I Can Fish Up Everything!

The seafood and everything else in Ji Jinxin’s shop had long since been cleared out. With the freezers gone, the space felt much more vacant. Gu Nan got the keys, went inside, and tested the oxygen pumps—they all worked perfectly.

He only really cared about the pumps and the fish tanks. Whether anything else was left behind didn’t matter to him.

He then called a locksmith to change the locks and asked the landlord to contact someone to tear down the wooden partition wall.

Because the wooden partition wasn’t moisture-proof, Gu Nan hadn’t placed the fish tanks in his own shop against that side.

Therefore, in his own shop, the counter was at the far back, followed by a space for miscellaneous items like dish racks. Further toward the front was the display counter for the chilled seafood section, and by the entrance was the station for cleaning fish.

Opposite the counter, against the concrete wall, were three tiered rows of fish tanks: top, middle, and bottom.

There were twenty tanks in total, which came in three different sizes.

At the very bottom, there was also a long pool that could hold a good amount of product.

This layout maximized the use of space, with an aisle running down the middle.

Ji Jinxin’s side had been the same—his counter was against the wooden partition, a mirror image of Gu Nan’s layout. But since his shop was larger, it had two additional double-decker rows of fish tanks in the middle.

If Gu Nan’s seafood shop had been this large, it could have held the haul from at least two "maps," and he wouldn’t have needed to expand for a long time.

However, since he was expanding the shop, he took out a piece of paper at the counter and started to sketch, roughly planning the new layout.

The shop sign would also have to be redone, but he could just hand that off to an advertising company.

Gu Nan didn’t want to change the general layout much.

The fish tanks along the sides couldn’t be moved; they were all fixed in place.

He would just expand the central chilled seafood area and install a similarly large pool beneath it, which could be used to keep some of the larger creatures.

The drainage system would also have to be redone so that splashed water wouldn’t leave the floor wet all over.

The chilled seafood area didn’t need to be so long; the space at the front could be used for two freestanding utility sinks, the kind that look like tables with basins.

In the back, he could put a few tables together to make a convenient area for cooking and eating.

Overall, not many changes were needed. It wouldn’t cost much, and they could stay open for business the entire time.

Gu Nan was very happy about being able to take over the adjacent shop.

"Yi Chen, I’m happy today. Let’s have crab for dinner."

"Huh?" Yi Chen glanced at the only sea crabs in the shop and tried to persuade him, "Boss, maybe we should eat something else? These crabs are so expensive—even the small ones are a hundred yuan a pound!"

"It’s fine. You have to splurge every once in a while! Other people might not be willing to eat them, but you should eat them like they’re snacks." Gu Nan was a high-earner now. ’What’s wrong with eating a few crabs I caught myself?’ he thought.

Since the boss had spoken, the employee naturally had to obey. Yi Chen took out her phone to check the time. If she waited until four, she could start preparing dinner.

But as her phone screen lit up, she saw that she had received quite a few private messages on the backend of the video-sharing site.

Curious, she opened them. Apart from some useless chatter, she discovered that two people had actually sent her private messages wanting to buy seafood.

She didn’t immediately share the good news with Gu Nan. Instead, she clicked on each of their accounts to take a look and discovered that both of them were content creators in the seafood section.

Their follower counts weren’t high. One had a little over fifteen thousand and had only posted about ten videos.

The other had over thirty thousand but had also only filmed about ten videos.

They had messaged to ask Yi Chen what seafood the shop had, suggesting they add each other on WeChat so she could send them some photos and give them a proper rundown.

After understanding the situation, Yi Chen walked over to Gu Nan, handed him her phone, and asked, "Boss, some people on the video-sharing site sent me private messages. They seem interested in buying seafood from the shop. Do we sell to them?"

These two content creators had found Yi Chen mainly after watching her previous video and discovering that the shop had seafood they couldn’t find in the market.

A crucial part of their seafood content was featuring novel and rare items.

Some of the seafood in Gu Nan’s shop didn’t look particularly exotic, but it was definitely rare and hard to come by!

"They’re customers. First, add them on WeChat and ask where they’re from," Gu Nan said after reading the messages. "But people making seafood videos probably live on the coast; living inland wouldn’t be practical. The distance shouldn’t be too great. If they really want to buy, we’ll pack and ship it. They’ll pay for their own shipping."

"Okay, I got it!" Yi Chen took her phone back and sent them the contact info for a new alternate account she’d just created. Then, she took photos of all the seafood in the tanks.

Sitting at the counter, Gu Nan also opened the video-sharing site. He was very satisfied to see that her newest video had already broken fifty thousand views.

The high viewership meant it had the potential to go viral.

Once Yi Chen gained more followers, they could set up an official account to sell fish, allowing followers to subscribe and place orders themselves.

Selling to seafood restaurants and hotels would mean bulk orders, but the prices would need to be lower.

In reality, since Gu Nan caught the fish himself, his output was limited. Doing bulk business really wasn’t as good as accumulating enough individual customers and selling retail.

When the time came, they could focus on promoting a few types of reasonably priced chilled fish; with cheaper shipping costs, customers would be more willing to buy.

As for high-end live fish, the customers ordering them wouldn’t be fussed about the shipping fees.

Time slowly passed, and it was soon four in the afternoon. Seeing that Yi Chen was still introducing the shop’s products to the customers, Gu Nan got up, grabbed a net, and scooped out a good number of tiger crabs from one of the tanks.

He tossed the large ones back and kept the small ones.

After a short while, he stopped once he had caught the eight smallest ones.

He grabbed a brush and gave them a good scrubbing, then picked four to steam in a pot. He prepped the rest for Yi Chen to braise in soy sauce later.

Just then, she seemed to have finished her chat. One of the customers said they lived right in Bazhou City and would be coming over in a bit.