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Chapter 201: Catching Sea Snakes

Translator: Aristophaneso

“Go get the leather net and then follow me!” Chu Xian shouted behind him and then jumped into the water.

“Splash!”

With a series of splashes, Sword Two and the others followed closely behind, each of the mermen holding a leather net in their hands.

Chu Xian checked the position of the sea snake, and with a thought turned into a fish.

His fish form was now a huge creature over four meters long with a snake like body that caused layers of waves as he pushed forward in the upper sea layer.

“There it is!”

A sea snake about 1.5 meters long appeared in the distance; its upper body was grey, and he could clearly see a golden glow from his god’s eye view. Sea snakes did not count as fish, so he could not use Rule on it, and so he directly rushed forward and grabbed it with the arms on his head.

“Hiss hiss!”

The sea snake looked at the huge creature charging towards it and raised its head a little, staring back with cold eyes and an extended tongue.

“Just a little thing like you should just give up and let us capture you!” Chu Xian smiled confidently – his huge body had never let him down.

Sea snakes very rarely run from danger, and would usually arch their bodies and prepare to fight.

Chu XIan stared with his fist sized eyes, his body wrapping around as he tilted forward to grab at the snake.

The sea snake stared at the oncoming monster with its beady eyes, and as it swam its body kept turning; there was something almost amusing about it until you looked into the eyes of the snake, and then all you felt was your heart jump.

“Hiss hiss!”

At that moment, Chu Xian suddenly sped up, and the arms on his head quickly reached towards his back. (sic, author uses pronoun for human male as opposed to neuter object)

But he had not expected that the sea snake was even quicker than he was, and in a flash of golden lightning, before his arms could reach the snake, it had already bitten into his arm. The smallish mouth was stretched open to its utmost limits, and its sharp poisonous teeth glinted in the water.

“Fuck!” Chu Xian immediately felt his hand numb a little, and the color of his face changed a little; he hurriedly thrashed his arm to the side.

But the mouth of the sea snake was sunk tightly into his arm, and though he kept shaking his arm he could not throw the snake off.

“Fuck me. No wonder fewer people are catching sea snakes nowadays!” Chu Xian’s heart was shook, and he could feel the numbness spreading in his arm. With a quick thought, electricity flooded down his arm.

“Pala!” With a soft sound, the sea snake quickly let go of his arm.

Chu Xian turned towards his blacking arm and his expression changed; with a quick decision, he did not hesitate as he used a claw to cut off the arm.¹

“Ah, it hurts so much! Looks like catching sea snakes really isn’t something regular people can do!” Chu Xian couldn’t resist opening his mouth.

“Incredibly poisonous, fuck, it must be a Stoke’s Seasnake (Astrotia Stokesii)!” Chu Xian’s heart turned cold.

An adult Astrotia Stokesii was usually between 1.2 to 2 meters in length and could reach 5 kilograms in weight; the thickest part of its body could reach a width of 26 centimeters. In Chinese waters, they usually lived off the coasts of Taiwan. They usually lived in coastal areas or rocky waters where clean water was around 30 meters deep. The snake is incredibly poisonous, and can kill an adult human within hours of the bite.

“Just randomly finding a snake and it’s actually such a poisonous one – it looks like we really can’t be careless while chasing sea snakes.” Chu Xian felt that he had been too confident just now, and followed the sea snake with his gaze – it was still swimming in the near distance. Chu Xian smiled coldly.

“You still want to run? you think you can get away after biting me!” Chu Xian opened his mouth slightly and shot forward an electrically charged ball at the snake.¹

“Pow!” The ball of electricity slammed in the Astrotia Stokesii, immediately jolting it and causing it to twitch violently and curl up.

Chu Xian paused a moment to focus and the severed arm slowly grew back, with a new addition of densely packed fish scales armoring the limb.

“This way even if it gets bitten it won’t be able to get through the thick fish scales!” Chu Xian hid a small smile as he swam forward next to the sea snake and reached out and grabbed it.

“One sea snake worth tens of thousands of rob. How profitable!” Chu Xian peered closely at the snake.

The sea snake was around eight catties and felt high quality; he casually threw it backward toward Sword Two.

Sword Two carefully placed the sea snake into a bag and then followed along behind Chu Xian as he swam forward.

The Gulf of Thailand was a world famous sea snake area, but even here there were very few sea snakes; after catching the Astrotia Stokesii, they continued onward towards the location of another sea snake.

This time Chu Xian did not recklessly swim forward and use his hand to directly grab at the snake; instead, he used his god’s eye view to observe for a moment.

The sea snake had black and green patterns and a vaguely triangular shaped head; it lay wrapped around a stone on the sea bed, resting its neck on its body.

‘Triangular headed sea snakes are usually very poisonous, and are just as poisonous as landed cobras.”

Chu Xian quietly thought. In fact, there are over 60 types of sea snakes across the globe, most belonging to the Elapidae category, and were thus closely related to cobras. Cobras are very terrifying snakes and extremely poisonous, but actually fall short of the lethality of many sea snake poisons.

In the modern world, there were many incurable sea snake venoms without any antivenin serums, and if someone was bit everything was down to luck. If the venom did not get too deep into the body, they might survive, but if they were unlucky they would definitely die. In those situations there was no chance of survival, that was how terrifying sea snakes were.

“This one should be a Laticauda Laticaudata.” Chu Xian thought back to the information he’d looked up about sea snakes these past few days and pondered to himself.

“Let’s be cautious and attack first!” The poison of this particular sea snake was far more deadly than that of the Astrotia Stokesii, so Chu Xian took no risks and opened his mouth and shout out a ball of electricity.

The electric ball was as large as a human head and slammed into the Laticaud Laticaudata and jolted it into collusion. Chu Xian had not blasted it with his full power, so he was not worried that he would kill the sea snake.

The electricity coursing through the sea snake paralyzed it for the moment, and Chu Xian quickly swam over and grabbed it with his hand. He threw it back towards Sword Two and the others.

“That’s two. It took us about ten minutes to catch two sea snakes; this speed is still a little slow. If I let Sword Two and the others go by themselves, they might be even slower, but they can definitely use an ordinary person’s method to capture them.”

Chu Xian frowned for a moment and then laughed, swimming forward again.

Sea snakes hid well, and their patterns were easy to miss if you weren’t paying close attention. To counter their camouflage, Chu Xian swam at a steady pace, pinging out his sonar to scan the waters above him, and keeping an eye on the coral and stone under him with his god vision.

“Yi, there are three snakes above!” After swimming for about five to six hundred meters, Chu Xian detected three sea snakes on the sea surface; he guessed that they must have surfaced for a breath.

Sea snakes cannot stay underwater forever like fish can; they need to breath, though they had a biology adapted to their unique existence. Sea snakes have lungs stretching from head to tail, and have skin they can breath through. Their upward facing nostrils can be closed over with a membrane and so the snakes bottle up their fresh oxygen and dive underwater for up to 30 minutes, and deep-sea sea snakes can even stay underwater for up to three hours.

“Gun One, Gun Two, come up here. There are three snakes up ahead, you two go and catch them!” Chu Xian did not go up himself but instead called over two of the fishermen; after all, Chu Xian couldn’t possibly stay here forever, and in the future Gun One and the others would need to function on their own.

The mermen nodded and immediately swam forward. These past few days had seen them familiarized with all kinds of sea snakes, and Old Huang had explained with great detail how they should go about capturing them.

The seven members of the Gun mermen series were all extremely strong, and their musculature and physics ranked at the top of the mermen types; and for the quick marlin, even remolded into mermen their speed was still noticeably faster than that of Sword One and the others.

The seven mermen exchanged glances, and the first three sped up to the front, their prepared leather gloves and forearm coverings extended forward.

The disturbance in the water immediately alerted the three sea snakes, and they all turned their beady eyes in cold stares at the incoming offenders.

Gun One signaled to Gun Two and Gun three, and the three mermen slowly separated, surrounding the three sea snakes in a loose formation.

In the end, sea snakes had no cleverness beyond their basic instincts, and though one snake marked Gun One, two turned towards Gun Two.

Gun One and the others flashed signals to each other, and the unwatched Gun Three immediately darted forward, pouncing at one of the distracted sea snakes.

Gun Three’s speed was incredibly fast, and the water parted around him as his hand flashed forward and grabbed the head of the snake. The strong grip immediately locked down the snake, and the mermen quickly placed the snake into a net tied to his waist.

The other two sea snakes turned at the commotion and pounced forward in fury at the mermen.

But just at that moment, Gun One and Gun Two moved; their quick hands rapidly dispatched the two remaining sea snakes, and their prey were soon stowed away in respective bags.

“Not bad!” Chu Xian nodded in approval from where he watched in the near distance. No ordinary person could compare with the mermen’s ability to capture sea snakes.

“Let’s return!” Chu Xian checked his surroundings before swimming upwards towards the fishing ship.

“Boss, how was the haul?” Old Huang called out as they climbed aboard.

“Pretty good!” Chu Xian nodded. In a short half hour, they had caught five sea snakes – this pace was already quite excellent.

“Boss, we should move forward a little bit, and then use some lights to attract the sea snakes!” Old Huang suggested.

Chu Xian considered his plan and then nodded. Sea snakes are attracted to lights, and when regular people went out to sea to catch snakes they used this sort of method, or they opened up nets. When Chu Xian left, Gun One and the others would use this sort of method.

“Have Gun One and the others try it out!”

With Chu Xian’s command, the fishing ship headed forward. Old Huang kept a vigilant lookout in every direction, and it was as if he could sense something invisible.

“Stop, right here!” Old Huang called out to Old Mu, and Gun One turned to switch on the lantern light. The light hung from the tip of a wooden pole, and its powerful glare lit up the surroundings.

“Into the water!” Old Huang ordered, and Gun One and the others dived into the ocean, and immediately fanned out.

Chu Xian surveyed with his sonar, and as Old Huang had somehow predicted, there really were three sea snakes swimming slowly toward the light. Below the surface, Gun One and the others waited silently.

After about ten minutes, the three sea snakes neared the light one after the other. The three were spread apart, with one near the water surface, and the other two around midway in the depths.

Normal sea snake catchers use nets to try to capture the sea snakes on the surface, but even this would sometimes fail.

Sea snakes are incredibly agile creatures, and they can manage outstanding bursts of speed. From relative stillness, they could dash forward in reaction to danger, and most professional crews could only catch one snake out of every four or five.

As for snakes deeper in the water, a crew might be able to use a combination of net and light, and lower it down slowly as a lured trap. When the sea snake wandered into the gap of the net, the crew would pull up and trap the snake.

But this method had a clear disadvantage, and limited the amount of snakes that it could attract. This was without even taking into consideration the limited range with which this trap could be used – after all, the net could not be lowered past forty or fifty meters.

The three sea snakes got closer and closer, and Gun One and the others paired off to each face a single snake.

A pair of two mermen who each were already faster and more agile than any of these sea snakes ended with a predictable success, and in less than a minute, all three snakes were safely stored within leather bags.

“Forward again!” Old Huang called back to Old Mu. He turned to Chu Xian and reported. “It usually takes at most ten minutes for sea snakes to gather around the light. If nothing has happened in this time, there are either no sea snakes nearby, or they’re down at the seabed and aren’t going to come up. When this happens, we change locations!”

Chu Xian nodded. The fishing ship sailed another thousand meters before stopping again, and the mermen repeated the same method to catch sea snakes.

Chu Xian accompanied the boat for about an hour, and during this time Gun One and the others caught over ten snakes. Their efficiency compared to other sea snake crews was already quite terrifying.

“If we can keep up this pace we’ll catch a hundred sea snakes each night, and every night make five to six million. If you count the hibernation season of sea snakes, there’s about a hundred and eighty days in a year that we can catch these snakes, and the annual income will be around 900 million! Nine hundred million!”

When Chu Xian thought about this number his heart blazed with emotion, but very quickly his ambition grew.

In the Gulf of Thailand and Veitnam, over three billion USD was made every year in the sea catching business. This was more than twenty billion RMB, and he had only just taken up four percent of that. It couldn’t count as that much!

“If only we could catch sea snakes faster, that would be the best!” Chu Xian thought to himself.

The truth was, according to all the records of the sea catching company, the mermen were already incredibly efficient. The Li family had only made a hundred million every year, and that was with hundreds of sea snake catchers working together.

“You guys keep catching sea snakes, I’ll go check some places nearby.” Chu Xian told Old Huang, and then grabbed a leather net and entered the water.

After turning into a fish, Chu Xian quickly swam away.

“As long as I stay within twenty kilometers of the fishing ship, I won’t lose me way!” Chu Xian thought to himself, and swam into the distance.

“Here is one!”

WIth Chu Xian’s sonar ability, he very quickly found sea snakes, and swam towards them without fear.

“Electric ball!” When he got within ten meters of a snake, without any hesitation, Chu Xian would shoot an electric ball and stun the snake.

In this manner, Chu Xian easily subdued the snake, and could swing out his arm and quickly store the snake into his leather net.

“If only the mermen could be as efficient as me. What a pity, there are too fish that both have gifts and large size!”

Chu Xian shook his head in disappointment as he swam further into the waters.

“Yi? What is that?”

At that moment, Chu Xian suddenly saw in his sonar vision a huge silhouette. This four meter long shadow darted forward with extreme speed and swallowed something whole!

“Four meters? Is this a large fish?” Chu Xian thought quickly, and a suspicion grew in his heart. He turned toward the direction of the shadow, and swam towards the image of the fish.