As a Fisherman, My Fish Can Level Up

Chapter 110: Chapter 109: Fishing Man Grandpa

Chu Mingcheng was indeed curious about why Jiang Luoluo had gone out of her way to learn how to make the special sea bass and Earth Dragon soup. He entered the house and arrived in the kitchen, only to see her back to him, busy with something unclear.

On closer inspection, he was met with the sight of a sea eel resembling a snake, frying whole in the pan.

Most girls would be scared to even touch it with its unappetizing appearance, yet Jiang Luoluo handled it with remarkable calm.

“Does the sea eel have to be fried first?”

“Holy—”

Jiang Luoluo, who had been fully focused, jumped when Chu Mingcheng suddenly spoke up.

She patted her chest and said irritably, “Couldn’t you make a sound when you came in? You scared the hell out of me.”

Chu Mingcheng put down the bag in his hand and spread his hands, “It’s your fault for being so engrossed, okay? I was talking to Zhang Ruomei at the door for ages.”

Zhang Ruomei was a year younger than him, so they both addressed each other by their first names.

“Alright then!” Jiang Luoluo didn’t quibble over this point. She glanced at the sea bass and Earth Dragon soup she was preparing and said with a hint of malice, “Ah Cheng, we’re good friends, right?”

Chu Mingcheng saw right through the little girl’s scheme. Glancing at the sea eel still sizzling in the pan, he said, “Yes, we’re good friends. But I’ve decided to break off our friendship during mealtime, and we can continue to be good friends after we eat!”

He had no intention of being a test subject; he picked up his groceries and left in a hurry.

Jiang Luoluo wanted to stop him but, seeing the sea eel in the pot turning a light golden brown, she decided to take it out first.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated on Ɲονǥο.с0

Then, looking at Chu Mingcheng who was quickly retreating to his house, she revealed a “ferocious” expression, “Hmph, I’ll let you go for now, but you’ll see later.”

Afterward, she concentrated on cooking her own dish.

The duck in the clay pot had been simmering for a long time by now, ready for the fried sea eel to be added.

Then Jiang Luoluo added the prepared ingredients into the clay pot: red dates, cooked rehmannia root, codonopsis, goji berries, and white peony root.

She covered the pot and let it simmer on a low flame.

She even set up an alarm clock for herself, timed for 45 minutes.

When the time was up, Jiang Luoluo opened the pot and added a bit of some medicinal wine she wasn’t quite sure of its use, then turned off the heat and removed the pot from the stove.

She had followed the tutorial video step by step, not missing a single condiment.

She even went out specially to buy a bottle of medicinal wine since she didn’t have any, although the shop owner’s look gave her a weird vibe.

“Wow, it smells so good!” Jiang Luoluo smelled the soup and thought it looked quite delicious.

Zhang Ruomei actually wanted to run away, but her curiosity was killing her.

She couldn’t stand not checking out Jiang Luoluo’s first attempt at making a big dish; it would make her itch from the inside out if she didn’t.

So, in the end, she couldn’t resist and still made her way to the kitchen.

For the aroma, she’d give eight points, leaving two points for possible improvement.

As for the presentation of the soup, she gave it six points. The sea eel’s appearance was a bit off, but the color of the soup itself looked quite good.

“Luoluo, aren’t you going to have the first taste of the dish you cooked?”

“Sister Mei, considering how you’ve always taken care of me over the years, this first tasting shall be yours!”

“No, no, no, you worked hard all morning for this, you should be the one.”

“Oh come on, I’m fine, Sister Mei, you’ve worked so hard…”

“Wait, wait, wait, all I did was shoot and edit the videos, how did we get to ‘worked so hard’? I’m not suffering at all, really!”

“So if you’re not suffering, does that mean I’m paying you too much, should we cut back a little?”

“Yeah, just keep waiting!” Zhang Ruomei feigned dissatisfaction and reached out to tickle her.

Jiang Luoluo dodged quickly, laughing, “Alright, alright, I was just joking! Of course, I’ll be the first to taste it to see if it’s good.”

As she spoke, she picked up a spoon to try the soup she had been simmering.

Zhang Ruomei watched her intently to see her reaction.

First, Jiang Luoluo frowned, but then her features relaxed, and she showed a surprised expression, “Wow, I didn’t expect to have such a talent for cooking, this soup is delicious!”

“Really?” Zhang Ruomei, doubtful after seeing her reaction, grabbed a spoon and tasted the soup as well.

The taste pleasantly surprised her. It wasn’t extremely delicious, but it was far from bad, definitely much better than being just palatable.

She then tasted the duck meat and the sea eel, frowning slightly.

“How is it?” Jiang Luoluo asked a bit nervously.

“The soup is quite good, but it’s a shame about the limitations of the ingredients. If you used locally raised sea bass and wild Earth Dragon, this soup would be considered a success,” Zhang Ruomei commented somewhat regretfully.

“It’s my first time making it! I used those ingredients as a trial run. If it turned out badly, it would have been such a waste,” Jiang Luoluo rolled her eyes speechlessly, content with the taste of her dish today.

Zhang Ruomei felt her own critique was too harsh upon hearing this and smiled, “That’s true; the flavor is actually fine as it is.”

“By the way, Ah Cheng came by earlier to call us for the meal, shall we take the soup over to eat together?”

“Of course, he ran off earlier, and we can’t let him off this time.” The good taste of the soup bolstered Jiang Luoluo’s confidence.

If the soup had been a bit off, she wouldn’t really take it out to torture others.

Carrying the soup to Chu Mingcheng’s house, they noticed he had purposely left the door open, so they walked right in.

“Oh, what a coincidence, I just finished stir-frying the dishes!”

Chu Mingcheng, seeing them arrive, also brought out his freshly cooked dishes: stir-fried lettuce with minced garlic, red-cooked pork ribs, red-cooked squid, and a plate of sweet, cold cucumber salad.

“You’re too quick; Luoluo spent a whole morning simmering this soup, and you made four dishes in less than an hour?” Zhang Ruomei praised.

Other than the cold cucumber salad, the other three dishes looked appealing in both color and fragrance, though she hadn’t tasted them yet.

At this moment, Chu Mingcheng also noticed Jiang Luoluo’s soup on the table, and the corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily, hoping she wouldn’t be unreasonable!

“Ah Cheng, try the soup and see how it tastes. Sister Mei and I think it’s pretty good.”

“…”

Chu Mingcheng felt conflicted. Facing Jiang Luoluo’s expectant look made it hard for him to refuse.

Oh well, if both of them said it was okay, he might as well give it a try!

If it tasted bad, he would just decline politely. With Jiang Luoluo’s personality, she probably wouldn’t force him to hurt his tongue and stomach.

But when he took a taste, his eyebrows lifted in surprise: “It’s quite good, better than I expected. Is this really your first time cooking?”

Receiving praise from the person she cared about, Jiang Luoluo couldn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, I just followed a video step by step!”

Chu Mingcheng then realized, learning from a video doesn’t necessarily mean it will be delicious, but if done with care, it was unlikely to taste bad.

Unlike his ex-girlfriend, who clearly had no interest in cooking yet insisted on testing him with her efforts, only to satisfy her own desire for control and vanity.

And that nonsense about the passenger seat being reserved only for her, claiming that if someone else sat there, it meant he didn’t love her, and then throwing a tantrum—complete lunacy!

In simple terms, it was all PUA: testing his boundaries step by step, then manipulating him for her own gain.

Seeing that Chu Mingcheng was quite satisfied, Jiang Luoluo felt somewhat relieved.

After lunch, they cleaned up, leaving the leftovers on the table for dinner.

Jiang Luoluo had fallen behind schedule that morning, so she went back to work on her dance moves. Once she had digested her food, she would start creating choreography in front of the mirror.

Chu Mingcheng wasn’t idle either. He sat on the couch, opened an app, and began practicing for his driving test, eager to get his license and head to sea.

This morning’s catch had made him realize that shore fishing wasn’t very profitable.

However, even without financial incentives, he still planned to continue fishing at high tide around two in the afternoon. At least there would be fish.

Around one o’clock, he packed up his phone and set off again, heading to the same fishing spot he had visited that morning.

Carrying his fishing gear, he was surprised to find his spot from the morning occupied by the same old man.

Chu Mingcheng hadn’t expected him to still be fishing now, and he wasn’t bothered by the spot being taken—after all, he had left.

Still, he couldn’t help but approach with curiosity: “Grandpa, how’s the bite been?”

In Fusheng, like on Treasure Island, people address older men as Ah Bei, and much older men as Grandpa; for women, it’s Ah Mu, and for older women, Ah po.

The dialect on Treasure Island is actually Southern Fujianese!

“Oh, handsome guy, you’re fishing too! The bite was decent this morning. Here, these are the ones I caught.”

The old man opened his tackle box, which had about seven or eight fish inside: Black Sea Bream and stone fish, and another kind of fish Chu Mingcheng hadn’t caught before called an Earth Dragon.

The old man’s Mandarin carried a heavy accent, but Chu Mingcheng, used to the not-so-standard Mandarin of the elderly back in Wen City, understood him easily.

“Grandpa, that’s impressive, catching so many.” Seven or eight fish wasn’t a lot for him, but for recreational fishing, it was a very good catch.

“You set a good bait this morning, and I benefited from that! You’re here to fish, right? I’ll give the spot back to you,” the old man said, starting to get up.

Chu Mingcheng quickly stopped him: “No no no, Grandpa, you keep fishing here. I’ll go to your spot from this morning.”

After saying that, he didn’t give the old man a chance to react, quickly grabbing his gear and making a swift exit.

It seemed that the old man had embraced the fishing life after retirement. Chu Mingcheng thought it best not to disturb someone else’s enjoyment of fishing.

He arrived at the old man’s spot from that morning, noticing it was much steeper. No wonder the old man had moved to his spot.

This level of steepness wasn’t a problem for Chu Mingcheng. The water level was still low, but the waves were already starting to surge, one after another slamming against the rocks.

He scooped a couple of mounds of Shrimp Brick and cast them into the water, then began to set up his fishing rig, the same one he used in the morning.

After getting his rock fishing rod and line rig ready, he didn’t start fishing right away.

The water was shallow and lacked fish. The Shrimp Brick’s effect hadn’t kicked in yet.

So, he took out his lure rod, rigged it with artificial bait, and made a few casts. It wasn’t ideal to lure fish on rocky shores, but it was manageable. Perhaps a less cautious fish would take the bait!

Having fished for over a month, Chu Mingcheng wasn’t a lure fishing expert, but casting was a breeze for him.

The wind today was from the southwest, a bit warm, but it didn’t hinder his casting.

If it had been an east wind or a northeast wind, blowing across the sea, casting would have been more difficult for him.

He flicked the rod, and the wave-climbing artificial bait flew out a dozen meters before “plop”—it hit the water.

It was not at the beach or other sandy places where casting too far was unnecessary. It would be tough to reel in a hooked fish from too great a distance.

Chu Mingcheng reeled in while rhythmically jerking the rod tip to keep the lure moving in a zigzag pattern, splashing water to simulate a small fish’s free swimming at the surface, mainly to entice sea bass.

While jerking the rod tip, he also paused momentarily, creating a thudding sound to mimic the noise of big fish preying on smaller ones, triggering nearby fish to attack.

Unfortunately, the sea bass’s current level was low, only grade 1, so the lure’s attraction was virtually non-existent.

However, it’s worth mentioning that after returning from Xisha, Chu Mingcheng’s seafood encyclopedia experience points had reached 17, meaning he was 43 points away from another upgrade.

Having gained the “Swim Freely” ability from the first upgrade, he was quite curious about what ability he might get from the second one.

For now, there was no need to rush. His main focus was to improve the levels of common fish to ensure daily income before acquiring a boat.

After making three casts with no action, the water surface remained quiet.

It was on the fourth cast that a sea bass suddenly leapt out of the water, chasing after the wave-climbing artificial bait.

Chu Mingcheng quickly paused, but the fish feinted an attack, diving back into the water and disappearing from sight.

“…”

He was a bit speechless but helpless as well; he couldn’t exactly put on a wetsuit and chase after it with a speargun now, could he?

A small sea bass wasn’t worth that effort.