Chapter 70 – Lining One’s Own Pockets
Despite Yang Sa’s efforts to adjust himself and accommodate his teammates’ habits, the anticipated goals still remained far out of reach.
Fortunately, the coach they had invited earlier had finally arrived. The new coach, Li Bai, wasn’t very fluent in Chinese, and the translator from the school had taken a sudden leave of absence, so all communication responsibilities fell to Yang Sa.
Before the new coach arrived, the Xinghai team prepared a simple yet grand welcome ceremony. In reality, it was mostly Tangyuan dragging Jiang Ranan and some youth trainees to help set it up. When Yang Sa and Zhuang Bai came downstairs after finishing their duo practice match, they saw a heart-shaped balloon arrangement set up in the empty garden. No matter how stoic a person, such an obvious setup couldn’t be ignored.
If he remembered correctly, it was the exact same scene some silly pineapple had arranged a week ago when they mistakenly thought he was their online crush and tried to confess.
The moment he stepped out of the villa, memories long buried in ruins surged back like demons resurrected from hell, full of malice and mockery.
Only the oblivious Tangyuan was humming a little tune, practically bouncing with pride over his quick wits.
“Why’d you use the props Old Pineapple prepared for his confession?” Zhuang Bai avoided the others and cornered Tangyuan to question him.
“Huh?” Tangyuan’s chubby face was full of shock. He cautiously leaned in, glancing left and right to make sure no one else was around. “How’d you figure that out?”
With a sigh, Zhuang Bai helped straighten his oversized head and couldn’t resist poking at his puffy eyes. “Anyone with a pair of eyes could tell, okay?”
“It’s that obvious?” Tangyuan sheepishly tugged at a lock of hair near his temple. “Don’t make a fuss, okay? I’m only telling you. So, Qin Xiaochuan wanted to throw a welcome party for the new coach, but he got caught up with stuff from the group. He gave me 10,000 to handle it. Now that you’ve caught on, how about we split the money?”
He held up three fingers mysteriously, then pulled one back. “Later, check under my keyboard and take… no, just grab 200 in cash.”
Zhuang Bai snorted and gave his meaty shoulder a pat. “No thanks. You can take this landmine yourself.”
“Too little for you?” Tangyuan huffed and quickly inflated three pink heart-shaped balloons. “If you think it’s too little, I won’t give you any!” He paused for breath, reminiscing about the pump Old Pineapple had smashed in a fit before leaving.
“This, this, this—” Du Changcheng was nearly blinded by the mass of pink heart balloons. “Who’s confessing again? Didn’t you guys make things clear with that Old Pineapple guy?”
POP—a balloon burst loudly. Tangyuan, still guarding the “heart,” ignored his now-reddened face and dragged Du Changcheng aside. “I’ll give you three hundred. Just pretend this is your first time seeing this setup…”
Zhuang Bai, quietly rearranging the decorations: “Why’s he getting a hundred more than me?”
Tangyuan shot him a look, full of disappointment. “Our coach is upright and selfless. How can a man of conscience be worth the same as you?”
“Enough, quit messing around. He’s here.” Despite being swamped with work, the ever-resourceful Qin Chuan still made time to personally pick up the new coach. But as he stepped out of the car and saw the heart-shaped balloons and drooping bouquet, he had to fight hard to suppress his urge to lose it, forcing a polite smile instead.
Fortunately, the friend from afar wasn’t picky. He probably thought having a welcome ceremony at all was already pretty nice—just like those foreign LAP players they had just sent off, he chuckled happily. He took out his phone to record a video and sent it to his girlfriend and future mother-in-law.
Although his qualifications and abilities had already been assessed, how well he could work with the team still needed to be tested. After a few brief greetings, they moved on to daily training.
Du Changcheng led Team One through their usual training routine. The new coach, Li Bai, blond-haired and blue-eyed, stood with his arms crossed, silently observing the players’ performance.
Once Du Changcheng finished reviewing the team’s mistakes during practice, he handed the floor over to Li Bai and asked for his feedback on the players.
Li Bai gave brief evaluations of each player’s strengths and weaknesses and even brought out a PowerPoint presentation. It outlined issues and improvement suggestions he had compiled based on Xinghai players’ performances in past international tournaments.
“Mars is a player I really admire. It’s a pity that I won’t get to stand by his side for my debut as Xinghai’s head coach,” Li Bai said. Yang Sa, acting as translator, condensed his words while simultaneously entering them into a document.
Since news of Shao Zhan’s injury had been kept under wraps, all previous plans were based on a team formation that had him at the lead.
Now that the team leader had changed, both the training plans and strategies had to be adjusted accordingly.
After watching the team all evening, Li Bai pointed out that the most critical issue facing Xinghai’s main team was psychological. The arena is a battlefield—if a player can’t fully trust their teammates in their heart, how can they entrust their back to them in the heat of a brutal match?
Based on his observations and the training plan he had previously prepared, he proposed several adjustments. Du Changcheng agreed with his suggestions.
Li Bai’s role as the new coach was basically confirmed. The team leadership intended to make it official once Shao Zhan returned to go through the formal process. After all, Shao Zhan was the team captain. Even though he had left due to injury, he remained the soul of Xinghai.
The earlier welcome party had been pretty half-hearted, so they decided to prepare a proper welcome banquet over the weekend. After a few days of getting to know each other, the players had grown more comfortable with Li Bai—though most of their communication still relied on translation apps.
As a quintessential foreigner, Li Bai had that particular brand of cultural difference: an unfathomably carefree and optimistic outlook, coupled with an unexpectedly delicate emotional side. This was most evident in how he recorded even the tiniest things—snapping photos or filming short videos to report back to his girlfriend.
At that moment, Li Bai was busy snapping photo after photo of the swan-shaped pastries, all while casually and clearly asking Manager Qin Chuan about the procedures for registering for social insurance.
The newly arrived interpreter was obviously a fan, brimming with passion for both the players and the game. Who would’ve thought the content they were translating would be so down-to-earth?
Fat Tangyuan had been listening for quite a while and finally seized a break between dishes to ask Li Bai a question: “You’re a foreigner—why do you care about social insurance?”
To everyone’s surprise, the usually laid-back Coach Li Bai began counting on his fingers and replied with a straight face, “You need to pay into social insurance for a certain number of years to get household registration (hukou). Only with a hukou can you buy a house. And only if I buy a house will my future mother-in-law let me marry her daughter…”
It was a whole line of reasoning—thorough and logically sound.
Fat Tangyuan couldn’t help but give him a greasy thumbs-up. “You’ve really done your homework on Chinese culture.”
Li Bai seemed to catch the gist of that sentence despite the language barrier. He gave a shy smile and said, “Since I’ve come all this way, I have to take a wife home, right?”
The audience didn’t exactly approve of that sentiment. Judging by how he acted, it was genuinely hard to tell whether he was planning to marry a wife or become one.
They were about one round into the welcome banquet when Shao Zhan finally arrived, having just escaped from a pile of pressing affairs.
The part-time interpreter, a young guy earning some side cash, went wide-eyed the moment he saw Shao Zhan. His hands clenched into fists on his knees, and his previously fluent English turned into a stuttering mess. Blushing furiously, he sat stiffly, not daring to sneak even a glance at the former team captain.
Thankfully, Shao Zhan’s German was decent enough for casual conversation. He had previously spent a month visiting the German PUBG committee on an exchange as part of the management team. Although he hadn’t met Li Bai back then, the two now chatted without hesitation, trading gossip about German players and former colleagues.
Ever curious, Fat Tangyuan blinked his big round eyes and sneakily tugged at the translator’s sleeve to ask what they were talking about. The poor guy gave him a simple summary but couldn’t bring himself to say the rest out loud.
Fat Tangyuan nodded knowingly—it was probably some really filthy stuff, too much for the young translator to repeat. He didn’t press further and happily dug into his giant pork knuckle.
Shao Zhan’s right hand was injured, so his secretary usually handled most of his daily affairs. Since this was a team dinner, he’d given the secretary the night off. He hadn’t planned on eating and figured he’d just sip water to get through the evening.
But after chatting with Li Bai for a while, he looked down to find that someone had thoughtfully deboned and plated crispy fried ribs with lily bulbs and cashews for him. Then came boneless chicken wings, braised lettuce stems, and stir-fried pork—balanced, nutritious, and neatly arranged.
Feigning nonchalance, Shao Zhan began eating from the plate in front of him, never once interrupting the stream of Sino-German gossip coming out of his mouth.
Fat Tangyuan’s face darkened, his heart burned with rage. Just from the way Coach Li Bai looked at him, he could tell—this old bastard had definitely been talking trash behind his back. But what could he do about it? Other than taking out his fury on the pork knuckle, was he supposed to bite someone?
Well… come to think of it, maybe that wasn’t entirely out of the question.
Fat Tangyuan spat out bits of bone with a puchi puchi, then waved over the waiter. “Another braised pork knuckle for this table…”
“I’ve had enough of you. You’re already like this and still eating?” Du Changcheng grabbed a handful of belly fat and held his forehead in despair.
Qin Chuan, sitting nearby, took a break from dismantling a crab to offer some reassurance to the coach. “The little fatty may be chubby, but his health check actually came back clean.” Then, lifting his pinky and pointing to the report on his phone, he added, “Unlike you, who ticked every box: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar… You didn’t miss a single one.”
Watching the color visibly drain from Du Changcheng’s face, Fat Tangyuan scooted closer to Qin Chuan and whispered, “Thanks for that cataclysmic rescue technique.”
Qin Chuan kept his head down, focused on pulling apart crab legs, face completely serene—untouched by the chaos around him.
When the new pork knuckle arrived, it did a half-rotation around the table. Fat Tangyuan’s eyes followed it longingly as the tendon and lean meat were picked apart right in front of him.
“Come on, vice-captain, that’s outrageous.” The chubby boy clenched his fists and took a righteous stand, looking like he was ready to sacrifice himself for justice. If not for the subtle trembling coming from the knee beside him, Jiang Ranan might’ve believed he was truly about to rebel.
“I heard you’re trying to lose weight,” Yang Sa said casually, not even looking up. Those six light words completely deflated Fat Tangyuan’s momentum.
Overwhelmed with sorrow, Fat Tangyuan dove into Qin Chuan’s arms—who was busy gnawing on crispy cartilage—and whimpered into his chest, “Chuan-chuan, save me… Am I really that fat? Am I truly that fat?”
Manager Qin Chuan crunched loudly on his food and lifted his pinky again. “Let’s not state the obvious out loud, okay?”
“How can you all be like this,” Fat Tangyuan said, hugging himself like a wronged panda. “No care, no love—what happened to this team?”
Zhuang Bai, who wasn’t very interested in the meat dishes, set down a piece of lotus root with surprise. “Our team has always been this cold.”
“You want to come here to find warmth,” Jiang Ranran, holding a bowl of health-preserving soup, delivered a fatal blow, “Are you crazy?”