Chapter 11: The Atlantis Map Upgrades!

After leaving the hotel, Huang Bin drove Chu Lin back to the shrimp farm.

Chu Lin locked the lease contract in the office drawer, then entered the game to transfer all the newly refreshed Atlantis prawns out of the game. Afterwards, he selected the berried shrimp and brought them out as well. He was just about to place them into the breeding tank when an astonishing sight caught his eye.

Inside the breeding tank, countless tiny shrimp fry were wriggling about.

Had the berried shrimp already hatched?

Something didn't add up. It usually took over ten days for berried shrimp to hatch, but the earliest of these had only been brought out three days ago.

After some thought, he understood. The berried shrimp might not have just been fertilized when they were refreshed from the game; some could have already been carrying eggs for a while. For instance, if one berried shrimp had already been incubating eggs for nearly ten days when it was refreshed, it would naturally hatch after these three days.

Since this was the case, and the purification stones of Atlantis had already cleansed the breeding ponds, he could now transfer all the berried shrimp into those ponds.

With this realization, he immediately scooped out the berried shrimp from the tank and, after some effort, placed them one by one into the breeding ponds.

Thanks to the special properties of the Atlantis blessing stones, there was no need to worry about the berried shrimp dying or encountering other problems.

In one of the breeding ponds, now crystal clear, he noticed some shrimp moving about.

They were evidently the survivors missed by the debt collectors who had previously swept through the place. These shrimp looked similar to the Atlantis prawns but were, in fact, kuruma prawns.

Their numbers were small and hardly made a difference.

Soon after, Liu Fa drove a small truck into the shrimp farm. After loading up the crates, he said, "Boss Chu, I'm off to make the delivery."

"Alright," Chu Lin replied.

After Liu Fa left, Chu Lin called a cab out of the shrimp farm too. To begin raising stock in the newly leased 500-acre bay mudflat, he first needed to demarcate the boundaries of the lease.

This required professionals.

Given Jiangping District's focus on aquaculture, such engineering teams were easy to find. Chu Lin remembered there was a specialized agency right next to the Fisheries Bureau.

At the agency, Chu Lin explained his needs, filled out a registration, and was promptly introduced to three engineering teams, whose leaders were summoned.

All three teams provided him with their project and materials quotes.

For aquaculture fencing, the standard requirement for Jiangping’s bay mudflats was about 300 yuan for a 30-meter roll of netting with posts. Naturally, the fencing needed to be professional-grade—not the ordinary fiber netting.

Trying to use fiber netting for a 500-acre mudflat was a joke; there was a story of someone who, trying to save money, used it for raising frogs in inland rivers and ended up losing 800,000 yuan worth of frogs out of a million.

For Chu Lin’s 500-acre mudflat, the side adjoining the shrimp farm didn’t need fencing, but the remaining perimeter still stretched over 18,000 meters.

The three teams’ quotes didn’t differ much; the total for materials and labor hovered around 250,000 yuan.

Chu Lin then asked each team for their expected completion time.

In the end, he chose the team that promised to finish within three days.

They signed a contract with the agency as the third party. Chu Lin paid a deposit of 50,000 yuan, leaving just over 200,000 yuan in his account—just enough to cover the project.

Money really did vanish quickly; just yesterday he’d had over 750,000 yuan, and now it was almost gone.

Fortunately, over 40,000 yuan would come in every day.

“Master Hu, I’ll be relying on your team for this project,” Chu Lin said, shaking hands with the team leader after taking his copy of the contract.

“Don’t worry, Boss Chu. We’ll do our best,” Master Hu assured him, then left with the contract to make preparations.

To complete the fencing of a 500-acre mudflat in just three days, Hu would need to hire extra hands, but there was still profit to be made.

When Chu Lin returned to the shrimp farm, he received a payment notification from Zhenzhen:

“Your account ending in… has received 44,100 yuan. New balance: 251,138.15 yuan.”

Not long after, Master Hu brought his team to the shrimp farm, along with a truck carrying materials. They immediately began work.

At first, Chu Lin watched with interest, but soon lost enthusiasm.

By nightfall, Master Hu finally called it a day and left with his team. Chu Lin made himself a bowl of seafood noodles for dinner.

No sooner had he washed his bowl than the Atlantis map’s refresh notification sounded right on time:

[Current Atlantis Map Level 1: One regular animal, prawn, has been refreshed!]

As usual, Chu Lin entered the Atlantis map, packed all the prawns into the seafood crate, and picked out the berried shrimp.

To ensure the farm’s sustainable output, he needed to prepare plenty of berried shrimp.

Once everything was ready, he walked to the center of the Atlantis map to check the illustrated guide:

[Current Atlantis Map Level 1, Collection Progress: 4/5, upgrade requirements not met.]

Now that he had leased the 500-acre bay mudflat, he was just waiting for the Atlantis map to upgrade and refresh a new species.

But he was still one short, and the map refreshed animals so randomly that he had no idea when the last one would appear.

In the original game, besides the map’s automatic refresh, it was possible to complete the collection by trading at the market or doing quests. Once obtained, animals could be brought into the Atlantis map to complete the collection.

But now, this game existed only in his mind, with just the map and nothing else. All he could do was leave it to fate.

Suddenly, an idea struck him.

In the original game, players could bring animals into the Atlantis map from the outside market. Could he, in this real-life version, also bring in animals from outside?

He had never considered this before.

Now that the thought occurred to him, he immediately exited the game and went to the breeding pond where he had spotted some kuruma prawns earlier. He scooped up a few with a net and re-entered the game.

At the center, he tried placing a kuruma prawn onto the illustrated guide.

[The current animal does not meet the collection standards. Please enter a qualifying animal to collect.]

This kuruma prawn clearly didn’t qualify.

But the message made his heart race, because the system didn’t say outside animals couldn’t be collected—just that the kuruma prawn didn’t meet the standard.

So if it did meet the standard, it would count!

With this in mind, he tried another kuruma prawn—same message.

He tried a third.

[The current animal does not meet...!]

Chu Lin tried each one he had scooped up, but the message was always the same.

He exited the game, spent more time netting more kuruma prawns, and tried again.

None met the standard.

He repeated the process yet again.

Each prawn he placed received the same message—none met the collection criteria.

Finally, when he placed a noticeably larger and stronger kuruma prawn onto the guide, the system message changed:

[Congratulations! You have collected a level 1 animal. The current Atlantis map is at level 1. Collection progress: 5/5!]

A look of delight spread across Chu Lin’s face.

So, as long as animals brought in from outside exceeded normal quality, they could be collected. Just as this kuruma prawn was clearly larger and stronger than the rest.

In any pond, there were always a few specimens better than average. If one pond didn’t have it, the next or the one after would.

In that case, he now had another way to complete the illustrated guide.

Almost simultaneously, two new messages appeared:

[Congratulations! You have completed the level 1 Atlantis map collection. The map is upgrading...]

[Congratulations! The level 1 Atlantis map has met upgrade requirements. Special animal, Neptune Grouper, has been refreshed!]

At once, the entire Atlantis map was bathed in radiant light, and groups of brilliantly striped fish in red, yellow, and gold appeared everywhere.

These fish were stunningly beautiful, eye-catching even at a glance—surely the Neptune Grouper awarded for the upgrade.

Curious, Chu Lin grabbed one for a closer look.

The details left him beaming with joy.