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

Schiller was called back by the headmaster; even though he could remotely control things, someone still needed to manage the daily affairs of the mental hospital, and this task fell to Bruce.

Schiller trusted him so completely that he dumped all the work on Bruce; Bruce always felt this professor had more faith in him than Bruce had in himself.

He was only a freshman, yet he had to take over an atypical mental hospital during his first internship; what he had to manage in this hospital, though containing not a single real mental patient, was more dangerous and troublesome than any mental patient.

When Bruce questioned whether he could handle this job, Schiller told him: "Sometimes, unless you push yourself, you won't know you're a genius."

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

Although he had memorized a book-thick stack of patient files, remembering everyone's names, room numbers, and corresponding medical records, if this were a normal hospital, an intern doctor reaching this level would be more than enough.

But unfortunately, there wasn't a single traditional mental patient here; behind their names and diagnoses lay extremely complex social identities.

Which gang member belonged to which gang? Which gangs had bad relations with which? Who and who were once enemies? Who and who were partners? This information couldn't be seen in the medical records.

Previously, when listening to Schiller take phone calls, Bruce had heard some of it; his memory far surpassing ordinary people turned this information into his beginner's gift pack. If he couldn't figure out everyone's social identity, it didn't matter; he could work backwards from these existing clues.

Besides that, Bruce was very good at disguise, just like his disguise of this Young Master identity; in this hospital, he became a flamboyant, pampered, yet black-gang-life-obsessed wealthy tycoon.

The identity of the world's richest man provided him with many buffs; generally, no gang member would think the world's richest man would specifically try to extract information from him, so when Bruce showed interest in gang stories, the gang bosses only thought this young wealthy tycoon, like any rich Young Master, had lived in comfort too long and longed for the thrilling life seen in gangster movies.

So, although they added quite a bit of their own fabrication when telling stories, Bruce could still infer real and useful gang social relationship information from these stories.

In a city where almost everyone had ties to gangs, clarifying these intricate and complex gang relationships meant clarifying almost all the underlying threads of the city.

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

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

These small gangs often undertook street patrol and petty theft businesses; they also had to pay protection fees to larger gangs and serve at their command.

And those slightly larger, with hundreds of people, were the mainstream of Cat Getan; most of them owned one or two businesses, which could be shops or factories.

They provided protection for these businesses, drove away troublemakers, remotely controlled small groups under them to solicit customers; when conflicts over snatching clients arose, they would engage in small-scale shootouts, but mostly just hiding behind cars and firing a couple of pistol shots, rarely using large-scale firepower.

Further up were large gangs with hundreds of people; these gangs reached another level. Each of them had at least one special industry they relied on for survival. Bruce discovered that these damn gangs had even achieved industrial specialization.

At a scale of hundreds of people, they often controlled at least one smuggling chain, or possessed a complete industrial chain of planting, refining, and sales, or controlled most industries in a red-light district; some among the outstanding even achieved monopoly in a certain industry within a certain region.

Reaching this level, the profits they could extract daily had already reached a quite astonishing degree, and saturation had also occurred.

Anything above that could no longer be called gangs; they should be called family crime syndicates. The twelve gang families ruling Cat Getan, besides the core military force controlled by their heads, actually had no businesses requiring their personal involvement; what they had to do was remotely control these large gangs. Each gang family had dozens or even hundreds of large gangs under them, managing different businesses in different districts.

When Falcone established the twelve families, he assigned them twelve different industries, letting each have its own focus.

And Falcone sat at the very top of the Jin Zita, issuing orders to all families and gangs.

In the collection and analysis of this information, Bruce discovered that Cat Getan's seemingly chaotic and disordered rules were actually a quite solid Jin Zita; wealth was extracted layer by layer from criminal industries, then redistributed and reinvested by those at the very top.

In such a cycle, Cat Getan produced its own unique ecosystem, forging the largest concentration of criminal industries in the entire United States.

"I Have a Scroll of Ghost and God Pictures"

At the same time, Bruce discovered that, contrary to his imagination, from the perspectives of sociology and economics, this city's industrial structure was damn healthy; whether it was the distribution of industrial volume at various levels or the so-called division of industrial concentration areas, it was done better than in the vast majority of cities across the United States.

As the investigation deepened, Bruce began to doubt his original intention bit by bit, because he discovered that although Cat Getan was very evil, it was actually not poor; the people's living standards were not low either. Besides being very dangerous, the people here were also quite wealthy.

During his travels across America, Bruce had also studied the living standards of people in major American cities. He discovered that the living standards of the vast majority of people in this damn city of Cat Getan actually exceeded the passing line by a lot.

During his visits to the hospital, Bruce met an old man from Crucible City; people called him "Rifle."

Rifle was originally from Crucible City, but his daughter married into Cat Getan, marrying a small gang lieutenant. This lieutenant was maliciously framed, and his daughter almost suffered misfortune. Upon receiving his daughter's plea for help, Rifle grabbed an old-fashioned rifle, rushed to Cat Getan, and shot dead the gang members who wanted to frame his son-in-law with just a few shots.

The Loren family, one of the twelve families, took a liking to this old man's hot temper and his good skills; now he is the owner of a restaurant in the western district of the Loren family.

Unlike other gang members, this old man was truly here for hospitalization. He had long-term headaches, seemingly a complication of anxiety disorder, so his son-in-law used connections to send him here for treatment. Currently, after two courses of treatment, he is much better.

"It's the same everywhere, the same everywhere..."

Rifle smoked a cigar, leaning against the hospital bed, and said to Bruce: "You think Crucible City could be any better? Everyone lives on clean streets, every family has a car to drive, and children wear school uniforms to go to school?"

He took another puff of smoke; this old man even had some Southern aristocrat mannerisms, like a real Rifle.

Accompanied by the smoke, he slowly recalled: "When I met Mary, you know, it was decades ago... back then, I was just a poor boy, also venturing into the city with nothing to my name..."

"Crucible City has gangs too; where doesn't it? I worked for them, but it couldn't compare to Cat Getan. I earned too little; sometimes I didn't even have a single cent in my pocket. I wanted to marry Mary, but I had no money. How could we get married?"

"So, I took a gun and started the assassin business, which made life improve a bit. When my daughter was born, I was already doing quite well. Although I haven't read much, in my opinion, Cat Getan is still much stronger."

Bruce said: "Cat Getan is stronger than Crucible City?"

If not for the fact that the speaker was an old man who seemed quite knowledgeable, Bruce would have thought his brain was broken.

"I know, you Young Masters with proper identities think this city is rotten through and through, full of gangs, everyone is a criminal. But for people like us, working for anyone is the same; we sell our lives. Whoever pays more, we follow."

"In Cat Getan, as long as you are an official member of a gang, you actually earn quite a lot. And for someone like me, who owns a restaurant or a bar, it's no different from doing big business."

"And here, gang members are actually safer. There is a set of order here. If you don't want to declare war on a gang, then it's best not to touch their people, even if it's just a low-level thug."

"So, those who join gangs to support their families are actually safer than in other places, because here the gangs have the final say. Once you become part of a gang, your words naturally carry more weight."

"I know, I know..." Rifle put down his cigarette and said: "I am very clear that being an assassin will bring retribution. I will go to hell, and Satan's judgment will wait for me, but I don't care. Do you know why?"

Before Bruce could answer, Rifle said it himself: "I must fill my stomach first, earn more money, and live a better life."

"God didn't let me be born into a family with food and clothing as worry-free as yours. My father gambled away everything, my mother ran off with someone else, and my only possession was an old gun that wasn't very reliable. So I thought, I'll just do this; what's the harm?"

"After coming to Cat Getan, I discovered that the person who built this city must be a genius. Don't you think these gangs are planned too well? It even achieved a very perfect balance, allowing this city to operate for a long, long time, and people live quite well."

"My son-in-law has someone under him called... what was it?... Never mind, we all call him 'One Hand'. His left hand was chopped off in childhood by his father, who was brain-damaged from drug addiction. But since childhood, he worked for the casino boss on their street, specifically responsible for rolling dice. Last year, he even bought a car, and he's getting married next month."

"Gang industries are huge; they are short of people. As long as you have hands and feet and can work, they accept anyone."

"Children don't go to school; they can learn a craft in the gangs too. Those with some brains work in restaurants learning to cook from the boss, or learn bartending in bars. The most outstanding are those who learn skills in casinos; they are all natural geniuses."

"Those with agile bodies become pickpockets; those with sharp eyes become lookouts. Even the least capable can learn a few fighting moves from others. There are so many gangs, restaurants, bars, casinos, auto repair shops; they either need employees or security guards. You can make a living anywhere."

"In my opinion, the economy has been even better in the last two years. If I save a bit more money, I can even buy a detached small house on the edge of the wealthy district in the south. Oh, you should be living in the center of that area, after all, they say you are a wealthy tycoon."

"My grandson isn't as lucky as you, but it's enough. 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 earns money outside. We live quite well, right?"

Perhaps because his headache had improved a lot, this old man appeared very energetic, constantly muttering details of his life. At this moment, Bruce's thoughts drifted far away.

One sentence from Rifle made him start thinking.

The planning of Cat Getan's criminal industries was extremely perfect; this could almost not be naturally formed. Gangs arise from chaos; they couldn't all spontaneously organize these industries.

So how exactly did this city become this strange shape today?

Could it really be that someone deliberately designed it this way?

Then what is his purpose? If he has the ability to plan the industrial chain so perfectly, why must he turn this place into a capital of crime? Couldn't he do something else?

Cat Getan is simply the strangest flower among all cities in the entire nation. It has operated steadily for so long in a bizarre and twisted manner, becoming one of the most prosperous cities on the East Coast by taking a sharp, unconventional turn, and surged to the top of the national city GDP rankings through an utterly outrageous method. People's living standards not only met the baseline but could even strive for excellence.

Its creator must have been a genius; he wrote order out of chaos, almost creating a new model of urban operation out of thin air.

But at the same time, he must also have been a madman, using his insane creativity to personally forge the world's greatest capital of crime.

Bruce thought that perhaps here, genius and madness are separated by only a thin line. Cat Getan is like a coin standing between the two, appearing as if it might topple at any moment, yet to this day, it still sways on this boundary line.

Everyone here, just like this city, has two sides to one body: they are both geniuses with special talents and unparalleled madmen.

Genius is on the left, madness on the right, and everyone in Cat Getan, just like the traffic rules here—

If I go straight, I will absolutely not turn.