Chapter 41: The New Team Base!

Compared to Senior Sister Lin’s needle-in-a-haystack approach, the taxi driver was clearly much more experienced. Before getting out of the car, he fished out a pack of Yuxi cigarettes and walked straight toward a corner of the wall.

An old man was squatting halfway down, eating a ball of glutinous rice wrapped in newspaper. Oil stains had spread across the yellowed pages of the *Yangtze Evening Post*, where the front-page headline still featured the old news of Mo Yan winning the Nobel Prize last year.

"Hey brother, help me find someone who knows how to drive an Iveco."

An Iveco!

That was the large passenger van familiar to many.

The pack of Yuxi was torn open, and two cigarettes were handed out.

Habitual and practiced, the old man tucked one behind his ear, took the other in his hand, and clicked a disposable lighter to ignite it, puffing away.

"A driver?"

"Also need someone to cook."

"Got it!"

Perhaps from squatting for too long, the old man stood up with some effort. However, having accepted someone else's cigarette, he did not slack off on the task at hand.

"Hey, you folks over there..."

Standing a bit too far away, Jiang Ming couldn't quite hear what the man was shouting, but soon, the crowd suddenly came to life. Women wearing rubber boots were the first to gather round, their chapped, red cheeks rubbed raw and shiny by cheap scarves.

"Young man, do you think she'll do? She used to cook mass meals for people in Pukou for a few years..."

"She has a health certificate too!"

The driver led a plump middle-aged woman over. As she spoke, the woman pulled a health certificate from her faux-leather shoulder bag. The edges of the plastic sleeve protecting the certificate were curled up, and the blue background of her ID photo had faded to a grayish-white.

Jiang Ming exchanged a few brief words with her. He could sense her genuine honesty in her speech, so he did not refuse.

"No problem. I'll have someone draw up a contract with you later, ma'am."

"Oh, wonderful, wonderful! Do we start work today?"

"Not today, but at the latest, you'll be expected to report for duty by this weekend. Don't worry, ma'am, your salary will be calculated starting from the day we sign the contract!"

"Of course, if needed, please keep your phone accessible. I'll contact you by phone."

...

By the time the sky was faintly turning bright, Senior Sister Lin finally walked over with two resumes.

"Drivers are a bit hard to find. Many people only know how to drive tractors, and those who can drive don't have licenses."

"That's normal. People with driver's licenses generally don't need to wake up early to look for jobs here."

"There are only two suitable candidates. Here is their personal information. I think the second one is a more appropriate age."

"Then let's go with the second one."

Jiang Ming wasn't picky. "Senior sister, could you trouble yourself to go to that convenience store over there and buy me two packs of Yuhuatai?"

"Yuhuatai?" Lin Jingyi asked, somewhat puzzled, knowing that her junior fellow student didn't even smoke.

Yet, despite her inner doubts, she didn't ask further, turning and walking toward the convenience store.

Of course, he wasn't buying the cigarettes for himself. The driver who had brought him didn't accept a cash reward. Although he had hired the driver to take them to view the base rental locations later, offering an extra token of appreciation was always a good idea.

The club's two logistics staff members were thus settled.

Aunt Deng, the cook: a monthly salary of three thousand six hundred, with room and board included, and concurrently responsible for the hygiene management of the entire club and its players.

Uncle Zhou, the logistics worker: a monthly salary of three thousand two hundred, with room and board included. Aside from driving, he would also handle the logistics and security management of the club.

Eight o'clock in the morning.

After giving brief instructions to the two logistics staff members, Jiang Ming and Lin Jingyi had breakfast and took a vehicle to the pre-arranged location to inspect the rental property in person.

From Nanjing to Taicang was a distance of nearly two hundred kilometers, so Jiang Ming's selection criteria for the team base required it to be located as close to the midpoint as possible.

There was no help for it; the venue for the inaugural LPL had been set in Taicang, Suzhou. Although they wouldn't need to take the subway or train to matches like other teams, driving that distance themselves would still take at least two to three hours each way.

"We've arrived!"

The driver pulled up the handbrake and pointed straight ahead at a few phoenix trees.

A beige three-story small building sat nestled behind them.

Jiang Ming cast his gaze forward, where vines crawled all over the horizontal cast-iron railings of the balcony, looking very much like an overgrown, moss-covered defensive tower in a video game.

It had a somewhat dated and shabby vibe reminiscent of the previous century, but compared to the basement the players were currently staying in, a standalone three-story building was practically a heavenly paradise.

"How come the landlord isn't here?"

"The key is right by the doorway. The landlord is the biological uncle of a junior fellow student in our department, and he told us to just look for that junior directly after we confirm."

The biological uncle of a junior...

Jiang Ming was momentarily speechless. Truly, having connections in high places makes things easier; the ancients did not deceive us.

Rattle, rattle!

Retrieving the key, Lin Jingyi pushed open the iron gate, and the view suddenly opened up. "Oh, this isn't bad at all."

The ground floor was very spacious, measuring around a hundred square meters or so. The few existing room partitions could also be put to good use. "We can build a few separate partitions. The west room on the first floor can be the training room, the east side can be sectioned off as a kitchen, and the rest... well, I feel like we could make a laundry room or something."

"Let's go up to the second floor and take a look!"

Squinting as he gazed at the arched windows on the second floor, where glass fractures refracted iridescent colors in the morning light, Jiang Ming spoke up.

The terrazzo staircase still retained the dark red patterns of the last century. Perhaps due to long periods of vacancy, the peeling wall plaster revealed deep brown mold patches.

"We can call Aunt Deng over this afternoon to clean the place up."

"Alright, sounds good."

Once salaries were paid, bossing people around instantly became a much more upright affair.

The two of them stepped across the creaking wooden flooring to measure out the space on the second floor. "There are four rooms on the second floor. We can buy bunk beds. For the players, one or two rooms should be temporarily enough. Uncle Zhou and Aunt Deng from logistics can each take one room, leaving us with one spare room."

Jiang Ming tapped the floor beneath his feet and said, "The flooring probably needs some work."

Lin Jingyi understood instantly. "I'll ask around in the group chat. The renovation company we used previously for the entrepreneurial park is a bit pricey. If it really doesn't work out, I'll go find the logistics department teachers at the department; they know more about these things."

"We don't need to go to all that trouble for renovations." Jiang Ming smiled. "Did you forget where we came from this morning?"

"The labor market?"

Lin Jingyi said tentatively.

It had to be said that capability was capability, but Senior Sister Lin, still carrying the naive and adorable buff of a college student, ultimately failed to escape its shackles.

When a house needed renovations, no renovation company could possibly offer workers as cost-effective as those in the labor market.

"It doesn't need to be too fancy. Just scrape some putty on the second floor and do a simple decoration."

We won't be staying here for very long!

Jiang Ming looked around, telling himself inwardly.

"Let's expand the training room on the first floor to a scale that can accommodate seven or eight computers, leave space for a water dispenser and a refrigerator, and add an extra air conditioner—summer is coming soon."

"Put some effort into the training room part. I'll send you the requirements tonight. As for the design blueprints..."

"Hehe, don't worry, I'm also familiar with those folks at the school's design institute."

"There's an attic up top too. I'll have them set up a boss's office for you there."

Mentioning her connections, Lin Jingyi instantly perked up.

After taking a full tour, the two of them were quite satisfied with using this three-story building as their team base.

Though they checked out two other locations subsequently, neither offered anything particularly outstanding in terms of hard conditions or rent, so they ultimately finalized the first three-story building they toured as the team base.