Target and Neighbor

Ryan saw the map on the wall. Hell's Kitchen was circled, and the ninety-plus blocks inside were painted in different colors, but he didn't pay it much mind. He figured Bai Jing was just familiarizing himself with the various power distributions in Hell's Kitchen.

Until Bai Jing spoke.

"What do you think—how long would it take to bring all of Hell's Kitchen under control?" Bai Jing asked.

Ryan froze, then immediately shook his head. "No way, boss. Hell's Kitchen has too many factions—hundreds of gangs, big and small, from every country and race. That alone is a nightmare. On top of that, there's the Kingpin, the underworld emperor. He'd never allow Hell's Kitchen to unify. Then there are the big corporations, the religious groups..."

In short, Hell's Kitchen was a tangled mess. Unification was impossible.

Bai Jing shook his head. "Nothing's impossible. If there's a problem, solve it. If someone opposes you, kill them!"

As long as your mindset doesn't slip, solutions always outnumber problems.

They don't submit? That just means you haven't killed enough.

Besides, it was just Hell's Kitchen. What threat could it pose to him?

Going by the movie timeline, most of the heroes in Hell's Kitchen weren't even adults yet. The only one with any real strength was Daredevil, and he was a close-range fighter.

Try getting close to me.

Besides, Daredevil was a gentleman. Gentlemen were too easy to deal with.

As for the Kingpin...

He was also a close-range fighter.

And just a mortal. No matter how big his muscles were, he was still a mortal.

For Bai Jing, whose future goals included snatching the Infinity Stones and setting his sights on opponents like the Ancient One and Thanos, the Kingpin was beneath his notice.

Of course, despise the enemy strategically, but take them seriously tactically. That was why Bai Jing kept his Gravity Field active at all times, just in case some sniper tried to take him out.

"Start from nearby," Bai Jing said, pointing at 45th Street. "Target: take these four blocks. Expand our territory to six."

"45th Street is held by the Viper Gang. They control six blocks. We're no match for them!" Ryan said. "If we make a move on them, the Redneck Gang on 47th Street will definitely take the chance to attack us!"

All of Hell's Kitchen had 24 streets, scattered with hundreds of factions, big and small. One move and the whole place would shift.

As for why "hundreds" instead of an exact number?

Because gangs fought every day. Some were founded today and wiped out tomorrow. The underworld's information network wasn't exactly public, so updates were slow. A gang could be wiped out for half a year before the people on the next street even found out.

So the question was: why was the Gray Squirrel Gang so weak, yet managed to survive so long?

Because their location was oddly strategic.

Looking out the window, across the vast Hudson River, Pier 86 was lined with over a dozen aircraft of various types.

There were fighter jets, reconnaissance planes, and one very famous one—the Concorde, a Franco-British supersonic airliner.

Back in the day, to meet the demands of more efficient transport and the Cold War arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, France and Britain jointly developed this supersonic airliner. But due to its deafening noise and multiple accidents during service, public trust in the plane collapsed. In 2003, the Concorde was retired, and one of them ended up here.

Why were so many planes parked here?

Because this was the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. A decommissioned aircraft carrier was docked here for tourists to visit.

But in 2006, the ship was towed away for major repairs, so the carrier wasn't visible at the pier now. Still, some of the planes that weren't on the carrier could still be seen.

The Gray Squirrel Gang's territory bordered Pier 86. They couldn't possibly fly those fighters—they couldn't afford pilots either—but they could blow them up.

The Gray Squirrel Gang couldn't beat any other gang, but they could trigger divine retribution by blowing up the fighters—bringing down the American military like a plague of locusts, and everyone would go down together.

With that deterrent, the Gray Squirrel Gang barely managed to survive in the 46th Block, running a few bars and casinos.

Their revenue streams included bars, casinos, prostitution, cocaine, human trafficking, debt collection, and so on.

The neighboring Viper Gang was about the same. It was like that all over America.

Ryan was still grumbling, but Bai Jing ignored him, studying the intel on their neighbors.

"Redneck" was a derogatory term used by "high-class whites" for "low-class whites," similar to "hillbilly" or "hick" in Chinese.

Most of them came from the southern U.S., and a large portion of those were from Texas, so "Redneck" sometimes specifically referred to Texans.

Their ancestors were farmers, poorly educated, and heavy drinkers, so they were generally hot-tempered and hard to reason with.

Because of their low education levels, Rednecks tended to marry and have kids early. And what happens when a woman is uneducated and her man is a drunk?

Domestic violence rates skyrocket.

Again, due to lack of education, they couldn't tell right from wrong. In Bai Jing's world, one clever man used simple, vivid metaphors, speeches without any complex language, and highly inflammatory yet shallow slogans to win their favor, eventually climbing to the pinnacle of American power.

As for the Viper Gang, their core members were mostly from southern Mexico. Mexican cartels were bigger than the state itself, and competition was even fiercer. A bunch of gangsters who failed back home smuggled into America and settled in Hell's Kitchen.

With connections to Mexico, the Viper Gang could get a steady supply of cocaine. They were also Hell's Kitchen's biggest cocaine supplier—nearly forty percent of the cocaine flowing into Hell's Kitchen came through their channels before spreading across the country.

From a cautious standpoint, taking out the Rednecks first would be easier. If they wiped out the Viper Gang, the cocaine supply chain would collapse, and all the other gangs would come knocking. They'd be hard-pressed to hold out.

But that was exactly the effect Bai Jing wanted.

He was a superhuman, able to cut through Hell's Kitchen with almost no opposition. He didn't have the time to take down every gang one by one.

Better to gather everyone together, have a chat, and wrap up the negotiations in one go.

General Tso's Chicken was considered the number one Chinese dish in the eyes of foreigners, but in reality, hardly any Chinese had ever eaten it. Bai Jing was seeing it for the first time.

The dish was golden, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. He took a bite—sweet, crunchy, soft, and a little spicy.

The taste was surprisingly good!

Next, he tried the Mapo Tofu.

Bai Jing wasn't from some wealthy family, and the Mapo Tofu he'd eaten back home wasn't authentic either—some places made it sweet, others spicy, and the tofu itself came in all sorts of varieties.

As for what authentic Mapo Tofu actually tasted like, he had no idea.

But he thought the one Ryan had bought was pretty good, delicious even.

"Is there a Chinese restaurant nearby?" Bai Jing asked curiously.

"Yeah, there's one called Yun Gui Xiang!" Ryan mimicked the Chinese pronunciation of the three characters with a fair attempt: "It's just down the street, run by a short, fat Chinese guy!"

As he spoke, he instinctively reached for his eyes to pull them into slits, but suddenly remembered his boss was Chinese himself. He froze, not knowing whether to go through with it or not, looking extremely awkward.

"You're Latino yourself, a race that gets discriminated against, and you still discriminate against Chinese?" Bai Jing chuckled. He'd always heard that Chinese had low status in America, but it turned out it wasn't just empty talk!

Ryan gave an awkward smile and said, "No, no, boss, I've always respected you!"