After Clearing the Infinite Flow, I Tamed the Mad Dog Boss - Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Getting to Fangu Village meant taking a three-hour coach to City C, then transferring from that prefecture-level city to a town.

From the town to the village, there was still a short-distance bus to catch-one that only ran twice a day.

The battered little bus swayed and rattled along. Most of the air-conditioning was broken; fortunately, it was spring, so it wasn’t so stuffy that anyone would get heatstroke.

A faint sour stench drifted through the carriage, and the seat cushions had long since lost any trace of their original color.

Even in that environment, Qin Xian still slept well.

Or rather, he had slept the whole way, seizing every minute to recover his energy.

“Hey, friend, do you know where to get off for Fangu Village?”

“Second-to-last stop on this route. There’s a road sign beside it. Look for yourself.”

“Thanks, brother.”

Hearing the key words, Qin Xian lifted his eyelids and glanced over. Seated ahead of him was a burly middle-aged man. The skin on the back of his head was dark, and his hair had been shaved down to a short layer of stubble.

This man was going to Fangu Village too. No telling what for.

Qin Xian closed his eyes again. When he heard the driver call out the name Fangu Village in off-key Mandarin, he picked up his heavy backpack and got off the bus.

The spring mountains were green, threaded here and there with patches of withered yellow that had yet to revive. Clear birdsong rang out from the woods. The sun was slanting west, and wisps of cooking smoke rose from distant farmhouses.

No matter how one looked at it, this was a peaceful countryside scene. A place like this was actually rather suitable for keeping a dog-the space was wide enough that you would not even need to walk it. He wondered how that new member of the household was doing. In any case, he had already given Lin Qizhi detailed instructions, so there probably would not be any major problems.

Qin Xian hitched his backpack and walked straight ahead.

“Hey, little brother.”

The man who had gotten off with him called out.

Qin Xian turned around and stood there in silence, waiting for the other man to speak.

The man studied Qin Xian carefully. His gaze was open and honest, not the sort that made people uncomfortable.

“Little brother, my surname’s Huang. I’m here to visit relatives. Are you a local?”

Qin Xian shook his head.

The other man chuckled. “I didn’t think you looked like one. Are you here to… travel? Sketch?”

Qin Xian said, “Sorry. I don’t want to say too much to strangers.”

The man scratched his head awkwardly. Seeing Qin Xian turn and walk away, he still jogged after him and stubbornly kept the conversation going. “Well, actually, I’m not here to visit relatives. I know someone here who made over a million in two months from livestreaming! I came to learn from him. I heard there are a lot of influencers and streamers in Fangu Village, and they all make tons of money.”

Qin Xian ignored him and silently walked on.

The man continued, “Must be nice. I want to be an influencer and make money too. Hey, little brother, don’t ignore me. We still have at least another fifteen or twenty minutes to walk. I’m the kind of person who can’t sit still; I just want someone to talk to. What should I call you, little brother?”

“Qin.” Qin Xian finally bestowed a single word on him.

The man was delighted. “Nice to meet you, Little Brother Qin! It’s okay if I call you that, right? I’m a bit older than you, so you can call me Brother Huang. Of course, you can call me by my name too. I’m Huang Quxie.”

Qin Xian humored him casually. “Oh. Fine.”

Then he fell silent again, observing their surroundings as he trudged forward.

Huang Quxie fidgeted, scratching his ears and cheeks, but he still leaned in with one-sided enthusiasm. “Little Brother Qin, you’re from the city, right? Are you interested in livestreaming too?”

Qin Xian turned his head. “What if I am? What if I’m not? You keep asking me that. What exactly are you trying to say?”

Huang Quxie’s expression grew a little more serious. “If you’re interested in livestreaming, then you’d better not go.”

Qin Xian asked, “Because you want one less person cutting into the profits?”

“No.” Huang Quxie denied it at once. “I heard there are actually some illegal dealings in this village. Some of the livestreams aren’t exactly legal. Of course, I’m not afraid. I’m an ex-convict myself, and I can’t find any decent work anyway. But you look like you haven’t been out of college long, right? You’re good-looking too. Coming to a mountain backwater like this would put you at even greater risk. You should find a proper job instead.”

After listening, Qin Xian tilted his head back and smiled.

It was the first time Huang Quxie had seen him smile, and he froze on the spot.

Qin Xian brushed the braid draped over his shoulder behind his back, revealing the pale side of his neck. His smile was so striking it made people stare.

His lips parted lightly. “With a face like this, wouldn’t it be a waste if I didn’t become an influencer?”

He was indeed outstanding-looking. Even when he wore a cold expression, he had a dangerous, eye-catching quality about him. When he smiled, that effect only grew stronger.

Huang Quxie said, “…It’s not illegal. If you start a stream and just sit there, people will send you money even if you don’t say a word. Which means you have even less reason to come to a mountain backwater like this!”

Qin Xian’s face returned to blank indifference. “None of your business. You’re really nosy.”

Huang Quxie: “…”

That attitude really could infuriate a person to death. Huang Quxie could only grit his teeth and sigh. After giving Qin Xian a look of bitter disappointment, he shut his mouth and silently followed behind him.

Fangu Village actually was not particularly remote. The concrete road was smooth, and electricity, water, and internet were all available. Some households along the road had even built small villas.

As soon as Qin Xian entered the village, he saw someone livestreaming.

A villager was in his own courtyard, making exaggerated faces and holding his fingers in a delicate, feminine pose as he rubbed them back and forth over his chest. The movement was thoroughly disgusting.

“Thank you, big brothers, for the gifts. Ah Hua has money to buy yummy food for Mama again today!”

Judging by that falsetto voice, it was clearly a man. And yet he was wearing a dress, with a messy smear of makeup painted across his face.
Huang Quxie pointed at the villagers and said, “You see? With beauty filters this powerful nowadays, even people like that can pretend to be pretty girls and trick viewers into tipping them. Turn on a filter and everyone’s handsome or gorgeous. But you don’t sweet-talk people, and you don’t like to chat. You might as well go back early and do something proper.”

Qin Xian hadn’t expected him to still be so fixated on talking him into leaving. He shot back, “Are you cursing me to not make any money? You’d be better off worrying about yourself. Even fewer people are into your kind of persona.”

Huang Quxie: “…”

This time, he went completely silent, probably because Qin Xian’s jab had hit home.

There really were a lot of people livestreaming in this little village. Every household they passed was livestreaming. Even from far away, they could hear the villagers interacting with their viewers.

“Waaah! Thank you, family! You’re all amazing! Yesterday our family was still worried about our unsold fruit, and today more than half of it sold just like that! You’re my second parents! Hey, newcomers can take a look too-juicy peaches bursting with juice, grown by our own family. Where else could you buy these for just 29.9 yuan?”

From over ten meters away, Qin Xian watched the villager selling fruit crush the peach in his hand. Juice splattered everywhere, making it look delicious.

But after walking all this way, he hadn’t seen a single peach tree in the area.

Qin Xian and Huang Quxie continued forward. A young man holding a phone looked over at them, then immediately raised his phone and ran over.

“Hey, bros, mm!” the young man cried strangely, shoving the phone up in front of Qin Xian. Looking at the screen, he continued loudly, “I was planning to show you the trap I set in the river last night, but now there’s something way more interesting. A handsome guy actually showed up in a place like our village!”

The phone screen was practically in his face. Displeased, Qin Xian stepped back.

The young man’s attention was mostly on his livestream. Seeing Qin Xian move, he chased after him and adjusted the angle to keep Qin Xian’s face in frame. But when his own face appeared in the same shot as Qin Xian’s, something hilarious happened.

Because the young man had maxed out his beauty filter, with face slimming, enlarged eyes, skin smoothing, whitening, and a whole pile of other effects, even though in real life his complexion was sallow and his mouth protruded, on the phone screen he looked like a fairly outstanding pretty boy.

Qin Xian, however, was a different story. His already good-looking face was over-processed by the beauty filter until his chin was sharper than a shoe, his eyes bigger than a frog’s, and his face as white as paper.

Comments immediately flew across the livestream: [Holy crap, did your village discover an alien?!]

[I’m dying. How high did the streamer turn up his beauty filter?]

[Sure enough, another fake hottie. Now I’m really curious what ugly mess you actually look like.]

The young man’s face darkened. He said the signal was bad and hurriedly shut off the livestream.

He had thought he’d found good material, only for it to backfire. He was definitely going to lose a ton of followers.

The young man stared at Qin Xian’s face with an unhappy expression and said in an extremely low voice, “I really want to peel your face off.”

Qin Xian said, “What?”

The young man snorted coldly. “Nothing. Who are you? You look like some city person. What are you doing here?”

At some point, Qin Xian had taken out a jar of face cream. He said, “I sell cosmetics. I know livestreaming is big here, so I wanted to find someone to discuss business with in person.”

Though the young man was a little suspicious, his attitude improved somewhat. “Discuss business? This is the first time I’ve seen someone come here personally. Who are you looking to talk business with?”

Qin Xian asked in return, “I contacted someone before, but now that I see so many people in your village are in this line of work, you’re a big streamer too, right? You really do have quite a lot of followers.”

Praised with the words “big streamer,” the young man’s expression eased again. “Eh, my follower count doesn’t even rank in our village. So now you want to find whoever has the most followers?”

“That’s right. Since I’m already here, of course I want to choose the best. Could you show me the way?”

The young man subconsciously glanced deeper into the village, but immediately showed some resistance.

“Keep going inside. There are a few households that are all really good at moving products. Go take a look yourself. I still need to figure out how to explain things to my followers. Tsk, this is all your fault… #&*”

By the end, his vicious complaints grew so quiet they were hard to make out. After all, this was also because he’d been too rash. Even if he went looking for trouble with this outsider, the followers he’d lost wouldn’t come back.

Besides…

The young man glanced at the sturdy Huang Quxie beside him, then shut his mouth and walked away.

City people really were city people. They even brought a bodyguard on a trip out here.

Huang Quxie had no idea he had been mistaken for a bodyguard. He followed Qin Xian and said, “So now you’re saying you’re here to discuss business?”

Qin Xian didn’t answer him. He walked straight another three hundred meters or so deeper into the village. There were clearly more houses in this area, but what stood out was that, at a glance, seven or eight of them were newly built villas that looked especially grand.

Soon, a middle-aged woman ran out of one of the houses.

When she saw Qin Xian, she greeted him warmly. “Oh? I heard from Xiao Yang outside that a big boss came to discuss business? What should I call you, boss?”

Qin Xian was blunt. “I’m sorry, but more than discussing business, I’d like to learn from your experience.”

The woman’s expression changed immediately, her eyes rolling upward. “Tch, another one.”

But soon, her eyes rolled back, and she sized Qin Xian up as she said, “But you might actually be cut out for this. Come on. Perfect timing-you can appear on my sales livestream.”