After Clearing the Infinite Flow, I Tamed the Mad Dog Boss - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The office air was heavy and sticky, carrying the cheap, sour smell of low-grade renovation materials. Rows of desks were occupied by rows of blank-faced people, the clatter of keyboards and mice rising and falling in waves, yet not a single voice could be heard.

Qin Xian frowned at the computer screen. Unknown files, incomprehensible charts, and a WeChat notification badge with 99+ messages were enough to make anyone irritated.

The screen flickered twice, then the page suddenly turned a ghastly red. Thick, bloodlike liquid surged across the monitor, the taskbar at the bottom drowning in tears of blood, while the trash can icon toppled over and a ghostly hand reached out from it.

Qin Xian jerked backward so hard that his chair slid a few centimeters across the floor with a sharp screech. The sound instantly snapped him awake. In the blink of an eye, everything around him was normal again.

The others turned at the noise and gave him a quick glance. Seeing that he was an unfamiliar coworker, they turned back immediately and continued their numb typing. Bright sunlight spilled across the floor, and the air conditioner hummed loudly.

What now? Had he stayed in the Infinite Flow World for so long that even his mind had gone bad? He had clearly cleared the game and returned safely to the real world.

“Hey, Qin Xian? You okay? Why are you so pale? Low blood sugar?”

The bespectacled coworker beside him handed over a piece of candy. Qin Xian lifted his head, and the coworker froze at once.

Huh? Had Qin Xian always had hair this long? And had he always looked this good? He vaguely remembered that Qin Xian had been decent-looking before, but he always kept his head down and seemed so withdrawn that he barely stood out.

But now… his features were refined and cool, and even with that frown on his face, he was striking in a way that was hard to ignore. He just didn’t look very approachable.

The coworker stumbled over his words for a second: “Uh, d-do you want candy?”

Qin Xian lowered his eyes to look at him, trying to be polite the way he used to. “Thanks…”

But what was this person’s name again?

His impression of this job, this office, and all the coworkers here had already become quite hazy. He only remembered that this lousy job kept him on a 24/7 grind, paid little, dumped a ton of work on him, and had a management team full of idiots. If he hadn’t desperately needed money right after graduating college, he never would have stayed here.

Forget it. He’d just quit tomorrow.

Qin Xian took the candy from the coworker’s hand, popped it into his mouth, leaned back in his chair, and pulled out his phone to slack off.

He had disappeared from this world for two years already. He had no idea how the Main God had made him appear here two years later without anything seeming out of place. Even his coworkers hadn’t noticed anything wrong, and his workstation hadn’t changed at all.

The coworker saw him so brazenly slacking off and stared in alarm. “Qin Xian, what are you doing? The monitor’s pointed at you! Slacking off at work gets you a four-hundred-yuan deduction each time!”

Qin Xian didn’t even lift his eyelids. “Then deduct it.”

“Damn, that’s four hundred yuan!”

“Four hundred? Labor law doesn’t apply here?”

“…W-well, uh, forget it. I don’t have the guts to go head-to-head with the company.” The coworker gave him a thumbs-up, then immediately turned back to stare at his screen.

But Qin Xian could clearly see that he was just sitting there blankly, staring at the monitor, typing a few words and deleting them, while in the lower-right corner a fake ad pop-up was even playing a TV drama.

Clearly a grandmaster-level slacker. His monitor was even tilted slightly sideways, and from the camera angle the glare would be terrible.

Qin Xian turned his attention back to his phone. He had only been away for two years, and he was already out of touch with modern internet slang and memes. Even scrolling through short videos felt fresh to him.

Like this one right now-someone in the video was moving, but their fingers were sticking together. The moment before, they had been dancing; the next, three heads had glued together into one… He’d heard it was the latest in AI technology, but some of the results looked a lot like the things he had seen in those bizarre instances.

“Everyone to the conference room in three minutes!”

A rough voice suddenly echoed through the whole office. The bespectacled coworker beside him jumped in shock and hit Win+D, switching the screen to the desktop.

“What the hell? We’re about to get off work and now there’s a meeting!?”

“Sigh… you’ll get used to it.”

“I still have to pick up my kid tonight.”

The coworkers rose listlessly and drifted out of the office in twos and threes. Qin Xian picked up his phone and blended into the crowd, walking into the conference room with them. Everyone handed in their phones and took their seats one by one. With the crowd no longer blocking his view, Qin Xian saw the “person” sitting across from the long table. He subconsciously summoned his weapon, but there was nothing in his hand.

Calmly, he lowered his hand and sat down in his own seat with the other coworkers, continuing to observe the thing across the table in secret.

It was an abnormally fat man, collapsed in his chair and panting heavily. Layers of flesh were practically melting off his body and pooling on the floor. A slab of belly fat had even flowed over to a coworker’s feet, but that coworker acted as if he saw nothing, head down as he sorted the documents in his hands.

Qin Xian looked left and right. Aside from him, no one else in the conference room seemed to notice anything unusual.

He clenched his fist, his brows locking tightly together.

What was going on? Had he really never left the Infinite Flow World!? Was this another new instance? Damn it, the Main God was actually messing with him!

“Qin Xian! Lift your head! I already saw it on the monitor. You’re playing on your phone in broad daylight during work hours. Stand up and think about what you’ve done!”

Qin Xian looked up, his dark eyes locking onto CEO Zhao with absolute precision, killing intent spilling out in waves.

CEO Zhao shuddered comically, stunned speechless by that gaze.

“Y-you… what, you refusing to accept that!? You’re going too far! Pack your things and get out tomorrow!”
He thrust out his hand and slapped the table in fury. His fat made wet, smacking sounds, leaving behind marks that could have been sweat or grease.

“Oh. Fine.” Qin Xian elegantly lifted one long leg and crossed it over the other, his tone calm, as if he were the highest-ranking person in the office.

CEO Zhao was so angry that the fat all over his body shook. He slammed the table and tried to stand, but his bloated body kept him from getting up. Instead, he sat down so hard that the metal chair beneath him collapsed completely.

With a loud clang, he landed right on the floor, the nearly bald top of his head level with the tabletop.

The conference room went silent for a few seconds. Then someone let out a snort of laughter. Once that started, the others could no longer hold it in.

“Hahahaha…”

“You! You goddamn bastards… I’m docking all of your performance bonuses this month! All of them!”

One coworker panicked at once and hurried over to help CEO Zhao up from the floor. But the moment he reached out, CEO Zhao seized him tightly by the collar.

“You laughed just now too, didn’t you? I heard it! It was this mouth that laughed…”

He reached out and grabbed the coworker’s cheek.

The coworker immediately screamed. CEO Zhao’s fingernails had actually dug into the flesh of his face. With terrifying strength, he slowly tore the skin at the corner of the man’s mouth apart, sending blood spraying out.

This time, everyone finally saw the horrific scene clearly. Some screamed in terror. Others tried to rush out of the conference room, only to find that the door had somehow locked itself from the inside and would not budge.

Just then, a figure suddenly vaulted onto the conference table.

Bracing both hands on the tabletop, he kicked off with one long leg and drove it straight into CEO Zhao’s face.

With that single kick, CEO Zhao, whose massive body had to weigh over six hundred pounds, screamed and flew backward, smashing into the whiteboard, coffee table, and other clutter behind him.

The fat on CEO Zhao’s body seemed to absorb most of the damage. He had not been down long before he crawled back up in a rage, roaring as he scrambled onto the table on all fours, stretching his arms as far as he could to grab Qin Xian. Faced with such a sluggish attack, Qin Xian merely shifted to the side and avoided it. Supporting himself with one hand, he leaped down from the conference table and kicked CEO Zhao in the face again.

The crack of breaking bone rang out at the same time as a muffled scream. The others could not help shuddering.

CEO Zhao’s face caved in. Screaming, he tried to grab Qin Xian’s foot, but Qin Xian did not hesitate in the slightest. He lifted his foot and stomped down hard on the man’s hand as well, not stopping even when the bones gave off a horrifying crunch.

After several kicks, CEO Zhao’s enormous body rapidly shrank back to the size of a normal human.

He rolled on the floor nonstop, clutching his head with his twisted hand. His nose bridge had collapsed, several teeth had fallen out, and his face was so covered in blood that he could no longer make a sound.

Qin Xian gave him a cold glance, picked up a nearby vase, and smashed it down on him. The vase shattered with a bang. Qin Xian selected the sharpest shard, raised it high, and was about to drive it into CEO Zhao’s neck.

“Don’t, Qin Xian! You can’t actually kill someone!” an urgent voice cried out.

Qin Xian turned his head and saw that the bespectacled coworker who had been sitting beside him earlier had left his seat and was standing next to him, trembling.

Seeing him stop, the bespectacled coworker hurried on, “Killing people is still against the law! You might go to prison for this. It’s not worth it!”

Qin Xian glanced at him coldly, then turned back and stabbed the shard down viciously. It sank into CEO Zhao’s neck, carving open a wound so deep that bone was visible.

“Ahh! Murder!”

The coworkers’ screams rang out, but Qin Xian, who had just killed someone, rose to his feet as if nothing had happened. He casually tossed the blood-covered shard aside and walked toward the others.

His serial-killer-like aura frightened everyone in the conference room so badly that they all surged toward the door, frantically trying to open it and escape.

“Ahhh! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

“Help! Someone’s dead! Open the door out there!”

“Hey.” Qin Xian called out speechlessly, but no one paid him any attention.

He sighed, picked up the ashtray on the table, and smashed it hard onto the floor. With a bang, the coworkers all flinched and looked over, trembling as they huddled together.

Looking at his coworkers, who were as frightened as quails, Qin Xian gave a cold laugh and pointed behind him. “Take a good look yourselves. Is that thing even human?”

One braver coworker poked his head out to look. The corpse of CEO Zhao lying on the floor had already swollen up. His skin was covered in corpse spots and gave off a foul stench, while maggots were even spilling from the freshly cut wound in his neck. He did not look like someone who had just died at all.

The stench slammed straight into everyone’s eyes and noses. For a moment, the entire conference room filled with the sound of vomiting.

Qin Xian silently took a step back and watched as the world around him slowly blurred, as if it were vanishing.

Was this the instance being cleared?

After a moment of disorientation, Qin Xian opened his eyes and abruptly discovered that he was still sitting at his workstation. The time on the wall had already reached 6:00 p.m.

He looked around. The other coworkers had also regained consciousness, but their expressions were shocked and blank. It was obvious they had no memory of what had just happened.

What was going on? Was this reality, or an instance?

Qin Xian frowned and sensed his surroundings, but that monster just now really did seem to be the source of the abnormal feeling.

Given his level, he should only be encountering high-difficulty instances. But the bizarre thing he had just run into had practically been beginner-level, the kind of existence ordinary people could beat to death with a few clubs if they ganged up on it…

Could there be some kind of trap?