The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 120: Witnesses to the New Glory
Inside the club, Kane faced the colleagues he had worked with for as little as three or five years, and as long as more than ten. His face was pale.
The way people looked at him was complicated. There was disgust, hatred, and things harder to name. Mixed into it was a kind of ingratiation woven together with fear and resentment.
Everyone had been dismissed. Only Kane had been kept. What made it even harder for them to accept was that Kane had become the executioner responsible for carrying out the sentence.
They could understand keeping the plumber and electrician. Technical work was like that. The longer one worked, the more skilled one became, and the easier it was to find satisfying work.
Old plumbers and old electricians with more than a decade of experience could solve both major problems and minor faults with ease.
But the others did not have such luck. All of them had been called in by Kane, one after another, and he had cut down their last hope.
At that moment, the club felt as heavy as if a memorial service had just been held there. Every face carried a pained expression, as though something had been buried.
Looking at them, Kane lowered his head and said, “I’m sorry.”
No one answered him. They only looked at him, or looked somewhere else.
Before long, the coach stood up. The bottle in his hand was already empty, and his body reeked strongly of liquor. “If you’re not leaving, are you staying here ... so other people can laugh at you?” As he spoke, he waved at his disciple. An assistant coach supported him, and amid his muttered curses, the two gradually left.
As for the coach being fired, everyone had actually been mentally prepared for that. They just had not expected themselves to become part of the plan as well.
Gradually, more people stood up one after another and left in silence. These people had long since found other jobs. Their purpose in remaining attached to the club was not any deep love for the place, but the subsidy they could still collect from it.
The Intermodal Authority had never stopped paying subsidies to professional athletes, but there was a process, or rather a set of rules. They had to be attached under the name of a club, even if that club was only an amateur club.
Now that they could no longer get that subsidy, it did pain them somewhat. But they were not willing to beg others for the sake of that lowest-level subsidy. After all, losing it did not mean they would starve, and having it had not changed their lives much either.
So they chose to follow their hearts and leave directly.
The ones who remained were either deeply attached to the club, or genuinely had nowhere else to go. They still wanted to meet William and see whether there was any possibility of reversing things.
That afternoon, nine trucks drove straight into the club parking lot. It had to be said, when trucks two or three men high drove side by side, they did create a heavy sense of pressure. Kane spoke briefly with Cooke, their leader, and became even more confused.
They waited until a little past three-thirty in the afternoon, when William’s luxury car drove into the club. Kane immediately brought the dozen or so remaining club members out to greet him.
William did not behave at all like a structural antagonist who had just strangled these people’s chance to continue idling away their days at the club, full of disdain, contempt, and scorn for the lower classes. He was kind, like some indistinct figure in everyone’s memory, perhaps the child of a neighbor, or the child of a relative, young, sunny, full of energy, his face covered in smiles.
That enormous contrast made every one of them feel a strange sense of unreality. Was it truly this optimistic, cheerful, sunlit young man who had issued such an inhuman order?
“Every one of you has rendered meritorious service to this club!”
In the club’s small boardroom, William’s first sentence affirmed the contributions these people had made to the club. His expression was sincere. His voice carried a deep emotion.
The eyes of some more sentimental people immediately reddened. They remembered the various miracles this club had created in the past. They had witnessed its rise, and they had witnessed its decline.
The more that was true, the more painful it became.
William’s gaze rested briefly on each person. “The rise of a new dynasty must always be built upon the ruins of an old one. For this club, it is the same.”
“An unreasonable structure, an unreasonable management system, unreasonable standards for employing people, these things brought this place a brief moment of glory, and then sent it falling into the abyss.”
“I came here to rescue it from that abyss. I will not gamble with my own money. To make it shine again, to make people truly understand Sabine City’s football club once more, I have to cut the rotten flesh from its body.”
“In truth, my heart aches too. This is hard for me as well.”
“You are all among the club’s most important assets. But we have no choice except to face a difficult decision.”
“Not long ago, I spoke with the mayor. Our club will move to another place. At that time, I will establish a more professional sports center. A more professional team will take over the work here, and there will be more humble, more reliable athletes.”
“We will create new glory. We will create new history. We will write our own miracle in the National League.”