[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-my-life-as-a-mental-mentor-in-marvel":3,"chapter-my-life-as-a-mental-mentor-in-marvel-my-life-as-a-mental-mentor-in-marvel-chapter-109":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","My Life as a Mental Mentor in Marvel",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2322677,4544,"Chapter 109: The Gotan Longzhong Dialogue (Part 2)","my-life-as-a-mental-mentor-in-marvel-chapter-109",109,"\u003Cp>The staff reviewing election candidates nearly dropped the paperwork when they saw the name on the first page submitted by Gotan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The old Godfather of Gotan is planning to enter politics????\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, once calmed down, it wasn’t impossible—let’s put it this way: Falcone’s age, while old for a crime boss, is only unusual because crime families turnover rapidly; very few bosses hold power this long, making Falcone seem exceptional.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But for politics, men his age are everywhere—Congress’s average age is over fifty, and there are plenty of octogenarian politicians; if Falcone truly wants to run now, it’s not too late, since his starting point is already far higher than others’, not zero.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the very least, if he aims to become mayor of Gotan, then state legislator of New Jersey, no one could stop him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After becoming a state legislator, if Wayne Group continues supporting his campaign, entering Congress—or even rising further—is not out of the question.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But this mayoral election was meant to clean up Roy’s reckless gangster-style speech—and now, if Falcone runs and wins, it’s like swapping a mud eel for a great white shark.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>State legislators all believed Falcone wouldn’t make such outrageous remarks like his godson, but the problem is, that’s even worse than making outrageous remarks!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A loudmouth is merely annoying; the top player in the server is deadly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If Falcone truly becomes mayor, he’ll hold both the surface and underworld of Gotan in his hands.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Countless people have tested just how dangerous the old Godfather is—with their lives.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>State legislators hurriedly called Falcone’s estate, and to their relief, the old Godfather merely intended to support his godson—not to run himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Falcone’s own son, Little Falcone, told them his father was old and had already begun retiring, with no intention of entering politics.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This news eased everyone’s breath—after all, Roy as mayor might be a minor nuisance, but Falcone entering politics could open a path no one had imagined.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After this incident, state legislators had to intensify scrutiny of Gotan’s mayoral candidates.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then they discovered that finding a truly qualified candidate among them was nearly as hard as panning gold from shit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Any sane person knows a mayor of Gotan won’t live long, so the kind of people applying needed no explanation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of the 23 candidate applications submitted, 19 were from known Gotan crime bosses; of the remaining four, three applicants were minors, the youngest only six years old, and the last one was a cat owned by Gotan’s Golden Cup Bar.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even more absurdly, among all the applications, only this cat had fully and correctly filled out every detail—most others, frankly, couldn’t write more than two shots of vodka worth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>State legislators were truly pulling their hair out trying to find a single viable mayoral candidate among them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Sword Comes\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>First, even if they could pick someone, whether that person understood voting rules was questionable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Second, if they actually elected someone, whether he’d curse worse than Roy was an even bigger problem.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most importantly, if they picked one, the other crime families who hated him would claim election fraud—and their fate would be eight bullets in the back, suicide included.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The truth proved Gotan was nothing but a swamp; anyone even slightly tied to this city met a terrible end. The state legislators were now completely trapped.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Those who could be chosen didn’t want to run; those who wanted to run couldn’t be chosen—what could they do?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After much deliberation, the state legislators realized it was better to let Roy stay.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Think about it: Roy used fewer than ten swear words in his entire speech, but these candidates, in their 300-word application reasons, used over a hundred swear words—even conservatively. If any of them became mayor, every congressman’s mother would be in danger.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Helplessly, the election became a farce again—Roy went from suspended review to reinstated candidate to re-elected mayor, all within a week.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The consequences were now massive.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>These crime-city bosses had been holding back too long—they were sick of journalists and commentators who spoke from safety. When it came to cursing, these bosses, raised in the streets, feared no one.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the first to erupt wasn’t the coastal cities near Gotan—it was Detroit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In modern industrial history, few cities suffered more than Detroit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Between 1960 and 1970, the oil crisis devastated the auto industry; the Auto City of Detroit became a wasteland overnight—homeless masses, unchecked gangs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Detroit’s economic collapse was so fast, within a single generation, the people alive today watched their prosperous city die—living proof of Roy’s theory.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When Detroit fell, no savior came; ordinary citizens plunged into hell overnight—racial conflict, riots, gunshots. The flashes of gunfire lighting up Detroit nights were as bright as the old factory lights, burning ceaselessly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In short, government officials, crime bosses, and civilian representatives all stood up to condemn each other, then united to curse the detached commentators, directing their fury straight at Congress.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Such a fierce reaction surprised even Xiler—he’d already removed most radical arguments and avoided sensitive topics from Roy’s speech.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The speech’s real purpose was to pave the way for future city alliances and industrial upgrades—in short: to raise the flag before war.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It aimed to give these crime-ridden cities a legitimate excuse to unite.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If our ruin isn’t our fault, why shouldn’t we band together to make money?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Xiler hadn’t expected this speech struck straight at the core of America’s eastern economic crisis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Systemic contradictions caused recurring economic crises, leading to waves of unemployment; without strong control or support, the unemployed spontaneously formed organizations—turning into gangs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Gangs severely threatened local safety, deterring investors from developing in unsafe environments, triggering capital flight; new investors avoided these cities due to their terrible reputations, deepening economic decline, increasing unemployment, and emboldening gangs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The East Coast’s thriving maritime trade naturally fostered illegal industries; once gangs rose, so did all kinds of illicit businesses.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The growth of illegal industries inherently rejected legitimate ones, further stifling legal economic development, trapping cities in endless cycles of darkness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most cities lacked a Falcone—a force of nature who could break the worsening cycle with extreme violence, impose a corrupt order, extract profit from it, and feed it back into society.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, most such cities couldn’t achieve what Gotan did: evil but wealthy. Most were both chaotic and poor, teetering on bankruptcy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The resentment in these cities far exceeded Gotan’s—after all, Gotan ranked among America’s top cities in infrastructure, population density, and living conditions; aside from its strange weather and ecosystem, it was a modern, prosperous metropolis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But post-industrial cities like Detroit were different: the rapid rise of the auto industry caused economic imbalance and lagging infrastructure and cultural environments.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>People realized: having money once wasn’t an issue—but now that money was gone, these backward conditions brought endless troubles, making life worse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the saying goes: not as good as those above, better than those below—Xiler’s speech, framed around Gotan and Chicago, still carried a touch of “I’m not even trying.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Chicago and Gotan were already top-tier among such cities—even Detroit was relatively decent, having once been glorious, with most people still holding some savings; smaller cities fared far worse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Overnight, the situation across East Coast cities grew restless—they agreed with the gangster mayor: if no one saves us, we’ll save ourselves.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But what surprised Xiler was that his original target—the triad system of Gotan, Chicago, and Miami—had seen promising preliminary cooperation between Gotan and Chicago, yet before they could move to link Miami, another city’s gang showed up: Imperial City.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Imperial City was a unique city in DC Comics, the hometown of superhero hunter Paul, and a major East Coast metropolis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, Imperial City was far better off than Gotan—it still had basic order; gangs were part of the city, but not the whole picture.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But like all other East Coast cities, illicit industries were its main income source, though its most famous sectors were tourism and casinos.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Imperial City was a beautiful, pleasant-climate city with a long gambling history; its numerous casinos had become part of tourism, and its economy had grown steadily, even advancing while most cities regressed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The mayor of Imperial City had murky ties with its top gang—after all, casinos couldn’t exist without gang involvement.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The day after Roy’s re-election, he received a call from the mayor of Imperial City.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They exchanged opinions on Gotan and Chicago’s friendly exchanges, shared views on their cities’ future development, and reached preliminary consensus.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Both mayors, concerned for their citizens, reflected on the painful histories of East Coast port cities and envisioned a prosperous future, expressing mutual hopes for cooperative win-win outcomes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Roy would visit Imperial City next month to study and observe what Gotan might learn.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Upon hearing this, the Twelve Families all declared: developing Gotan is everyone’s duty—they were willing to contribute their humble share.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Gambling held limitless potential and had a solid foundation for tourism development; once outright illegal industries became unworkable, gambling and tourism would be the best paths for urban transformation.\u003C\u002Fp>",1499,"2026-06-20T16:39:12.484Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","12b47371d6a8a0f179028bd558cc0ab4e1ceeb4a4370e018001055512115b5cb","my-life-as-a-mental-mentor-in-marvel-chapter-110","my-life-as-a-mental-mentor-in-marvel-chapter-108",1000,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fmy-life-as-a-mental-mentor-in-marvel-cover.jpg"]