OFR – Chapter 59 Saffron.

Five minutes later.

Sitting in front of her computer, Mi Xuan read the message sent by Mu Bai and learned that he had also opened a Taobao shop and was looking for a customer service representative. 

This wasn’t difficult—she could easily find someone on a job recruitment site like 58.com or Ganji.com. However, Mi Xuan knew that the people hired from those platforms often weren’t reliable.

Instead, she thought for a moment before typing, “Mu Hao, is your shop busy? If it’s not too much trouble, I can help you manage it for free. Just remember me when you buy jade in the future.”

Mi Xuan figured that helping Mu Bai manage his shop would be worth it. After all, her own jade shop on Taobao only made around 200,000 yuan a month, with just seven or eight orders per day, so she had plenty of free time. Building a long-term relationship with someone like Mu Bai, who regularly purchased jade, seemed like a good trade-off.

“Help me manage it? Although the shop is only busy occasionally when I’m selling things, I’d feel bad wasting your time. How about I pay you instead?” Mu Bai quickly replied.

Mi Xuan smiled as she continued chatting with Mu Bai.

A few minutes later, after finishing breakfast and returning to his apartment, Mu Bai read through the replies on QQ and nodded. Having Mi Xuan, another experienced Taobao shop owner, help with customer service was a great solution.

They talked for a few minutes, and Mi Xuan insisted on only charging him a “friendship fee” of 1,000 yuan. Seeing her persistence, Mu Bai didn’t push further. He figured that the future profit he’d bring her from buying jade would more than make up for it.

Once they agreed, Mu Bai set up some specifics. He wasn’t going to give Mi Xuan full control of his “Zhenpin Tian” store since their relationship was purely online and not yet trustworthy. Instead, he added her as an extra contact on the store’s communication system.

Afterward, Mu Bai asked Mi Xuan to send him a Taobao link. Clicking it, he purchased 2 million yuan worth of jade from her shop.

As soon as the purchase went through, Mi Xuan sent him a message, clearly excited and paying close attention to her store’s backend.

Mi Xuan: “Oh my gosh, Mu Hao, are you trying to keep me around by buying so much? You just bought 2 million yuan worth of jade, that’s my shop’s entire turnover for ten months!”

Reading her message, Mu Bai smiled but didn’t explain much. He simply replied with his usual request for prompt shipping.

Now that both the customer service and jade purchasing were taken care of, Mu Bai leaned back on the sofa, thinking about what to do next. 

At the moment, apart from a long-term task involving a “cunning girl,” there was nothing urgent on his to-do list. However, after buying the 2 million yuan worth of jade, his bank balance had dropped to just over 1 million. For a wealthy person like him, this amount felt embarrassingly low. 

It was time to make some more money.

“Open the host page,” he thought to himself, calling up his system’s interface to check his current stats.

**Host**: Mu Bai  
**Magic Space Level**: 2, four farming slots, with a time flow rate of 20 times faster than the outside world.  
**Online Copper Coins**: 550  
**Online Silver Coins**: 610  
**Warehouse Inventory**: One magic die, one platinum dragon fish, four rare plants, six near-rare plants, 201 drops of magical creek water.  
**Planting/Breeding Slots**: No plants or animals currently.  
**Ten-square-meter Private Land**: No plants currently.  
**Daily Online Expenditures**: None so far today.  
**Daily Check-in**: Not yet checked in, rewards 350 online copper coins for today.

Mu Bai noticed he hadn’t checked in yet, so he casually did so. Then, seeing that both the farming slots and private land were empty, he began considering what to cultivate. 

In the farming slots, he needed to grow some rare plants or animals, but after browsing Nanjing’s flower forums and dragon fish forums, he hadn’t found many new species worth cultivating. Plants like the Golden Queen or Snake Plant could be propagated easily, so he didn’t need to purchase them anymore. What he wanted were genuinely rare species like *Datang Fengyu*, Ghost Orchid, or Blood Dragon Fish. However, those were hard to come by and would take time to source.

As for the private land, Mu Bai thought it would be best to grow medicinal herbs.

With over 600 online silver coins, he could buy an additional 100 square meters of private land, which would be more than enough to grow herbs.

But which herb should he grow?

He needed something with a relatively short growth cycle and a high market price. Famous herbs like *Cordyceps sinensis* required a fungus-insect symbiosis, which was currently unavailable to him, so he couldn’t grow that. *Ginseng* took far too long to grow— even using growth cards in the farming slots would require 30 to 40 basic growth cards just to cultivate a few plants.

After thinking it over, Mu Bai decided on *Saffron*. While *Saffron* wasn’t as valuable as other high-end herbs, its price still ranged from 10 to 50 yuan per gram, with top-quality *Saffron* fetching up to 200 or 300 yuan per gram. 

The price wasn’t sky-high, but *Saffron* was easy to cultivate. As long as he found quality corms, it could be grown successfully. The growth cycle was also reasonable, taking about eight to nine months. With the time acceleration in his magical space, that would be less than a month, and with further space upgrades, it could be even quicker.

So, cultivating *Saffron* seemed like the best choice for now.

With that in mind, Mu Bai logged back into Taobao to purchase a batch of *Saffron* corms.

He searched for *Saffron* corms and found many results. The prices ranged from less than 1 yuan to 1 or 2 yuan per corm.

“Huh? Why are they so cheap? *Saffron* sells for at least 10 yuan per gram,” Mu Bai wondered.

He clicked into a shop with good reviews selling *Saffron* corms at 1.5 yuan each, one of the pricier options. After reading through the product details, he contacted the seller.

“Hi, I’m interested in buying some *Saffron* corms.”

The seller, who seemed responsive, replied within seconds.

Seller: “Hello! Yes, we have them in stock. How many corms would you like? We offer discounts for bulk purchases.”

Mu Bai first asked the question that had been bothering him: “Why are *Saffron* corms so cheap when the *Saffron* itself sells for at least 10 yuan per gram?”

Seller: “Well, our corms are high-quality, so they’re priced at 1.5 yuan each, which is a fair deal. The reason corms are cheaper is that it usually takes 10 or more corms to produce a single gram of *Saffron*. But with careful cultivation, our corms can yield 1 gram with just a few bulbs, even one or two.”

Mu Bai finally understood why the corms were so inexpensive.

Confident that his magical space could further enhance the yield with the help of some basic nutrients, he decided to place an order. After some more back-and-forth with the seller, Mu Bai purchased 10,000 corms.

With 10,000 corms in the magical space, supplemented by nutrient solutions, he expected a good *Saffron* harvest.

“Shenchuan City, not too far. It should arrive in a day or two,” he noted after checking the seller’s location, then logged off Taobao.

Unknowingly, it was already past nine in the morning, and the sky outside was still gray and overcast.