Super Zoo

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The bald man, however, disagreed with Zhou Jin's idea, saying, "Mr. Zhou, aren't you thinking too much? How big can Shuijun Lake be? At most, it's just two to three hundred tons of fish. Even if they sell them all, it's impossible for them to steal our market."

This made sense, actually. Although the cultivation area of Huating Fisheries Company was just a small part of the entire reservoir, not even one-tenth, it was still a behemoth compared to Shuijun Lake, and the two were not on the same level in terms of output at all. With millions of people in the entire Yangchuan City and the whole province, the market was so vast that the few hundred tons from Shuijun Lake were insignificant. Even if Shuijun Lake sold all its fish, it couldn't deal a fatal blow to the reservoir; there was no direct competition between the two at the moment.

The bald man spoke this way for another important reason. He really didn't want to provoke Suming again. After several attempts to cause trouble for Suming, not a hair on Suming's head had been harmed while he himself had nearly lost his life under mysterious circumstances.

The bald man was not highly educated and was somewhat superstitious at heart. He wondered if this person was under some sort of divine protection. Otherwise, how could he have such smooth sailing?

Zhou Jin snorted coldly, "What do you know! A thousand-mile dike is destroyed by an ant's nest, do you understand the meaning? A tiny ant makes a hole on a thousand-mile dike. If you ignore it, let it develop, before long the whole dike will collapse!"

"Mr. Zhou, you're really cultured!" The bald man quickly slapped on some flattery while inwardly scoffing with disdain, thinking to himself, I have at least completed nine years of compulsory education, yet this semi-illiterate who didn't even finish elementary school dares to spout off to me.

People stand in different positions, each with their own reasoning. Zhou Jin's thinking wasn't necessarily wrong; several hotels changing suppliers all at once, and all choosing Suming's Shuijun Lake simultaneously, was definitely a dangerous signal. The Suming of now was more than just a tiny white ant. Although far from having the power to confront Huating Fisheries Company head-on, not being on the same level, he was already posing an insidious threat to Huating Fisheries.

For so many years, Huating Fisheries had virtually monopolized the market in Yangchuan with no competitors. Now, the sudden rise of Shuijun Lake was undoubtedly a huge provocation and threat to Huating Fisheries.

"So, Mr. Zhou, what should we do?" The bald man slapped his forehead, anxiously said, "It's quite strange indeed. Those snakehead fishes I put in last time should have caused substantial reduction in the fish population of Shuijun Lake by now, but it looks like nothing has happened at all. Not only that, but I heard that the fish raised by that kid are particularly tasty, even better than our wild-caught ones."

"It's really damned weird, they haven't had a reduction in output, yet we have lost quite a bit..." a blonde underling muttered a few curses on the side.

This comment struck Zhou Jin like thunder, suddenly enlightening him.

He had seen the dead fish in the Huating Reservoir before. Some had died for no apparent reason, while it seemed others had been killed by larger fish or aquatic animals. Huating Reservoir was large; the water surface contracted by the fisheries company was less than one-tenth. It wouldn't be strange to have some ferocious animals in other areas. In fact, it was impossible to avoid such losses when raising fish in the reservoir, as they were considered part of the planned loss that happened every year. This year, however, there were simply more than usual.

At the time, Zhou Jin didn't pay much attention to it, but now, thinking back, it seemed suspicious.

On the day of the model worker award, he had a chance encounter with Suming in the garage. He had pretended to care while actually probing with a question about the fish in Shuijun Lake recently. At the time, Suming had appeared nonchalant, and Zhou Jin thought he was just faking it.

There were many other details, including how the bald man had been attacked by wasps and wolf dogs after releasing the snakeheads that day...

All these incidents, when linked together, led Zhou Jin to suddenly guess the truth: it was very likely that the other party had discovered the bald man releasing the snakeheads all along, but had kept quiet about it, secretly retrieving the snakeheads and introducing them to the Huating Reservoir to harm his fish!

"It must be so!" Zhou Jin's face turned blue with anger.

"What must be so?" The bald man widened his eyes and asked.

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Zhou Jin glared at him with displeasure, "It's all because you screwed up!" Having said that, he simply repeated his conjecture.

The bald man felt a deep sense of grievance, thinking to himself, haven't I been risking my life slaving away for you, and now it ends up being my fault?

That's what it's like being an underling, the big brother claims the rewards, and I'm left holding the bag. The bald man sighed and said, "So, Mr. Zhou, what do we do now?"

"Just waste that kid and be done with it!" That was the same bleached-blond underling from before.

Zhou Jin paced around the room with his hands behind his back, "No, he's now a known figure in the city, being direct and harsh would look bad. If they start investigating, it would be very easy for them to trace it back to me."

"Then I'll go poison the fish in Shuijun Lake." The bald man said helplessly.

"That's just asking for trouble! He's already started selling fish, if you poison them and people die, a major poisoning case is something nobody can cover up!" Zhou Jin said, while he went over in his mind, from the first time he met Suming to everything that had happened since, hoping to find some clue that could be exploited.

"Right, do you guys remember when he first came, asking me how to raise fish?" Zhou Jin asked.

"Yeah, brother, you were so domineering you told him to scram," a lackey chimed in with flattery.

"That's where the problem lies. He knew nothing about fish farming back then, so how could he have grown so many fish in just a few months? And raised them so well? There has to be someone guiding him!"

"Could it be someone from the Agricultural Science Institute? I heard there's a graduate student helping him out," the bald man suggested.

"No!" Zhou Jin shook his head, "When the Agricultural Science Institute came to Yangchuan, his fish were already thriving—it must have been before that! Oh, I remember now. That day at the river, you guys were stung by wasps because of some old man fishing there, and later, that old man left with that kid, didn't he?"

"Right, right, that's true!" The bald man would never forget the tragedy that unfolded by the river.

"It might have something to do with that old man. You guys go find him. I have this intuition that it's highly likely related to that old man. If we find him, we might just find a breakthrough!" After becoming a reserve committee member, Zhou Jin began to speak more and more sophistically; even words like "breakthrough" began to slip out.

"But that's like looking for a needle in a haystack! Where do we even start?" The bald man was dumbfounded.

"Don't we have surveillance footage? Check the tapes, luckily I've been ill, so the footage from a few months back probably hasn't been wiped yet."

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PS: Although I rarely show up in the book review section and hardly ever speak much within the book, I do read the reviews every day. You guys always manage to guess the outline for what's coming next, which feels somewhat embarrassing... Covering my face...