The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 85: Reporters Before the Storm
This was the answer William gave Mr. Fox. He did not directly use words to persuade Mr. Fox that this was a good deal, or explain what money he himself could make from it.
People were always like this. Before they saw reality, before living reality punched them into a wall, they would never believe reality could hit that hard.
By the way, reality was not a person.
Rather than use words to make his description look more like some pale excuse, it was better to let them carry all their different thoughts and wait for the result.
In any case, there were only a few days left.
On Friday morning, around ten o’clock, William received the reporter friends who had come to see him at a café outside the Warehouse District.
The Warehouse District was not entirely filled with blue vests. There were also some people with a bit of money working there. A warehouse was a complicated thing. It could hold trash, worthless things, but it could also hold valuable things.
Its diversity also shaped the diversity of the workers in the Warehouse District. There was no problem with people being able to kill time with coffee and pastries.
This time, William had invited six local newspaper offices from Sabine City, including one paper dedicated to printing photographs of various pitiful girls. Soliciting was an illegal business in Sabine City, but publishing those photographs, articles, and attached personal information did not violate Sabine City law, Federation law, or the relevant laws and regulations of the publishing industry.
Aside from the local ones, there were also reporters covering court proceedings, as well as mainstream media reporters from other cities. William’s ambition was great. What he wanted to build was not merely a secondhand auction company in Sabine City. His business was going to expand across the entire state, even beyond state lines. That made publicity for the first consignment auction very important.
When people saw news in the papers that interested them, they would also look forward to the consignment auction being held locally at least once. At the very least, they would want to attend and experience whether it was really as good as the papers said, and they would continue paying attention to these things.
If all they saw was a great deal of criticism, they would not even have the interest to keep paying attention. Even if the consignment auction were held locally, they would have no intention of attending.
Perhaps because William reimbursed food and lodging expenses and added a thirty-dollar daily subsidy, these reporters all had a good impression of him. In truth, aside from this money, William had also bought corresponding advertising space in the newspaper offices where they worked. That was the main reason the newspaper offices were willing to send them.
In short, William was a big boss. This had already become the reporter friends’ first impression. This counted as a small personal interview. In a while, they would also enter the Warehouse District to photograph the scene before the consignment auction, then the scene during the event and after it.
These photographs would be arranged together to form a strong contrast and visual impact. Even if they did not do it that way, the readers would still be able to feel how seriously William treated this matter. He was absolutely not just playing around.
“Mr. Carter, how do you define the Secondhand Goods Auction you are holding?” This reporter came from the capital, from the best-selling newspaper office in the state, without exception.
Every region had some newspaper offices like this. They carried very important responsibilities: guiding the direction of public opinion, spreading positive energy, and supervising all aspects of society.
The question seemed a little ... empty, but in fact, it was extremely critical. She was asking about William’s position, or whether he had some objective that might be tied to politics.
The reporter was a woman. She wore a pair of glasses, and her expression was somewhat stiff and serious. As soon as she spoke, the others prepared to take notes.
They were all in the same line of work and knew the interview process very well. Reporters always treated themselves as the vanguard of social justice, fair and impartial weighers of truth. In reality, their backsides were already crooked.
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