OFR – Chapter 30 Prices soar.

At 7 AM, the sky outside was still dark, with just a sliver of light breaking through—it was winter, after all. At this time, Mu Bai woke up, following his usual routine of getting up and washing up. Afterward, he picked up his phone to check the time.

“Huh? No battery?” 

Mu Bai pressed the power button on the screen, but when the phone didn’t respond, he fiddled with it a bit before realizing it had run out of battery. He rummaged through his desk drawer to find a charger, plugged it in, and powered the phone back on.

Once the phone was back on, Mu Bai logged into Taobao. He wanted to check if anyone had placed bids on the arowanas. If, like the day before, there hadn’t been a single bid, he would start questioning his decision to open an online store.

After all, while online sales reach a broader market, it wasn’t easy for a newly established small shop like Mu Bai’s to survive. No traffic meant no sales.

“I wonder if yesterday’s banner ad on the arowana forum did any good?”

Although Mu Bai had rented a banner ad on the arowana forum the day before, he wasn’t sure if anyone had noticed it or how many viewers might have clicked on the link to his Taobao store.

With a feeling of uncertainty, Mu Bai logged into the Taobao app. 

The moment he did, a flash of surprise crossed his delicate face under the dim light of his desk lamp. The app was flooded with notifications, messages from strangers, and alerts in the backend—too many to count.

It was overwhelming.

For a newly opened online store, having this many messages was truly staggering.

“Is this really my Taobao? There must be tens of thousands of messages! Is this the result of the forum ad?”

Mu Bai was shocked. He had only rented the forum’s banner ad on a trial basis, but he never expected the amount of traffic it brought to be so overwhelming.

In reality, the surge in attention was largely due to the nearly perfect arowanas Mu Bai had put up for sale. For arowana enthusiasts, the allure of top-quality fish was immense.

Even ads placed on the forum’s homepage wouldn’t normally attract this much attention.

Seeing the flood of messages, Mu Bai opened a few.

User 520******: “Hello, are you there, shopkeeper? Do you support in-person transactions?”

User 896******: “Shopkeeper, I’m interested in buying all four arowanas. I’ll offer 800,000 for the lot.”

User 586******: “Come on, are you there or not? I’ve contacted you with three different accounts! I want to buy one of the arowanas.”

User 852******: “I’d like to inspect the fish first. If they match the photos, I’ll offer 1.5 million for one.”

After reading through a dozen or so messages, Mu Bai noticed that most of them were about in-person transactions or one-time purchase offers.

Faced with the overwhelming volume of messages, Mu Bai didn’t reply—responding to all of them would take forever, and even now, new messages were coming in.

Realizing that replying wasn’t a feasible option, he decided to check on the auction page for the arowanas instead.

When he did, he found the auction just as busy.

All four arowanas had received over a hundred bids each, with their average prices exceeding 1.2 million yuan.

The highest bid was for the first arowana, a slightly larger fish at 65 cm in length. The current bid was 1.69 million yuan.

With ten hours remaining in the auction, the price was likely to climb even higher, perhaps even breaking the 2 million yuan mark.

Although there were no comments on the listing yet—since comments can only be made after delivery—there was already a bustling “Ask the Seller” section.

With over a thousand questions, it was probably the busiest Q&A section Taobao had ever seen.

Not even popular smartphones could generate over a thousand questions in under 24 hours.

**Question:** “When is this irresponsible shopkeeper going to show up? I’ve been waiting since 10 PM last night! Can we get a response already?”

**Question:** “Same question.”

**Question:** “Shopkeeper, what’s the deal? I’ve bid 1.08 million, and you haven’t responded once. Can you at least confirm if the sale can be done in person? This is a million-yuan arowana, and I’m feeling very uneasy bidding any higher without a reply.”

**Question:** “I just want to know one thing: Were these photos edited? If they weren’t, and if you can guarantee a smooth transaction, I’ll bid 2 million for one of the fish!”

**Question:** “Please reply, shopkeeper. Urgently waiting! I can’t bid any higher without a response from you.”

Seeing these questions, Mu Bai realized that the high prices were making people hesitant to keep bidding. At this point, with bids reaching millions, if he didn’t show up soon, most people would likely stop bidding altogether.

Even though Taobao is a global e-commerce platform, making million-yuan transactions online still made most people nervous.

Mu Bai decided to update the listing description to address the concerns.

**New Description:** “Apologies for the delay in responding, and thank you for your patience. To address everyone’s questions: the arowana photos in the listing are 100% unedited, and they perfectly match the real fish. Rest assured. As for quality assurance, because arowanas are difficult to care for, we cannot offer an unconditional return policy within seven days. However, we can guarantee an in-person transaction—if you’re not satisfied, you can request an immediate refund. I will personally contact the winning bidders to arrange the details. Thanks again for your support.”

At this moment, over 40,000 users were online in Mu Bai’s shop. Many quickly noticed the updated description, and new questions started appearing in the Q&A section.

**Question:** “Whoa, the shopkeeper’s finally shown up and updated the description!”

**Question:** “Wow, the mysterious and aloof shopkeeper has finally made an appearance.”

**Question:** “This is my first time bidding over a million on Taobao, and also my first time being completely ignored by a shopkeeper. Usually, when I buy pants for like 30 bucks, the customer service is all ‘Dear this, Dear that,’ but today’s experience is truly beyond words.”

**Question:** “Same here! It’s my first time bidding this much, and I’ve never been so cold-shouldered. The worst part is that I still have to shamelessly keep bidding!”

**Question:** “Now that the shopkeeper has guaranteed the photos aren’t edited, I can bid with confidence.”

The Q&A section quickly became a chatroom for online users, and thanks to Mu Bai’s response, the bidding prices for the arowanas rose even further.