Needless to say, Laura received huge orders from the aristocrats. Yet, they didn't order much of the blue-eyed rabbit meat. Adding them all up, it would only amount to 3000 blue-eyed rabbits per month. This, in turn, made them rely heavily on the retail sales instead.
Nowadays, within the Purcell Duchy, if you hadn’t heard about the Taoyuan brand then it meant that you were an outsider. Everyone in the Purcell Duchy knew of the Taoyuan brand. Right now, the Higanbana stores currently had four types of products from this brand which made their business hot.
Nobody even thought of faking Taoyuan products because the quality of those products compared to other products was too different. It would be easy to spot the difference. Even trying it once would let one know if it was a legitimate or fake product. This could easily ruin a store’s reputation.
Laura was also prepared for such cases. She’d immediately taken measures to prevent it from happening, such as letting the buyers be presented with Taoyuan cards by store personnel in order to prove their legitimacy. Furthermore, these cards were exclusive only for Higanbana stores, so buying from other stores would mean that what you bought were counterfeit goods.
Taking advantage of the popularity of Taoyuan products made the Higanbana business prosper. Laura opened up a lot of store branches throughout the Purcell Duchy. Now, one could see a Higanbana store everywhere within the duchy. This resulted in increased demand for Taoyuan products.
Zhao Hai was happy to see this situation. Considering that he still couldn’t plant high level plants in the Space, Zhao Hai had still been yielding an astonishing amount of products, enough to deal with the demands of the Higanbana stores. Given the situation, he was getting a lot more gold coins and this made him happy.
He also sent a lot of blue-eyed rabbits to Laura to be processed. This procedure separated the rabbit furs and meat. Laura would then sell the rabbit meat and send back the processed rabbit fur to Zhao Hai.
Zhao Hai had also told Laura to use the money from selling the rabbit meat towards the processing of the rabbit fur. He also gave Laura some rabbit fur as he believed that human relationships would have better sentiment if you gave them something.
Laura decided to accept it in the end. However, she thought it was somewhat unfair for her to get something while Zhao Hai didn’t get anything in return. Lately, she had been too busy managing the Higanbana stores, especially the newly opened branches. Thus, she didn’t have much time to collect the different magic plants and beasts that Zhao Hai needed.
Zhao Hai didn’t care much about it because, at present, the Higanbana firm had increased their demand for food and oil commodities. He was now planting a lot of radishes and had no time to plant other types of crops. Additionally, Zhao Hai was also too busy managing the matters on Fort Iron Mountain recently. Thus, he didn’t have much free time and he was not worried, but rather quite relieved as he waited.
Fort Iron Mountain was presently in very good condition. There was a lot of firewood, corn stalks, oil trees, and bamboo rice. As long as you dried them up, one could use these plants to make a fire, especially the oil fruit trees. Not only did it have many applications, it could also be used to make a fire last for a longer duration. A fifty centimeter long piece of the oil tree can last for a whole day. Zhao Hai had way too many oil trees, so this was something that would be useful for the winter. As long as you placed an oil tree in the brazier, the room would be warm for the whole night.
Zhao Hai had also improved the land in the Black Waste everyday. He then tasked the slaves to grow some vegetables. These vegetables would then be used as food during winter period. Zhao Hai had also wanted to observe if these vegetables would be able to grow properly. In the end, he wanted to see the results of his land improvement.