Chapter 1 A Dark and Stormy Night

The night was pitch black.

A violent storm raged.

The ocean's turbulent waves crashed madly against the reefs, as if poised to overturn the entire landmass. The orange-red weather balloon, tethered ten meters above ground, was blown severely askew, signaling the imminent arrival of the typhoon. Even the sturdy poles securing the windbreak ropes creaked ominously, threatening to snap at any moment.

For Siqiao, a remote port, such terrible weather was infrequent but occurred three to five times a year. The residents were accustomed to it, retreating into their shacks, lighting dim candles, and drinking Erguotou liquor with salted fish. They'd also place basins and oilcloths beneath leaking roofs to catch the dripping moisture. Despite their efforts, blankets remained perpetually damp, as if a touch would release a layer of moisture.

Amidst this atmosphere, a dilapidated shack on the western side of Siqiao was ablaze with a roaring fire. Discarded rubber tires were piled haphazardly inside—an inexpensive and effective material for patching boats for the impoverished fishermen. A dozen or so dark-skinned fishermen, their faces filled with excitement, were gathered around. Most were robust men in their twenties and thirties, except for the middle-aged man sitting in the center. His face was deeply etched with wrinkles, like the work of a knife and axe. His stubble was streaked with gray. His features were a mixture of worry and kindness, marking him as someone resigned to the hardships of life.

"Aiya, aiya, if you ask me, San-zai deserves credit for today's events, but Senyan's shot was the real bullseye!"

The speaker was a young man with a scar on his face named Gao Qiang. He gestured wildly, spraying saliva as he spoke. His words were met with agreement from his companions, many nodding and casting admiring glances at a young man sitting to the right.

This young man had thick, dark eyebrows and bulging arm muscles. He was sturdily built, with a hint of exuberance in his expression, tempered by a sense of composure. He sat casually on a broken wooden stool, holding a chipped porcelain bowl. The water inside was scalding hot, so he sipped it while blowing on it. This young man, called Senyan, smiled slightly when his name was mentioned, but remained silent, nodding and smiling at his companions before resuming his drink.

"Senyan's shot was undoubtedly perfect, but I stabbed it nine times, a full nine times!" A stout man with a large nose stood up and declared loudly, gesticulating excitedly with his hands.

"Damn it, that beast dragged us at least thirty *li*! Ten more *li* and we would have been caught in this typhoon."

A thin, dark-skinned middle-aged man interjected with a chuckle from the corner:

"Da Si-ge, there must be at least twenty kilograms of ambergris we scraped out! Even dried, that's at least ten kilograms—this time we've struck gold! Weren't you always planning to overhaul the Fuyuan? This is enough to overhaul it ten times over!"

Da Si-ge was clearly the middle-aged man. He smiled honestly upon hearing this, his eyes radiating joy. He was born by the sea, and the taste of salt water had permeated his bones. His boat was practically his home. Because he had adopted two orphans early in life, he never took a wife and apparently didn't plan to. Years ago, he had used his life savings to buy the old boat Fuyuan, only to be cheated. He had to overhaul it immediately, and he still hadn't cleared the debt.

If kindness and honesty were always rewarded, Da Si-ge would have been rich long ago. But the reality was that no matter how hard he worked, he couldn't escape his nomadic, impoverished fate. However, even the harshest heavens would occasionally open their eyes. The day before yesterday, the Fuyuan encountered a lone sperm whale while at sea!

Sperm whales were commonly known as "Fathead Monsters" by fishermen in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan. Their scientific name was the renowned sperm whale. They were stocky, slow, and awkward, with a bizarre appearance, head-heavy and tail-light. If one had to compare them to anything, a tadpole magnified thousands of times would be a close match. The sperm whale's enormous head accounted for a quarter to a third of its body length, resembling a large box. Its nose was also peculiar, with only the left nostril open and located at the upper left front. The right nostril was blocked, so its misty breath column sprayed out at a 45° angle to the left front. Experienced fishermen could spot them from afar by observing the water column they spouted. However, after decades of hunting, the sperm whale population had dwindled to only a few hundred worldwide. In the past five years, there had only been three reports of Fathead Monsters being hunted in the entire South China Sea. Their rarity was self-evident.

A Hei, the thin, dark-skinned man who was Da Si-ge’s peer, spotted this lone Fathead Monster. The younger generation all called Da Si-ge "Fourth Uncle." Frankly, given the configuration of the old Fuyuan, it was impossible to take down this behemoth. Fortunately, San-zai, one of the orphans raised by Da Si-shu, was clever and skillful. A few days ago, he had taken a fancy to a discarded fish gun that someone had dismantled at the dock's junkyard. He tinkered with it and managed to get it working. However, his intention was only to shoot sharks in the South China Sea to harvest some fish maw. Who would have thought they would encounter a nearly extinct Fathead Monster?

Then began a relentless chase.

The Fuyuan decided to seize the opportunity bestowed by heaven and, ignoring the typhoon warning, doggedly pursued the ten-meter-long sperm whale through the waves! But aside from Da Si-shu, no one on board had any whaling experience. The fixed harpoon gun installed on the boat was half-broken. It fired four times amid the turbulent waves and failed to hit the mark, only alerting the behemoth, which looked about to dive into the depths.

At that moment, Fang Senyan, the other orphan raised by Da Si-shu, stepped forward. His body pitched and tossed like a leaf in the raging waves, but his hands were as firmly welded to the harpoon gun as if they were one. He aimed for a full ten seconds, and just when everyone had almost given up hope, he fired!

The shot pierced the sperm whale's vitals!

The dying beast, writhing in agony, dragged the Fuyuan a full thirty nautical miles, turning the seawater red along the way. But in the end, it became a human trophy. The old Fuyuan, fully loaded, miraculously returned to Siqiao Port before the typhoon made landfall. For the sperm whale, although its meat, oil, and bones were valuable, the most precious thing was the "ambergris" in its intestines. This was the local fisherman's term for it, and after drying, it became the famous ambergris.

The sperm whale's main food was squid/octopus. After eating it, it could not digest its sharp beaks and internal bones. At this time, the sperm whale's large intestine or rectum would become diseased due to stimulation, producing a gray or black secretion. These secretions gradually formed a viscous, dark substance in the small intestine, stored in the colon and rectum. It smelled unpleasant when first extracted, but gradually became fragrant after being stored for a period of time. This was the so-called ambergris.

Ambergris contains 25% ambrein, a raw material for precious spices and the best substance for keeping perfume fragrant, used as a perfume fixative. It is also a valuable Chinese medicine. The sperm whale Da Si-shu caught was only a little over ten meters long, considered to be of medium to small size among its kind. Even so, the harvested ambergris could be sold for a fortune!

This group of people chatted and laughed together, unaware that it was already late at night. They had been fishing at sea for half a month, and they had rushed back to Siqiao Port before the typhoon arrived, which had been hard work. Once the excitement of hunting the big guy faded, fatigue immediately set in. The rain was torrential outside, and the typhoon would not stop until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Da Si-shu naturally asked people to stay overnight and sleep on the floor in his shack. These fishermen were used to the hardships on the boat and didn't mind it. However, San-zai and Senyan had already moved out. They each built a shack next to the Mazu Temple Street in the north of Siqiao Town. They had their own private space. Even though the wind and rain were heavy, it wouldn't take long to walk from one end of the town to the other with an oilcloth over their heads.

The two pushed open the old door, which was nailed with several wooden boards in a chaotic manner. A gust of cold wind carrying large swaths of rain rushed in, immediately causing people to shiver. Even the fishermen who were lying down around the fire grumbled in dissatisfaction. Fang Senyan and San-zai put on their oilcloths, shrunk their heads, and wedged the door shut. Da Si-shu rushed up and handed them an umbrella. The two identified the direction by the dim light from the crack in the door and walked back home, one foot deep and one foot shallow.

Siqiao was a small town, a town that was not even marked on the map.

Its specific location was a small bay south of Fangchenggang, a border city in Guangxi. One could even see Vietnamese territory with the naked eye to the west on a clear day. Administratively, it happened to belong to a no man's land. Therefore, it had invisibly formed a deformed port integrating smuggling, trade, and illegal immigration. Most of the people inside were engaged in gray industries that walked the edge of the law.

The reason why the honest and honest Da Si-shu chose to settle here was because the old Fuyuan was also stolen, and Da Si-shu simply could not afford the heavy taxes. Fang Senyan had seen the long list of fees, which involved numerous departments, including finance, taxation, industry and commerce, public security border defense, health, township governments, fishery committees or village committees, and fishing boat management companies. Here, he only needed to pay a protection fee to the local "big boss" Hua Shanfei on time.

Because they didn't know when they would be "swept away" by the authorities, most of the buildings in Siqiao were temporarily built with relatively cheap plywood, tires, fiberglass tiles, etc. They were the kind of illegal buildings that were eyesores to the city management. Fang Senyan was nearly 19 years old this year, a few months older than San-zai. Da Si-shu had asked acquaintances to get him on board a ship to work since he was fourteen years old. Because he was calm and reliable, he was well-received by his employers and was repeatedly entrusted with trust. At a young age, he had traveled to ports all over the world, and he was second to none in terms of knowledge and character.