The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 171: The Underworld After Dark
“Wood...”
Wood, who was having dinner with his friends, heard someone call his name. He paused, then turned and saw an old “schoolmate.”
Not many people knew that after attending the police academy, Wood had been transferred into the Federation Bureau of Investigation, its secret police. Even his parents did not really know.
In the eyes of many people, Wood was not very different from an ordinary man. Given the current social background in the Baler Federation, the police academy was actually not even as promising as certain technical schools devoted to training workers.
Being a police officer was dangerous work with low pay. In the eyes of ordinary people, a police officer had less of a future than a plumber. Perhaps only police officers themselves thought otherwise.
Wood had not been recruited by the Sabine City Police Department to become a Sabine City policeman. His parents had even opened a bottle of wine to celebrate.
Compared with the dangerous work of being a police officer, becoming a security guard might be better.
So no one knew Wood had in fact become a federal special agent, including the people closest to him.
Even the salary paid to him by the Federal FBI was allocated through special activity funds to his chief first, after which his chief deposited it into a secret account.
Before Wood’s work as an undercover agent either succeeded or failed completely, that money would not be touched. Tracing origins through spending records was not a capability reserved only for the police system. Certain criminal groups had that capability too.
A single account could expose too much information. During his time undercover, Wood could only rely on the money he earned in that role to live.
In the eyes of most people, Wood had a life much like everyone else’s. After wasting the best years of his youth, he had learned nothing and stepped into society to begin working.
He was simply lucky. By accident, he had become an outstanding businessman. At least, that was how he explained it to his family. When he placed more than ten thousand dollars in front of his parents, they were stunned.
Their first thought was not how capable Wood must be to earn so much money. It was whether he ought to turn himself in, so they could hire a lawyer and ask the judge for leniency during sentencing.
This sort of thing happened often in bottom-tier families. Some child would suddenly come home carrying a bag of money, then step onto another road in life, only to vanish into the black night sky during the brightest years he would ever have.
Fortunately, Wood explained it clearly and brought his family to meet his “hangers-on.” Only then did Wood’s family begin to lift their heads.
At that moment, they were in a chop house. Two days earlier, they had just concluded a Consignment Auction. Because Richard had left, Wood, whose luck had always been fairly good, smoothly claimed first place in that auction.
It was also possible that the local appetite for secondhand goods had gradually faded under the heat of social consumerism. Two days earlier, the Consignment Auction’s transaction volume had quickly fallen to a little over three hundred and seventy thousand dollars.
Even Wood, who ranked first, had earned only a little over three thousand dollars.
But even if it was only three thousand dollars, his income was still despairingly high to many, many people. Perhaps William had temporarily forgotten about the revelry, or perhaps he had other arrangements. The boys had not received an opportunity like the previous one.
Today happened to be Monday, and everyone had time. Wood called the boys out and chose a chop house for a bit of “luxury.”
He was not as rich as William, who could let everyone find his own happiness. Wood could only fill people’s stomachs, but even that was enough to make them grateful.
Before becoming Wood’s followers, quite a few of them had lived on the edge of hunger.
Just as a more genuine smile appeared on Wood’s face, a somewhat unfamiliar voice, almost forgotten, came from nearby.
He turned and glanced over. It was a classmate from high school, Terry, who had been one of the better “connected” boys back then.
In school, there were always students like that. They seemed to have no relationship whatsoever with textbooks or knowledge, but they moved through the streets with surprising ease.
Most normal students actually looked down on them. They believed such students refused to study properly and would certainly end up doing the lowest kind of work. This was also the view society and teachers had always instilled in students, and it was the most correct universal value.
But once everyone actually entered society, they discovered that certain things were completely different from what they had understood as students.
Of course, this did not include students who had already gone on to university. Those were the “students” recognized by teachers and society. Once they graduated, they became society’s elite. Anyone below the university level did not count.
Most of the students who had looked down on Terry would become the very people lowering their heads to serve him. That much could be seen from the summer outfit he wore, which was worth no less than a hundred dollars.
Wood stood up. Two of the boys noticed something unusual and wanted to go with him, but he stopped them.
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