"Gone wrong?" Upon hearing the shouts, the boss hurriedly stopped his work with the cooking spatula and ran out of the food stall.
Ni Qiu’s several companions also turned pale and were about to go down to the river.
But there was no sign of anyone on the river’s surface.
"It’s all over, Ni Qiu’s wife is going to kill us for sure, that kid must have gotten a cramp, this is bad," at this moment, they finally began to feel scared.
The river was wide, and just now everyone had entered the stall, so it was unclear where exactly Ni Qiu had gone under.
"Wait, there are splashing sounds," the boss pointed to the dark river surface, and dimly, two figures could be seen heading towards the shore.
"Ah, it’s the young man who was eating noodles just now," the boss recognized Yezi, how did he get into the water?
Having been submerged in the water without reason, Ni Qiu swallowed several mouthfuls of water, and just as he thought he would lose his life in this inconspicuous river tonight, the intense pain in his foot alleviated a lot, and a very strong hand lifted him out of the water, pushing him towards the shore.
Yezi and Ni Qiu were not accompanied by that five or six jin heavy fat fish but the very thing that had almost cost Ni Qiu his life.
"What in the world is this?" Yezi saw someone fall into the water and, without a second thought, jumped in.
After groping in the water for a while, he discovered that Ni Qiu’s unprovoked drowning was not due to a muscle cramp, but something under his feet.
Yezi didn’t recognize what that thing was, it had a hard shell and wasn’t large, just the size of a palm, but its two long, mud-haired arms looked quite frightening.
Ni Qiu’s companions were very grateful as they looked at Yezi, but when they heard him ask the question, they looked back at Yezi oddly.
"If you guys don’t recognize it either, then let’s throw it back," Yezi might not recognize the strange thing, but he knew how to subdue it, opening his tiger’s mouth, he aimed and grabbed at those long, hairy arms, ready to throw the weird thing that emerged from the water back into it.
"Don’t," Ni Qiu exclaimed in panic, ignoring his injured foot, he hopped up and hugged Yezi’s arm. Ni Qiu was shorter and leaner than Yezi, and Yezi was stronger, so with one hug and one toss, Ni Qiu was hanging off Yezi’s arm.
Good grief, strange things happen every year, but this year takes the cake, everyone inside and outside the stall was stunned, not to mention Ni Qiu’s companions.
"Don’t throw it, never mind the absence of fish for the drinks, catching a few wild crabs works too, these are authentic Taihu Hairy Crabs," Ni Qiu spoke breathlessly, and finally managed to explain everything.
Upon hearing that the thing was edible, Yezi quickly put Ni Qiu down, "This ugly thing, it’s really edible?" There weren’t such things in the rivers of the Southwest Mountain Area, only little shrimps and snails, so Yezi didn’t recognize these crabs.
"Really, I’m not kidding you, it’s just a pity it’s too dark now, do we have a light or something? Otherwise, we could catch some crabs," in fact, Ni Qiu and his few companions, had come from various places north and south, coming to this small town not for other business, but to talk about aquatic products.
This unassuming river was a tributary of Tai Lake, and being far from the city, no one fished for fish or crabs in the river.
These few aquatic businessmen like Ni Qiu saw this opportunity to come here to collect some crab and fish seedlings to take back for their operations.
When Ni Qiu went into the river, he had forgotten that there might be shrimp and crabs in it, walking barefoot in the water he first stirred up the sediment and couldn’t see the bottom, by the time he was getting a fish onto the shore, he had stepped on a foraging male crab by chance.
Just like capsizing in a gutter, it was almost a major mishap, and thinking about it made Ni Qiu shudder, feeling endlessly grateful to Yezi.
"To catch these things, we don’t need a light, just wait, I’m going to dive back into the river and catch a hundred or eighty right now," the noodles he had eaten were almost burnt off in the rescue, and hearing that there was something good to eat, and from the tone of those people, something very tasty, Yezi got excited on the spot.
"Boss, if I catch them myself and let you cook them, will the price be cheaper?" Now, Yezi remembered to haggle over the price.
"Cheap, of course cheap," the food stall owner had been through two such strange groups of customers in one night, he was too flustered to even close his mouth, and didn’t even notice the smell of the eggplants burning black on the grill.
"Hey, little brother, if you like, throw a few Hairy Crabs to the boss, and later I’ll teach you how to cook crab, I guarantee he won’t charge you a penny," Ni Qiu, regardless of the wound still on his foot, began making suggestions on the side.