm.

Su Jing was already used to not thinking about the source of the vortex and started sorting through the garbage. This pile was about twice as much as the one from the One Piece world, almost covering half the yard. The lute plum tree was crushed, and it probably wouldn't survive. Fortunately, the man-eating tree was near the wall, with only a small amount of garbage piled around the basket, or it might have been crushed as well.

The garbage included dust, soil, rags, leftover food, dead branches, and leaves. It was very messy and smelly. At first glance, Su Jing couldn't tell which time or space it came from, but he could roughly guess that it was garbage produced by human living and daily activities.

Su Jing put on gloves and started sorting through the garbage, but the more he searched, the darker his face became. This pile of garbage was truly the most genuine garbage, with not a single item that could be recycled or reused.

"Hey!"

Su Jing suddenly felt something hard in a pile of leaves.

His heart raced, and he quickly pulled away the leaves, revealing a white and black object. Under the moonlight, he took a closer look and suddenly turned pale, stepping back three steps and sitting down on the grass.