A Huge Deal!

My eyes lit up the moment I heard those words.

After all, I was really short on cash at the time. Forget about a huge deal, even if someone offered me fifty or a hundred yuan to fish for corpses in the river, I would roll up my sleeves and get to work without a second thought.

So, as soon as I heard there was money to be made, I immediately became interested.

"Uncle, tell me quickly, what kind of deal is it?" I asked.

Uncle Mei took a puff of his cigarette and said unhurriedly, "My friend knows that I'm good in the water and that I work as a corpse fisherman. It just so happens that his deal requires someone with my skills. This time, he needs someone who's good in the water for underwater salvage work."

"Underwater salvage? Salvaging what? Dead people?" I asked subconsciously.

"No!" Uncle Mei shook his head like a rattle drum, and said disdainfully, "How much money can you make from salvaging dead people? A hundred or two is the market price. If they give you five hundred or eight hundred, that's considered a kind and righteous bereaved family. If they give you any more than that, people will inevitably gossip, saying that we're extorting them, taking advantage of their misfortune, that we'll be punished, that we'll die a violent death…"

"Right, right, right…" I said, nodding repeatedly.

Uncle Mei said, "This time, we're salvaging a sunken ship! And a sunken ship full of treasure and antiques! It's been underwater for six or seven hundred years, they say!"

As soon as I heard this, I perked up!

Salvaging a sunken ship!

An antique sunken ship!

This was a notoriously profitable business!

There's a saying in the tomb raiding world, which I heard Jiang Yongguang mention before, which is "one ship is worth ten tombs!"

This means that the antiques and treasures on a sunken ship are worth the total of ten large tombs! This shows how profitable and lucrative salvaging sunken ships can be!

But then I thought again, salvaging sunken ships? If you don't have the government's permission, isn't that the same as tomb raiding in terms of its nature? Isn't that illegal?

Although we're not government people, we've been dealing with the Xiaoling Guard for so long, so we can be considered people who know the law. What if Jiang Yongguang, Xiao Liang, and Lao Wei turn around and arrest us, and also give us the crime of knowingly breaking the law, then we're done for.

I quickly said, "Uncle, illegally salvaging sunken ships is the same crime as tomb raiding. Are you sure this deal is doable?"

Uncle Mei smiled after hearing this, patted me on the shoulder and said, "Silly boy, don't worry, would I ever trick you? This deal isn't in our country, it's overseas, the salvage location is in the waters of Thailand."

I was stunned and asked, "Is this stuff… legal in Thailand?"

"I don't know about that." Uncle Mei shrugged and said, "Anyway, whether it's legal or not, and what procedures are needed, they have people over there who are specially responsible for handling it. We just need to go out to sea with the ship and dive to salvage, we don't need to worry about anything else."

Hearing this, I quickly asked, "Uncle, are you sure this is reliable? Salvaging sunken ships should be illegal in any country, right? What if the person who organized this and the guy in charge on our side are the same kind of people, also engaged in illegal salvage? If we get caught abroad, we'll really be in a desperate situation, unable to return to our country…"

Uncle Mei smiled and said to me, "Rongsheng, you're underestimating me a bit. We've known each other for so long, are you sure I'm the kind of unreliable person? Don't worry, this friend is quite trustworthy, I guarantee there won't be any problems."

Indeed, knowing him for so long, I know that Uncle Mei is a steady person. Even if Little Mei is in urgent need of money now, he's not the kind of person who would do anything for money without regard for the consequences, he has a sense of proportion.

"Okay, Uncle, since you said so, then I definitely believe you." I nodded and said.

"That's right." Uncle Mei took another puff of his cigarette and said, "Have I told you what the reward is yet?"

I said, "No."

Uncle Mei lowered his voice and said, "There are two forms of reward this time, and we can choose either one – the first form, fifty thousand yuan per person. If you and I go, that's a hundred thousand!"

As soon as I heard this, I felt my blood rush to my head!

One hundred thousand!

With this money, Little Mei's medical expenses would be covered!

But I didn't rush to express my opinion, because there was still a second form of reward.

I quickly asked Uncle Mei, "Uncle, what about the second one? What is the second one?"

Uncle Mei said, "Aren't we going to salvage a sunken ship? The second form of reward is to pick one item from the treasures we salvage to take away. But there won't be anyone on site to help us appraise them, we can only choose for ourselves. If we pick a valuable treasure, the owner won't stop us, but if we make a mistake, we can only accept our bad luck."

Hearing this, I immediately clenched my fist and said, "Uncle, this reward is worth more! Didn't you just say that this sunken ship has a history of six or seven hundred years? The treasures salvaged from such a long-standing sunken ship must be valuable, not something that can be obtained with fifty thousand yuan!"

Uncle Mei nodded, agreeing, "I also think this reward is the most worthwhile, but this reward also involves some problems."

"What problems?" I asked curiously.

Uncle Mei said, "First, the treasures we pick are all foreign treasures. We may not be able to recognize the good or bad of domestic antiques, let alone foreign antiques. We may make a mistake and not earn much money. Second, even if we get the antiques, how to sell them is also a problem. It's definitely impossible to bring cultural relics across the border. The border checks very strictly on this kind of thing. Even if we get the treasures, we can't transport them back to China. We can only sell them in Thailand, but selling goods abroad faces obstacles such as language and connections."

I felt a headache listening to this. The two problems that Uncle Mei mentioned were indeed relatively sharp.

"Otherwise, let's choose the fifty thousand yuan?"

Taking the fifty thousand yuan would save trouble. We'd work for the money and get a fixed salary. No matter how many treasures we salvage, it would have nothing to do with me.

But as soon as I said this, I felt unwilling. A sunken ship that is six or seven hundred years old, the treasures inside are worth at least hundreds of thousands or millions. If we're lucky, we might even salvage national treasures. I thought about it again and again, and felt that picking any treasure to take away would be worth more than fifty thousand yuan.

So I quickly changed my mind and said, "No, fifty thousand is too much of a loss. Uncle, I think we still have to pick a treasure to take away."

"Haha…"

Uncle Mei couldn't help but laugh.

"Don't worry, we haven't met the owner yet anyway, we can think about it carefully. If you agree, I'll quickly reply to my friend and ask him to save two spots for us, lest we miss this opportunity."

"Okay!" I nodded quickly and said.

Uncle Mei put out his cigarette and went to the courtyard to make a phone call. I listened quietly through a door, and vaguely heard Uncle Mei chatting with that person about some details. I also had a rough understanding of this ship.