Chapter 139: Breaking the Old, Establishing the New

What is it called to be reborn? The feeling of coming out of a maximum-security prison is what you call being reborn.

Three days; they had only stayed in that place for three days, and everyone already felt like dying. In fact, from the moment they heard the words "insect powder," they had already wanted to die.

After explaining the breakfast, the broadcast added one more sentence.

"I hope you can focus on your meal, because if you still remember the little sprites scurrying around in your cells last night, it might have some impact on your consumption of the insect powder bread."

Ma Luoni felt he must have lost his mind to want to taste those things that were supposedly hygienic and nutritious, referred to as "meals" by the voice on the broadcast.

Meals? Ten!

For the three meals on the first day, even though the nutrition and portions were sufficient, everyone in the prison, including Ma Luoni, remained in a state of near-constant hunger. Even though there were fines by weight for leftovers and long periods without eating would lead to malnutrition and physical weakness, they were unwilling to eat what was on their plates, because no matter what the food was, it would only turn into dark cuisine in the hands of the chef.

Besides eating, they also had to complete the work arranged for them by the prison every day. For three whole days, they were dragged to the production lines to work—under conditions of low energy and malnutrition, they had to complete a fixed amount of production work every day, which led to many people being so tired and hungry on the first day that they almost wanted to collapse on the assembly line and fall asleep.

However, the sound of the loudspeaker rang out again at this moment.

"Gentlemen, as stated before, only by completing the day's schedule can you be considered to have truly spent a day here. If you collapse on the production line, then today's day has been wasted."

Those who were about to fall asleep immediately braced themselves, stood up, and continued working on the production line.

"Let me state another rule that applies to both prisons: if your labor within a week has no errors, your sentence will be reduced by one week; if your labor results are excellent within a week, your sentence will be reduced by two weeks."

This time it was Ma Luoni's turn to sneer. He looked around and, sure enough, saw most people subconsciously rolling their eyes, clearly quite disdainful of this reward mechanism.

"Of course, I know you may look down on this way of reducing sentences, all calculating that after this war ends, people from the upper echelons will directly fish you out of this hellhole. But I also ask you big shots to think carefully: if the side you stand on loses, what will you do?"

"So, rather than expecting this protracted war to end, it is better to make plans early and consider the future—I will only say one thing: your deductions are all based on the years of your sentence. In other words, the better you work, the faster your sentence is reduced, and the less money you lose when purchasing services and paying fines."

"It is all real dollars, gentlemen. The more you work, the more you save. Whether you want to pick up this lost money depends entirely on your own thoughts."

Screw you. Ma Luoni cursed fiercely in his heart, his hands involuntarily speeding up.

There was no help for it; loving money was the nature of everyone here, and furthermore, no one was willing to let the prison earn their money.

Are you kidding? I went to prison to make money, and now you've deducted it all back; didn't I go to prison for nothing?

It was precisely because of this that, starting from the second day, the first person began to take the lead in eating the insect powder bread on their plate, then a second, and then everyone ate.

They endured the nausea in their hearts and forcibly ate the only food on the plate that looked edible.

Wake up, fold blankets, roll call, eat, work, recreation, sleep.

Everyone went through the motions like walking corpses, passing these three days. Now that they thought about it, it was like a nightmare. And what was even more of a nightmare was that when they finally transferred to the regular prison, these people had already contributed a total of nearly ten million dollars in deductions to Wei En Prison in those three days, including but not limited to night talks, leftovers, violence, and the cost of upgrading cells.

Their numbers were simply too large, totaling hundreds of people. The economy of Gotham was developed, and the gangs were also developed, which together resulted in an absurdly high number of wealthy criminals.

The group of prisoners who returned to the human world from hell almost treated the regular prison as heaven. Other prisoners saw them shedding tears over the white bread on their plates and the milk in their cups; saw them rolling around while hugging ordinary cotton quilts; saw them buying snacks in piles at the commissary; saw them engaging in retaliatory night talks after lights out; and were mostly quite puzzled.

"What on earth did they experience?"

Thus, the two sides began to exchange information, and the various details of the maximum-security prison immediately spread among the crowd. There were still quite a few troublemakers in the prison similar to Ha Like who were itching to act, but when they heard the news from the maximum-security prison and thought of the sentence Ma Zhaodi had mentioned about "putting those who are unwilling to accept reform inside for a week," they immediately became smooth and compliant at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Stop joking. Everyone grew up eating food; who the hell could stay in that kind of environment for a week?

Seeing that the preliminary reform work of the prisoners was basically completed, Ma Zhaodi was very gratified. He picked up the phone and called Bruce.

That evening, in a specially built quiet room in the prison, four figures were sitting around a table talking.

"Old Ma, hasn't Bruce already certified your little cabin as a prison in the legal sense at the courthouse? Why do you still insist on holding meetings here?"

Ma Zhaodi shook his head: "Harvey, that is not my cabin. Strictly speaking, from the moment Bruce bought it, it became his cabin. In fact, I never thought he would buy that thing and give it to me."

"Certification must be applied for as the owner of the house. You need a way to go outside; you can't stay in the prison all the time," Bruce replied. "Since you don't want to hold meetings in the cabin, then let it be here—judging by what you said on the phone, the time has come?"

"That's right. Now, the vast majority of prisoners in the prison have no thoughts of escaping; most are willing to work hard, and that group of dignitaries and celebrities have also temporarily settled down. The first batch of money has also been scraped out."

Harvey, on the side, showed a smile on his face: "The funds are in place, the personnel are in place, and the plan is in place. We can directly push to the next step."

"This is the first time I've seen such a strange plan," Commissioner Gordon let out a breath. "But this is Gotham, so perhaps there is nothing strange about it—let's get to work. What was that plan called again?"

"The Gotham Reconstruction Plan," Bruce picked up where Commissioner Gordon left off. "Use the time they serve to break the underworld system they implicitly accept in their hearts, let them adapt to a new, normal social system in prison, and let the prisoners participate directly in the Gotham reconstruction plan, which can reduce the labor costs required for the plan; the remaining plan funds will be extracted from the hands of those maximum-security prisoners who have been locked up."

"However much they greedily took, they will spit it back out. Whoever destroys it, rebuilds it." Ma Zhaodi shrugged.

"This is fair, isn't it?"

(End of chapter)