Chapter-72 | The genius is on the left, the madman is on the right... (3)

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Professor Schiller was called back by the Dean and even though he could remotely control things, there still needed to be someone to manage the day-to-day operations of the mental hospital. This task fell to Bruce. Schiller confidently handed over all the work to Bruce, and Bruce always felt that the professor had more faith in him than he did in himself.

As a first-year student, he was now in charge of running an atypical mental hospital, managing people who were not necessarily mentally ill, but were still more dangerous and troublesome than actual mental patients. When Bruce questioned his own ability to handle the job, Schiller told him, "Sometimes, you don't know how much of a genius you are until you push yourself."

On the first day of work, Bruce encountered a major problem, he couldn't tell who was who.

Despite having memorized thick patient files, remembering all of their names, room numbers, and corresponding medical records, if this were a regular hospital, an intern's level of performance would have been more than enough. But unfortunately, there were no traditional mental patients here. Behind their names and diagnoses were extremely complex social identities.

Who was a member of which gang? Which gangs had bad relations with each other? Who used to be enemies with whom? Who were partners with whom? This information couldn't be inferred from the medical records.

Listening to Schiller's phone calls in the past, Bruce had picked up some information, his extraordinary memory making these pieces of information a new toolkit for him. If he couldn't figure out everyone's social identities, it didn't matter, he could infer them from the existing clues.

In addition, Bruce was skilled at disguise, just like his disguise as a playboy, in this hospital, he became a flamboyant and pampered but envious of the gangster life rich businessman.

The identity of being the world's richest man provided him with many benefits, usually, no gang member would think that the world's richest man would specifically come to him, so when Bruce showed interest in gang stories, the gang leaders thought that this young rich businessman, like the rich playboy, was too comfortable with his life and yearned for the exciting life of a gang member in movies.

So, although they added a lot of their own fabrications in their stories, Bruce was still able to infer useful and true information about the social relationships within the gang from their stories.

In a city where almost everyone had ties to gangs, figuring out the complex relationships within the gangs was almost like figuring out the underlying context of the entire city.

Bruce discovered that the survival rules of this city were far more complex than he imagined.

Starting from the small street gangs at the bottom, even a small group of only a dozen people had their own survival rules.

These small gangs often patrolled the streets, did small steal and pickpocketing businesses, they also had to pay protection money to larger gangs for protection.

And even bigger, there were gangs of hundreds of people, these gangs were the mainstream in Gotham. Most people had one or two businesses, it could be a store or a factory.

They provide protection for these businesses, drive away troublemakers, control smaller gangs to attract customers, when conflicts over customers arise, they also have small-scale fights, but they mostly hide behind cars and shoot with handguns, there are very few that use large-scale firepower.

Further up the ladder are large gangs with hundreds of members. These gangs have reached another level, with each member having at least one special industry that they rely on for survival. Bruce discovered that these damn gangs had even managed to specialize in different industries.

At the scale of hundreds of people, they often control at least one smuggling chain or have a complete chain of cultivation, refining, and sales, or control the majority of industries in a red-light district. Some of the outstanding ones have even achieved a monopoly in a certain industry in a certain region.

At this level, the profits they can seize every day have reached a quite astonishing level, but also a saturation.

Going even further up, they can no longer be called gangs and should be referred to as crime families. The twelve crime families that rule Gotham, besides controlling the core force in the hands of their henchmen, actually have no businesses that need to be personally managed. What they need to do is control these large gangs, with each crime family having dozens or even hundreds of large gangs in charge of different businesses in different areas.

When Falcone established the twelve families, he gave each of them a different industry to focus on. Falcone himself was at the top of the pyramid, giving orders to all the families and gangs.

In the process of gathering and analyzing this information, Bruce discovered that Gotham, which appeared to be chaotic and disordered, was actually a very solid pyramid in which wealth was extracted layer by layer from criminal industries and then redistributed and produced again by the top.

In this cycle, Gotham created its own unique ecosystem and became the largest criminal industry gathering place in America.

At the same time, Bruce found that, contrary to his imagination, the city's industrial structure was surprisingly healthy from a sociological and economic perspective. The distribution of industry volume at all levels and the division of so-called industrial clusters were even better than in most cities in America.

As the investigation delved deeper, Bruce began to doubt his original intentions, because he found that although Gotham was very evil, it was not poor, and the living standards of the people were not low. Besides being very dangerous, people here were quite wealthy.

During his travels across America, Bruce had also studied the living standards of people in major American cities, and he found that the vast majority of people in Gotham lived above the passing line.

During his visit to the hospital, Bruce met an old man who had come to Gotham. People called him "Lucky Gun."

Lucky Gun was originally from another city, but his daughter married into Gotham and married a small gang leader. This small gang leader was falsely accused and his daughter was almost unfortunate. When he received his daughter's call for help, Lucky Gun picked up an old-style lucky gun and rushed to Gotham. He killed several members of the gang who wanted to frame his son-in-law with a few shots.

One of the twelve families, the Lorenz family, was impressed by the old man's temper and his good skills, and now he is the owner of a restaurant in the west district of the Lorenz family.

Unlike other gang members, this old man was truly here to stay in the hospital. He had long-term headaches, which seemed to be a complication of anxiety disorder, so his son-in-law found connections to bring him in for treatment. After two courses of treatment, he had improved a lot.

"It's all the same, it's all the same..."

Lucky Gun puffed on a cigar, leaning on the hospital bed, and said to Bruce: "Do you think escaping to another city would be better? Everyone lives on clean streets, everyone has a car to drive, and children all wear uniforms to school?"

He took another puff of smoke. This old man even had some Southern gentleman style, like a real lucky gun.

As he sat with smoke swirling around him, he slowly reminisced, "When I first met Mary, you know, it was decades ago... Back then, I was just a poor kid, trying to make my way in the city with nothing but my bare hands."

"Every city has its gangs, right? I worked for them, but it wasn't as good as Gotham. I didn't make much money, sometimes I didn't even have a penny in my pocket. I wanted to marry Mary, but I didn't have the money, so how could we get married?"

"So, I picked up a gun and started doing hitman work. That's when my life started to get better. By the time my daughter was born, I was doing pretty well. Even though I hadn't gone to school, I felt like Gotham was still way ahead of where I came from."

Bruce said, "Gotham is better than where you came from?" If it weren't for the fact that the person speaking was an older man who seemed quite knowledgeable, Bruce would have thought he was crazy.

"I know, you guys who have respectable identities think this city is a mess, that there are gangs everywhere and everyone is a criminal. But for people like us, working for anyone is the same as selling our souls. Whoever pays more, that's who we work for."

"In Gotham, as long as you're a formal member of a gang, you can make a decent living. And for someone like me, who has a restaurant or a bar, it's not much different than doing big business."

"And here, the gang members are actually safer. There's a certain order here. If you don't want to declare war on a gang, it's best not to mess with anyone associated with them, even the lowest level thugs."

"So, those who join gangs to make a living, they're actually safer here, because gangs run the show, and when you're part of a gang, you naturally have more power."

"I know, I know..." Lucky Gun put down his cigarette and said, "I'm very clear that being a hitman will bring retribution. I'll go to hell and Satan will judge me, but I don't care. Do you know why?"

Before Bruce could answer, Lucky Gun continued, "I have to first fill my stomach and make more money, to have a better life."

"God didn't give me the opportunity to be born into a family like yours, with no worries about food or clothes. My father lost everything in gambling, my mother ran away with someone else, and my only possession was an old gun that wasn't very reliable. So, I thought, what else can I do?"

"When I came to Gotham, I realized that the person who built this city must have been a genius. Don't you think the gangs are planned out too well? It even reached a perfect balance, making the city run smoothly and people living well."

"My son-in-law works for someone, I think it's called something... Anyway, we all call him "One Hand" because his father, who was a drug addict, cut off his left hand when he was a child. But he started working with the boss of a gambling den on his street when he was young, throwing dice. Last year he even bought a car, and he's getting married next month."

"The organized crime industry is large, they're always in need of people. As long as you have a hand and can work, they'll take anyone."

"Kids don't go to school, they go to the gangs and learn a trade. If they're smart, they work at a restaurant and learn how to cook from the boss, or they go to a bar and learn how to mix drinks. The most skilled learn how to play in a casino, they're naturally clever."

"The nimble ones become pickpockets, the ones with good eyes become lookouts, and the least skilled learn how to fight. With so many gangs, restaurants, bars, casinos, and repair shops, either they need employees or security, and you can make a living anywhere."

"In my opinion, the economy has been better in recent years. I've been saving money, and I may even be able to afford a small standalone house on the outskirts of the wealthy neighborhoods in the south. Oh, you must live in the center of one of those areas, after all, they say you're a millionaire."

"My grandson isn't as lucky as you, but he's doing well. He's much better off than me, at least he was born in a house that doesn't leak wind, and his mother takes good care of him. His father makes money outside and we're getting by, right?"

Maybe it was because his headache had gone away, but the old man seemed quite lively and kept talking about details of his life. At this moment, Bruce's thoughts wandered far away.

Lucky Gun's words made him start thinking. The criminal industry in Gotham is extremely well-organized, which is almost impossible to be formed naturally. Gangs emerged from chaos and it's impossible for everyone to organize these industries spontaneously.

How did this city end up becoming the peculiar place it is today? Is it possible that someone deliberately designed it to be this way? What was their purpose? If they had the ability to plan the industrial chain so perfectly, why make this place a haven for crime? Couldn't they have done something else?

Gotham is one of the most peculiar cities in America, it has been running smoothly in a twisted and unusual way for so long, it has become one of the most prosperous cities on the East Coast and has reached the top of the GDP list of American cities in an unbelievable way, people's living standards not only meet the requirements, but also challenge excellence.

The creator of this city must be a genius, he ordered disorder and created a new model of city operation almost out of thin air.

But at the same time, he must also be a madman, using his crazy creativity to personally create the world's largest city of sin.

Bruce thought, perhaps in this place, geniuses and madmen are only a line apart, Gotham is like a coin standing between them, it looks like it will fall at any moment, but until today, it is still swaying on this line.

Every person here, like the city itself, is also two-faced, both a special talent genius and an unparalleled madman. The genius is on the left, the madman is on the right, and every person in Gotham, like the traffic rules here, is going straight, never turning.

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