Chapter 74: Genius on the Left, Madman on the Right (Part 2)

Schiller was called back by the principal; even if he could remotely control things, actual management of the hospital’s daily affairs still required others, and this task fell to Bruce.

Schiller entrusted all his duties to Bruce without a second thought, and Bruce always felt that the professor’s confidence in him surpassed even his own.

He was merely a first-year student, yet he had to take charge of an atypical psychiatric hospital during his first internship; though there were no genuine psychiatric patients here, the people he managed were more dangerous and troublesome than any patient.

When Bruce questioned whether he was fit for the job, Schiller told him: “Sometimes, you won’t realize you’re a genius until you push yourself beyond your limits.”

On his first day of work, Bruce encountered a major problem: he couldn’t tell who was who.

Although he had memorized every patient’s file—thick as a textbook—including their names, room numbers, and corresponding medical records, such a feat would have been more than sufficient for an intern at a regular hospital.

But unfortunately, there were no traditional psychiatric patients here; behind their names and diagnoses lay extraordinarily complex social identities.

Who belonged to which gang? Which gangs despised each other? Who had been enemies? Who were allies? None of this could be gleaned from medical records.

Previously, while listening to Schiller’s phone calls, Bruce had picked up fragments of this information; his extraordinary memory turned these fragments into a beginner’s treasure trove. Not understanding everyone’s social identity? No matter—he could reverse-engineer it from the clues he already had.

Moreover, Bruce excelled at disguise; just as he had masked himself as a playboy, here in the hospital he became a wealthy magnate—extravagant, pampered, yet deeply enamored with gangster life.

The identity of the world’s richest man granted him many advantages; few gang members would suspect that the world’s richest man had come here specifically to extract information from them. Thus, when Bruce showed interest in gang stories, the gang bosses merely assumed this young billionaire, like any spoiled rich kid, had grown bored with luxury and longed for the thrill depicted in gangster films.

So while their stories were laced with fabrication, Bruce could still extract genuine, useful information about the underlying gang social network.

In a city where nearly everyone had ties to organized crime, understanding this intricate web of gang relationships meant understanding the very veins of the city’s underbelly.

Bruce realized that the city’s survival rules were far more complex than he had imagined.

Even from the lowest-tier gangs—even those with only a dozen members—they had their own codes of survival.

These small gangs typically handled street patrols and petty theft, yet they still paid protection fees to larger gangs and were forced to serve them.

Larger gangs, numbering in the hundreds, formed Gotham’s mainstream; most controlled one or two businesses—shops or factories.

They provided protection for these enterprises, drove away troublemakers, and directed their subordinate gangs to recruit customers. When disputes over clients arose, they engaged in small-scale turf wars—usually just two gunshots fired from behind car doors, rarely escalating to large-scale firepower.

Above them came the massive gangs, numbering in the hundreds; these reached an entirely different level, each possessing at least one specialized industry for survival. Bruce discovered that these damned gangs had even achieved industrial specialization.

At this scale, they typically controlled at least one smuggling route, or a complete production chain for cultivation, refinement, and distribution, or held dominance over most of a red-light district’s businesses; some elite ones even monopolized a specific industry within a region.

At this level, their daily profits reached astonishing figures—and saturation inevitably followed.

Beyond them, they could no longer be called gangs; they were criminal families. The twelve families ruling Gotham possessed no direct businesses of their own; their only role was to command these large gangs, each family overseeing dozens or even hundreds of them, each managing different sectors in different districts.

When Falcone established the Twelve Families, he assigned each a distinct industry to specialize in.

Falcone himself sat atop the pyramid, issuing orders to all families and gangs.

In gathering and analyzing this information, Bruce realized that Gotham’s seemingly chaotic order was in fact a remarkably stable pyramid: wealth was extracted layer by layer from criminal industries, then redistributed and reinvested by those at the apex.

Within this cycle, Gotham had forged its own unique ecosystem, becoming the largest concentration of criminal industries in all of America.

I Have a Scroll of Ghost and God Records

Simultaneously, Bruce discovered that, contrary to his expectations, from a sociological and economic standpoint, the city’s industrial structure was disturbingly healthy—its distribution of industrial scale across tiers and its designation of industrial clusters were better than those of nearly every other American city.

As his investigation deepened, Bruce began to doubt his original intentions, for he realized that although Gotham was evil, it was not poor; its people’s living standards were not low—beyond being dangerous, they were surprisingly wealthy.

During his travels across America, Bruce had studied living standards in major U.S. cities; he found that the vast majority of Gotham’s residents lived far above the poverty line.

During his hospital visits, Bruce met an elderly man from Gocheng, known to everyone as “Rifle.”

Rifle had been from Gocheng, but his daughter married a low-ranking gangster in Gotham; this man was maliciously framed, and his daughter nearly suffered the same fate. Upon receiving his daughter’s plea for help, Rifle arrived in Gotham with an old-fashioned rifle and shot dead the gang members who had framed his son-in-law.

The Lauren family, one of the Twelve Families, admired the old man’s temper and skill, and now he was the owner of a restaurant in their West District.

Unlike other gang members, this old man was genuinely here for medical treatment—he suffered from chronic headaches, likely a complication of anxiety—and his son-in-law had used connections to get him admitted. After two treatment courses, his condition had improved significantly.

“It’s all the same, it’s all the same…”

Rifle, smoking a cigar and leaning back on his bed, told Bruce: “You think Gocheng is any better? Everyone lives on clean streets, owns a car, and sends their kids to school in uniforms?”

He took another drag; the old man even carried the mannerisms of a Southern aristocrat, like a true rifle.

As smoke curled around him, he recalled slowly: “When I met Mary, you know—it was decades ago… Back then, I was just a poor boy, fighting my way through the city with nothing but my bare hands…”

“Gocheng had gangs too—where doesn’t? I worked for them, but I earned so little I sometimes had not even a penny in my pocket. I wanted to marry Mary, but how could I, without money?”

“So I picked up a gun and became a hitman. That’s when things started to improve. When my daughter was born, I was doing well. I never went to school, but if you ask me, Gotham is far superior.”

Bruce said: “Gotham is better than Gocheng?”

Had it not been for the fact that the speaker was an elderly man with evident insight, Bruce would have thought him insane.

“I know—you privileged kids think this city is rotten, full of gangs and criminals. But for people like us, working for anyone is the same: we sell our lives. Whoever pays more, we follow.”

“In Gotham, if you’re a full member of a gang, you actually earn well. And if you own a restaurant or a bar like me, it’s no different from running a major business.”

“Besides, gang members here are safer. There’s an order here—if you don’t want to declare war on a gang, don’t touch even their lowest thug.”

“So those who join gangs just to feed their families are actually safer here—because the gangs rule. Once you’re part of one, your voice carries weight.”

“I know, I know…” Rifle set down his cigar. “I understand—being a hitman invites retribution. I’ll burn in hell, face Satan’s judgment. But I don’t care. Do you know why?”

Before Bruce could answer, Rifle spoke himself: “I must fill my belly first. Earn more money. Live better.”

“God didn’t let me be born into a family like yours, with food and shelter guaranteed. My father gambled away everything. My mother ran off with another man. My only possession was a rusty old rifle. So I thought—what’s the harm in doing this?”

“After coming to Gotham, I realized its builder must have been a genius. Don’t you think these gangs are planned too perfectly? They’ve achieved a near-perfect balance, allowing the city to run smoothly for generations, and everyone lives decently.”

“My son-in-law has a man under him—what’s his name again?… Never mind, we all call him ‘One Hand.’ His left hand was cut off by his father, who went mad from drugs as a child. But since he was young, he worked for the gambling den boss on their street, handling dice. Last year, he bought a car. Next month, he’s getting married.”

“The gang industry is huge—they’re desperate for workers. Anyone with two hands and feet who can work is welcome.”

“Kids don’t go to school—they learn trades in gangs. The smart ones work in restaurants, learning to cook from the boss, or in bars, learning to mix drinks. The best are those who learn gambling techniques—they’re born geniuses.”

“The agile become pickpockets. The sharp-eyed become lookouts. Even the weakest can learn a few fighting moves. With so many gangs, there are restaurants, bars, gambling dens, repair shops—all needing staff or guards. You can always find a meal.”

“In my view, the economy’s been better these past two years. If I save a bit more, I might even buy a small standalone house on the edge of the rich southern district. Oh, you probably live in the center, right? After all, they say you’re a billionaire.”

“My grandson isn’t as lucky as you, but it’s enough. Better than me, at least—he was born in a house that doesn’t leak wind, with his mother caring for him, his father earning outside. We’re doing fine, right?”

Perhaps because his headache had improved greatly, the old man seemed full of energy, endlessly recounting details of his life. Meanwhile, Bruce’s thoughts drifted far away.

One of Rifle’s remarks had set him thinking.

Gotham’s criminal industry was planned too perfectly to have formed naturally. Gangs emerged from chaos—they couldn’t all have spontaneously organized these industries.

So how had this city become so bizarrely structured?

Could someone have deliberately designed it this way?

If so, what was his purpose? If he had the ability to plan such a flawless industrial network, why not build something else? Why make this a city of crime?

Gotham was the strangest anomaly among all American cities—a bizarre, twisted entity that had run steadily for so long, becoming one of the East Coast’s most prosperous cities, reaching the top tier of U.S. city GDPs through an absurd method, where living standards didn’t just meet the baseline—they soared toward excellence.

Its creator must have been a genius, writing order from chaos, inventing an entirely new model of urban operation from nothing.

But he must also have been a madman—using his insane vision to forge the world’s greatest city of evil.

Bruce thought: perhaps here, genius and madness stood on opposite sides of a single line. Gotham was like a coin balanced between them—seeming ready to topple at any moment, yet still swaying on that edge to this day.

Every person here, like the city itself, was two-faced: both a genius with unique talent, and an unparalleled madman.

Genius on the left, madness on the right—and every person in Gotham, like its traffic rules—

I go straight. I never turn.