Northern Manhattan's Harlem, an area straddling Central Park, bounded by the Hudson River to the west and Fifth Avenue to the east, formed a notoriously terrifying neighborhood together with the neighboring Bronx.
Mansions had once lined its streets.
After the American Civil War, Black people moved in and white residents gradually moved out, while European immigrants began expanding farther north. World War I brought another great influx of African immigrants, and by the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem had become a predominantly Black neighborhood. After the devastation of the Great Depression and World War II, it had turned into a slum.
Theft, robbery, and murder were the words most often associated with the place, while "pharmaceuticals" were practically a form of currency.
Prostitutes and pimps frequented Times Square, while Central Park became a hunting ground for robbery and rape. Homeless people and drug dealers occupied the abandoned buildings.
Zhang Xiao followed the sweating man who clutched his arm. Under threat of a gun, the other lackeys had driven them here, only to bolt the moment they got out.
"Your gang's based here? It doesn't look all that big..." Zhang Xiao studied the modest factory building curiously. At most, it resembled an old auto repair shop.
It covered perhaps a few hundred square meters, with a three-story steel frame. Its mottled walls and roof looked shabby and worn; the building had clearly been around for years.
"Fair enough. If you were really powerful, you probably wouldn't be robbing street performers."
The man clutching his arm had a twisted expression, half from pain and half from fury.
All the way here, this young Asian man had kept talking to him. Who knew where he'd learned his trash talk? The thug had been undefeated in trash-talk battles across an entire neighborhood, yet he hadn't lasted