Chapter 94 - 88: Luring the Unihorn Catfish with Human Bait
"Bro, I’ve been wracking my brain for the past two days, but I still can’t figure out how you plan to hunt that Giant Catfish. If you’ve got a good method, why not share it?"
Chen Chong and Zhong Fang walked at the front.
Following behind were Xu Jun, Wang Biao, Zhang Meng, Huang Mao, and seven or eight members of the Fishing Club.
The group of more than ten people had already traveled from the school deep into the jungle...
"I wouldn’t call it a ’good method,’ just the rough outline of a plan," Chen Chong said casually.
"That’s fine too. Just let me in on it, or I’ll be completely in the dark. I won’t even know how to support you when the time comes."
"Let’s get there first before we talk about it."
Chen Chong wasn’t in a hurry to reveal his plan, intending to discuss it with the group once they reached their destination.
Just then, Xu Jun came up beside him and whispered, "Brother Chong, the place we’re heading... don’t tell me it’s the grassy clearing?"
Chen Chong nodded slightly.
"It’s in that direction, but we’re not going to the clearing. We’re looking for the stream that branches off the main river..."
The plan to hunt the Unihorn Catfish had begun to form in Chen Chong’s mind back when he went to steal eggs from the Stone Claw Eagle’s nest.
To successfully hunt it, they absolutely could not do it in the wide waters of the main river.
Otherwise, setting aside the fact that the Unihorn Catfish could escape into the deeps at the first sign of a threat, just salvaging its carcass after a successful hunt would be a monumental problem.
A Unihorn Catfish over ten meters long was comparable in size to a whale—specifically, a humpback whale, second in size only to the blue whale.
Without a specialized whaling vessel, trying to haul such a behemoth ashore from the water would be nearly impossible.
The only way was to lure it out of the wide main river and into a relatively narrow tributary where it couldn’t move around as freely.
The stream outside the grassy clearing was only four to five meters wide, and the water was barely chest-deep.
Such a shallow depth obviously couldn’t accommodate the Unihorn Catfish’s massive body, so hunting it there was out of the question.
But Chen Chong had purposely walked along the stream toward the main river and discovered that the closer he got, the wider and deeper the stream became.
He had guessed then that this stream, which branched off the main river and cut through the Primitive Jungle, must get progressively narrower and shallower.
The stream outside the grassy clearing was what the tributary looked like after dwindling significantly.
Perhaps the farther it went, the deeper into the jungle, the smaller this tributary would become, eventually turning into a ditch one could step across...
But where the tributary first split from the main river, it had to be very wide.
Wide enough for the Unihorn Catfish to pass through and swim into it.
The biggest question now was determining the length of the tributary that was large enough to accommodate the Unihorn Catfish.
If the distance was long enough, they could use this stretch of the tributary to play for time, waiting for the Vermilion Fruit to take effect and weaken it.
By then, the narrow environment, where it couldn’t turn around easily, would restrict the Unihorn Catfish’s movements to the greatest extent possible!
If they could kill it here, getting it ashore would also be much more convenient.
But if the distance wasn’t long enough, if it was only a short stretch... then they would be in trouble.
Either the difficulty of hunting it in the tributary would increase drastically, or they would have to find another way.
Everything depended on scouting the area in person.
Soon, the group arrived at the bank of the stream...
Chen Chong didn’t lead the Fishing Club members to the grassy clearing, his hidden hunting spot.
Instead, he deliberately took a detour to a relatively distant upstream section, a conservative estimate of over a thousand meters away from where he had set his fish and bird traps.
The tributary here could no longer be described as a stream; it was a proper small river.
It was about five to six meters wide, deep enough to submerge a person, and the current was much faster.
But this still didn’t meet Chen Chong’s expectations.
The width was enough for the Unihorn Catfish to enter, but the depth wasn’t.
If it was too shallow, the Unihorn Catfish wouldn’t enter, no matter how stupid it was...
The group continued walking forward.
They didn’t stop until they reached the source of the tributary, where it met the main river.
"This tributary is really long. It took us a full two hours to walk here."
"If you hadn’t led the way, I never would have known there was a tributary like this in the Primitive Jungle. By the way, bro, how did you find this place?"
Zhong Fang asked, his face full of curiosity.
"Found it by chance."
Chen Chong gave a vague reply, his eyes fixed on the tributary before them as he calculated the farthest point the Unihorn Catfish could reach.
On the way here, he had periodically entered the water to measure its depth, committing the tributary’s width and depth to memory.
Starting from where the tributary met the main river, the water was deep enough for the Unihorn Catfish to pass through for a distance of about 1,500 meters.
If they pushed the limit, it could possibly extend another 500 meters, for a total length of 2,000 meters.
But the subsequent distance would likely be dangerous for the Unihorn Catfish, with a risk of getting beached or stuck.
’I wonder if it will risk going in that deep...’
Of course, if it recklessly entered that section, it would be the best possible outcome for Chen Chong.
It would restrict its movements even more, making it easier to hunt.
Although a distance of 1,500 to 2,000 meters seemed long—taking at least half an hour for a person to walk—the Unihorn Catfish could probably swim the entire length in less than ten minutes.
Therefore, to wait for the Vermilion Fruit’s effects to kick in, they had to do everything possible to attract its attention along the way and stall for time.
Fortunately, although this tributary was long and its upper reaches were deep, its width consistently remained around six to seven meters.
At its widest point, it was only eight or nine meters, but most of it was quite narrow.
If the Unihorn Catfish’s massive body were to swim into a channel of this width, it would be severely restricted.