After letting his mind go blank for five minutes, the first question that popped into the hot-blooded Bruce Brown’s brain was who in this neighbourhood was tougher and meaner than him.
He was still in that state of transcendent rage, but Ye Chen, the target of his anger, was no longer in front of him, so he had to find his next opponent.
Soon, a face emerged in his mind. That person was named Liam, the one he usually feared encountering the most in this neighbourhood.
Liam was only three years older than Bruce Brown, but he had entered society much earlier. In his early years, he was also an idle street thug, occasionally robbing passers-by or small corner shops.
But in the last two or three years, Liam had joined a small gang that was quite well-known in the nearby neighbourhoods, becoming a gang member.
The gang structure in Australia was very similar to that in Europe and America. Although their organisational structure was not rigorous enough, the hierarchy was very clear.
In a city, the most powerful gang certainly controlled the most profitable businesses, such as the most lucrative prohibited goods and gambling industries.
However, the most powerful gang could not achieve complete dominance. There were often several players at the same level dividing territories and competing with each other.
In the areas that top gangs disdained to pay attention to, there were still a large number of other gangs, such as some living off the sex industry, others living off extortion and collecting protection fees.
Further down were the kind of gangs where Liam was, they had no real systematic industries, just hiding in various nooks and crannies to eat some scraps and leftovers. For example, top gangs distributed prohibited goods to some mid-level distributors, these distributors then took the prohibited goods and mixed in a large amount of impurities for repackaging, making them into retail versions of a few dozen dollars a small packet, selling to bottom-level users.
And these retail versions were peddled on the streets by the small gangs below.
Take Australia’s most rampant methamphetamine as an example. Its high-end consumers included tycoons, white-collar workers, influencers, and nightclub courtesans. These customer sources had high profit margins and could drive their other consumption. Each one was a cash cow for the gang. Such customers were something small gangs like Liam’s could never access. If they dared to go to high-end hotels or nightclubs to sell inferior products, higher-level gangs would wipe them out in minutes.
This was the concept of territory.
Territories with high-end users were like fertile soil or even gold mines. Territory owners would go all out to defend their interests. Once someone dared to touch their core interests, they would inevitably strike back with deadly force.
Because of this, Liam’s gang could only mix on the streets, selling to those penniless addicts who could only get a few dozen dollars by stealing and cheating.
But even so, the profit margin was very generous.
A small packet of one hundred Australian dollars in prohibited goods could bring them at least forty Australian dollars in profit. As long as their small gang could control a slum and cover a few hundred addicts, relying on these drug bugs every day, they would have at least ten thousand Australian dollars in net profit. Although Liam was just a tail-end little brother in this gang, getting a few hundred Australian dollars a day was not difficult.
In Melbourne’s slums, a few hundred Australian dollars a day was already a very good income level, because Melbourne’s median income was only about a hundred or so Australian dollars a day. Liam’s few hundred a day, three hundred and sixty days a year without rest, could earn at least one hundred thousand Australian dollars a year. In Melbourne, that exceeded most white-collar workers.
In contrast, Bruce Brown was far behind. He wanted to join such a gang but never had the opportunity. His small group had no territory of their own and did not dare to mess with the prohibited goods business, so they had no stable source of income at all. Occasionally robbing some money on the street was almost his only source of income.
A few months ago, Bruce Brown saved up a few hundred Australian dollars, said a lot of nice words, to get Liam to do him the favour of eating a meal together.
At the dinner table, Bruce Brown gave all the expensive ingredients he ordered to Liam, starving himself, humbly begging Liam to introduce him into the gang. But after Liam finished eating and drinking, he wiped his mouth and told Bruce Brown that a little punk like him had no qualification to join his gang, and eating his meal was already lowering himself.
After saying that, Liam stood up and strode away.
At that moment, Bruce Brown felt utterly humiliated.
But even so, he did not dare to settle accounts with Liam, could only silently swallow this bitter pill, while vowing in his heart that one day he would climb higher than Liam and then step on him.
The courage he lacked before, Ye Chen gave him now.
So, he weighed the baseball bat in his hand, obsessed, said to his group of little brothers: “Let’s go, find Liam and take him out. From now on, I’ll be the most powerful rookie in the entire South District of Melbourne. Maybe his boss will appreciate me for it, let me replace his position. Then we’ll really soar!”
Psychological suggestion was equivalent to a thought stamp, making people deeply believe in the suggested content, even forgetting reality and ignoring reality because of it.
Bruce Brown was originally a thug with low education and even lower quality. His cognition of the world was extremely superficial. Plus, he had watched too many gangster movies, always feeling that maybe some special opportunity could get him appreciated by the big shots, thus skyrocketing.
And the psychological suggestion Ye Chen gave him prompted the first thought he had, which was to replace Liam with ruthlessness.
