"No, I don't care what happens to Huang Qu, this child. He is already working in the company, and everyone around him speaks highly of him. You can't remain silent any longer. You must appear at the company immediately, or you'll stay with the football team forever and never come out again!" Leng Zhiruo said angrily.
Facing his mother's threat, Huang Fan could only offer a bitter smile. "Mom, please don't say such meaningless things. Because no matter what you say, I am still your son. Even if you want to stab me to death right now, I am still your son. How can a son not have a mother?"
"So, no matter what you say, I will always come to see you. You will always be my mother, and nothing you say will change that. Even if you disown me, it remains the same. The person I love the most will always be you!" Huang Fan said, holding Leng Zhiruo's hand. Huang He, hearing this, couldn't help but secretly give himself a thumbs-up.
It seemed that Huang Fan, this child, had been trained quite well in the football team. He had such eloquence, something Huang He himself didn't possess!
Indeed, upon hearing her beloved son's words, Leng Zhiruo embraced him and began to cry. Huang Fan also shed tears.
Once Leng Zhiruo's sorrow had been sufficiently expressed, Huang Fan said, "Mom, my teammates and I have always had a dream: to win an unprecedented third consecutive World Cup. Only then will my efforts over the past decade have value!"
"What! You've already won one championship, why do you want a third consecutive one?!" Leng Zhiruo asked in disbelief. Huang Fan explained, "Because I don't want our championship to be like a fleeting blossom."
"Over twenty years ago, Spain won a championship, but no one talks about Spain's victory anymore.
"And Brazil's last championship was 32 years ago, but when people mention the World Cup, the first country they talk about is Brazil, because Brazil has the most World Cup titles and almost created a miracle of three consecutive wins."
"I know that Father has supported football until now entirely because of me. If I stop playing football, then Father will no longer invest in the national team, and my teammates will be scattered, joining different teams.
"Given the current situation with the Chinese Football Association, they won't take more than a year to either be assimilated by the association's environment, becoming those greedy individuals who eventually end up in jail, or to leave the football circle completely in despair, no longer considering football.
"In that case, China will forever have only one World Cup title, and in the future, it might be decades or even centuries before China is unable to win the World Cup, making our current championship a laughable joke.
"So, I hope you can give me another eight years. The next eight years will be my and my teammates' prime professional period. I will only be 30 years old after eight years. As long as you let me play for these eight more years, I will obey you and obediently return to take over the company, have children, and do everything you want me to do.
"But if you don't let me play for another eight years, I might return. However, I will have lost all my dreams and all my vitality. Even if I appear at the company by your order, in the eyes of my colleagues, I will be a complete failure, not even comparable to a single hair on my elder brother's head. Do you want to see me like that?"
"But..." Leng Zhiruo was clearly wavering.
"There's no 'but.' Jiangnan Group is so vast, and no one except Father can truly control it. And if you carefully observe the praise my elder brother receives, you'll find that none of it comes from the hovering car project he is responsible for. All the praise comes from other unrelated companies.
"This means my elder brother only has two faces. He is a universally praised successor on the outside, but inside the company, he is an arrogant and cruel tyrant.
"In fact, a truly outstanding successor should display that outward face to everyone, while the other face should be hidden forever behind their mask until they truly inherit their father's position.
"But he didn't. He showed this face to those he trusted, which means he has no one he can truly trust!
"Conversely, my identity is now exposed, and every word and action I take represents Jiangnan Group. If I withdraw from the national team now, causing the national team's performance to completely collapse, it will bring endless negative evaluations to Jiangnan Group in the future.
"On the contrary, if I can achieve a grand slam of three consecutive championships, my prestige within the company will also reach its peak. With your and Father's help, it will take no more than 3-5 years for me to control the entire company!" Huang Fan said firmly in the end.
Three days later.
Watching her son board the plane to Modu again, Leng Zhiruo sighed deeply. This meant she would once again have to live with seeing her son only a few times a year.
"There's no need to be so pessimistic. This child is much more mature than we imagined!" Huang He said with a smile, putting his arm around his sister-in-law's shoulder. "At least when I first took over the company, I wasn't as capable as he is."
"You're just deliberately speaking up for him!" Leng Zhiruo retorted angrily. "As his father, you don't care, because it's your son no matter who takes over. But I only have this one child, Fanfan, and I absolutely cannot watch the company fall into the hands of others!"
"I'm not lying to you, our son is much stronger than we imagine!" Huang He laughed. "Our son managed to thoroughly persuade you, the stubborn old woman, in less than a day, making you willingly agree to let him continue playing football for another eight years. Doesn't that make you think our son is very remarkable?"
"I'll kick you to death," Leng Zhiruo immediately sent Huang He a high-heeled shoe.
"Really!" Huang He caught Leng Zhiruo and said, "Huang Qu has only been in charge of the hovering car project for three years, and he's already anxious. But our son has played football for 17 years and is still so calm. And do you really think a goalkeeper who can stand at the goal and block all penalty kicks is an incompetent person who wouldn't make you worry?"
---
A few days later, Leng Zhiruo also went to Modu. She figured that since she couldn't stop her son from continuing to play football, she could at least see him every day.
Previously, to keep her son's identity a secret and prevent security risks, Leng Zhiruo had suppressed her emotional impulses, meeting her son only on the few occasions each year.
But now that his identity was exposed, Leng Zhiruo decided not to hide anymore and moved directly to her son's training center. Even if she could only watch her son training on the field through the window each day, Leng Zhiruo felt content.
With Leng Zhiruo gone, Liu Xu's side became empty again.
Hu Jing had long since given up her secretarial work. For years, she had stayed at home with her son, rarely spending more than a few days a year with Huang He. Leng Zhimeng and Huang He's relationship was lukewarm, but she hadn't married. Recently, she had fallen in love with extreme sports, and at over forty years old, she was still as boisterous as a young person, traveling everywhere.
Huang You's personality was completely different from her mother's. She was very quiet and enjoyed writing. Her biggest dream was to become a writer. Currently, under the pen name "I Love Eating Pudding," she was writing novels on her family's online novel website.
However, unlike ordinary girls who liked writing about domineering CEOs, in her own words, she was tired of the domineering CEO lifestyle and had no interest in writing about such things in her novels.
What she loved to write most were Xianxia novels, specifically those with male protagonists. But the male protagonists in her writing were always indifferent to women, only interested in power, and she had never had a boyfriend.
Furthermore, her cultivation writings were not the genre of cultivation based on realms pioneered by "Piaomiao Zhi Lu," where they advanced a realm every few dozen or hundreds of chapters and continued fighting.
She wrote about the most traditional Chinese Taoist classic cultivation. To understand related cultivation knowledge, she had lived alone on Longhu Mountain for a year, almost reading all the ancient texts there.
It was rumored that during that time, she also became friends with Steve Jobs, and when Jobs passed away last year, she was the only guest, besides those from Taoism, invited by Jobs to witness his "yu hua da dian" (ascension ceremony).
She was the sole guest of this kind. It was even said that the current Grand Celestial Master of Longhu Mountain wanted to hand over the position of the next Grand Celestial Master to her, and his words were so sincere that if it weren't for the obvious attempt to curry favor, Huang He would have almost believed him.
Huang He tried to introduce several talented young men to her, but as soon as she started talking, she would discuss cultivation with them, solemnly discussing how to refine essence into spirit and how to cultivate one's nascent spirit. Within ten sentences, these talented young men would essentially flee in disarray.