The Fourteenth Book by Mao Men Xiao Xu

(Period setting + beachcombing + multiple heroines + sudden wealth + baskets overflowing with yellow croaker)

Li Jianjun was known throughout the fishing village as the “unluckiest man alive.”

He’d spent ten years beachcombing. While everyone else came home with a full haul, he returned empty-handed. Of the hundred times he cast his net, ninety-nine times he pulled up seaweed and old shoes.

The whole village called him “Captain Empty Net.” Even his youngest sister-in-law looked down on him and said, “Brother-in-law, why don’t you give up beachcombing and take up farming?”

Then, one day at low tide, he found an old, tattered-looking fishing net wedged between some rocks.

The first time he tried it, he casually cast it into shallow water.

When he hauled it in, he was stunned.

The net was full of clams, each one as big as his fist. And yet... when he’d cast the net, there had only been a few tiny clams in that stretch of water, hadn’t there?

For his second cast, he tried a deeper spot.

He hauled up... two yellow croaker weighing three jin each, and a swimming crab bigger than a washbasin.

Good heavens! Whatever this battered net caught, it caught in a jackpot haul!

From that day on...

“Captain Empty Net” became “King of the Golden Net.”

His sisters-in-law competed to help mend the net. “Brother-in-law! Take me beachcombing!”

His wife smiled, her eyes curving like crescent moons. “Honey, our family’s finally not poor anymore.”

Villagers lined up to ask, “Jianjun, that net of yours... could you lend it to me for a bit?”

Li Jianjun clutched the net tightly. Lend it? Dream on!