After Clearing the Infinite Flow, I Tamed the Mad Dog Boss - Chapter 16

Chapter 16

After helping the little girl find a safe place to hide, Qin Xian and Huang Quxie crawled back into the ditch.

Huang Quxie’s expression was grave as he asked Qin Xian for advice. “Friend, what do we do next? You seem to understand this situation better.”

Qin Xian no longer dodged the question. “We have to go back to the area around those two rows of temporary housing. More people were tortured there. Some may even have died, which means something strange may be occupying the place.”

Huang Quxie nodded. “All right. I’ll follow your lead.”

Spring had not yet had time to bring much rain, so the bottom of the ditch held only a soft layer of sand. It seemed safe and clean enough.

The streetlights outside occasionally shone in through the gaps, so they did not even need a light.

But before they had crawled far, the streetlights ahead went dark. The ditch before them sank into pure blackness, and a faint stench of rot drifted out of it. The farther they crawled, the stronger the smell became.

Qin Xian frowned and stopped. In a low voice, he said to Huang Quxie, “Something’s wrong. Let’s get out first-”

Before he could finish, his hand touched something sticky and slimy. The texture was revolting, and it even seemed to be writhing.

Startled, Qin Xian immediately pulled out the small knife strapped to his leg and stabbed down.

Squelch.

It felt as if the blade had sunk into something soft and rotten, yet within that mess of sludge came the sound of metal striking metal.

“Holy crap! There’s something here!” Huang Quxie suddenly cried out from behind him. Qin Xian’s heart jolted. He slammed open the covers above both himself and Huang Quxie, then stood up.

In the dim light, the two of them realized that, at some point, a pile of monsters had crawled into the ditch from both directions.

They had rotting human torsos, but wires protruded from all over their bodies. Their necks gleamed with a metallic sheen, and a closer look revealed that they were actually several metal rods.

Huang Quxie desperately tried to climb out of the ditch, only to feel something wrap around his leg. He swallowed and looked back. Several loops of electrical wire were wound around his leg, and the other end was connected to one of the monsters.

Seeing that they had been discovered, the monsters abruptly stood and raked their claws at them-claws made of bone mixed with steel reinforcement bars.

Qin Xian immediately jumped up and dodged the attack. The monster pitched forward, its claws scraping the ground with an ear-piercing screech of metal.

A second monster charged over at once, its head almost pressing against Qin Xian’s face.

In the faint light, the two finally saw what the monsters looked like. Below the head, they still had human bodies, but half of each head was a rotting human face, while the other half was actually a tablet computer. It looked as if the tablet had grown out of the brain and forced the skin of the face apart.

Huang Quxie was so frightened that he kicked madly at the wires on his leg, shouting in despair, “What the hell is this zombie-meets-cyberpunk thing?! How did it even form? Did humans and electronics crossbreed?!”

Seeing that he could not kick the wires off, the veins on his arm bulged. He punched the monster squarely in the face. The crisp sound of a shattering screen rang out, and the back of his hand was instantly cut open by the sharp glass fragments.

The monster fell backward. Huang Quxie seized the chance, grabbed his combat knife, and began cutting through the tough wires around his leg.

On Qin Xian’s side, he simply picked up a very handy weapon from the roadside: a three-pronged rake farmers used to loosen soil. Raising it high, he brought it down and hoed one Cyber Zombie after another.

But the commotion quickly drew the villagers’ attention. Someone seemed to be charging toward them with flashlights and weapons. Only when they got closer did Qin Xian and Huang Quxie realize those were not flashlights held in their hands at all. The flashlights were their heads. This was yet another kind of monster.

Mixed in among the monsters were some normal-looking humans holding machetes. Yet these people treated the monsters around them as ordinary companions, as if they saw nothing abnormal at all. Their blood-red eyes locked viciously onto Qin Xian and Huang Quxie.

“Grab them!” a villager roared, raising his machete as he charged forward.

With one swing of the rake, Qin Xian knocked the machete straight out of his hand. Then he stepped on the blade with the tip of his foot, flicked it up, and sent it flying into his own hand.

He handed the machete directly to Huang Quxie.

Huang Quxie hurriedly took it and stood back-to-back with Qin Xian, the long blade in his hand pointed toward the encircling villagers and monsters.

Panting, Huang Quxie asked, “Are these monsters living people?”

Qin Xian replied, “If their appearance hasn’t changed much, they’re alive. If their heads have already changed, they’re dead.”

“Got it.” Huang Quxie raised the machete with both hands and struck a still-intact villager hard with the back of the blade. The other man had no combat experience at all and was knocked to the ground unconscious in one blow.

Qin Xian laughed. “As expected of a people’s police officer.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he brought the rake down and smashed a Flashlight Man to pieces. The glass cover on the monster’s head shattered all over the ground, and it toppled over with a swaying thud.

A human villager beside it jumped in fright. But just as he mustered the courage to attack, Qin Xian kicked him in the stomach. The man gagged, then curled up on the ground clutching his belly.

Qin Xian glanced at the shrimp-like figure on the ground and looked up, ready to counterattack again. Suddenly, a blast of strong light stabbed straight into his eyes.

His vision instantly went white. He could not see a thing.

“Tch. Huang Quxie, duck!” Qin Xian roared. Then, gripping the shaft of the three-pronged rake with both hands, he spun in place with a full-force sweep.

Huang Quxie stared at the sharp teeth rushing toward him and yelped, “Holy crap!” He barely managed to crouch in time. The three-pronged rake whistled over his scalp and swept hard through the enemies around them. Screams rose one after another.

Huang Quxie clutched his head, cold sweat pouring down his back, and for a moment he did not dare move at all. If he had reacted even a little slower, Qin Xian would have split his skull open. He even began to wonder whether following Qin Xian had been a good idea after all.
Huang Quxie had turned into a mushroom and was crouched on the ground. Around him, the monsters and villagers had all been forced two meters back by the spinning three-pronged rake. Not a single thing dared come close.

Qin Xian blinked hard, fighting to get his vision back, and shouted at Huang Quxie, “Move! Break out!”

With that, he raised the bloodstained rake at the nearest villager. In the darkness, his eyes looked unnaturally cold, his face splashed with blood.

The villager let out an “Awooo!” in a broken-gong voice, turned, and ran. Seeing that, the other timid villagers scattered like frightened birds and beasts.

“Wait for me!” Huang Quxie scrambled to his feet and charged after Qin Xian with his knife raised.

But the moment they broke through the encirclement, his scalp went numb. Along the village road, between the field ridges, and inside the houses, shadowy figures were swaying out from every direction, all of them approaching with heads of wildly different shapes.

Huang Quxie struggled to keep up behind Qin Xian, watching him vault over ridges, debris, and ditches with absurd agility. He was in complete awe.

“No, seriously, bro… did you used to do triathlons or something? Wait for me…”

Qin Xian dodged a monster and replied, “Talk less, or you won’t keep up.”

Looking at the endless stream of monsters, Huang Quxie still could not help wailing, “Why are there so many of them? Brother Qin, do they have any weaknesses?”

“How would I know?” Qin Xian answered while kicking one over. Then his gaze suddenly shifted. He spotted something and changed his tune. “But we can try.”

“Try what?” Huang Quxie was still confused when he saw Qin Xian run toward a house. At the base of its outer wall was a protruding faucet, even connected to a long hose.

Huang Quxie lit up. “Right! Electronics are afraid of water!”

Qin Xian rushed over, picked up the hose, and turned the faucet all the way on. Water gushed from the end of the hose. Qin Xian deliberately pinched the tube, making the stream thinner and sharper, shooting three or four meters out.

The water struck a monster with a flashlight for a head. The flashlight gave a sizzling crackle, then mechanically froze and toppled on the spot.

“It works! Increase the water pressure!” Huang Quxie cheered, pumping a fist.

Qin Xian moved the hose, sweeping the spray across them. Flashlight heads, camera heads, and the like fell one after another. But the monsters with phones and tablets for heads only paused for a moment before charging over again, claws bared.

Huang Quxie froze, then loudly complained, “Holy shit! That iPad’s waterproof!”

Qin Xian: “…”

He decisively aimed the water jet with precision at the things that were not waterproof, cutting down part of the enemy force. Before he could even catch his breath, the ground suddenly began to tremble, and a black metal claw burst up from beneath the soil.

Qin Xian’s brows drew tight as the earth bulged. A gigantic monster, at least three meters tall, broke out of the ground. On top of its head was an enormous camera. The instant it emerged, its lens locked onto Qin Xian and Huang Quxie with a click, and an unbearably dazzling white flash lit up. Both of their eyes stabbed with pain, and at the same time, their bodies went rigid, unable to move.

This thing actually came with such a powerful control effect.

Qin Xian shut his eyes and tried his hardest to move his limbs, but his entire body felt like it had turned to stone. He could not budge an inch.

At the same time, he heard the ground cracking open. The earth beneath his feet seemed to split completely. A violent sense of weightlessness hit him, and Qin Xian felt himself drop several meters like a statue before landing on the ground with a bang.

Strangely, because his whole body was rigid, the impact caused no damage at all.

Once his eyes recovered from the glare, Qin Xian saw several knives pressed against his neck. Three human villagers were pinning him to the ground with savage grins.

He glanced at Huang Quxie. He was getting the exact same treatment. In fact, because he looked so sturdy, it took four people to hold him down. His face was shoved into the dirt, and no matter how he struggled, he could not move.

“Get up!”

A villager roughly dragged Qin Xian off the ground. The knife edge pressed closer, cutting a small nick into the skin of his neck.

Qin Xian tilted his head back slightly and did not resist.

The villager behind him laughed. “Don’t move! Move even a little and your head’s gone! Hmph, we finally caught you two. First time we’ve ever run into people this hard to catch.”

Another villager replied, “They’re probably not ordinary people. This one has a gun. He might be a cop.”

“A cop!? Then he can’t be the only one, right? The cops didn’t all come to our village to arrest people, did they?”

“He’s the only one. Besides, are we scared of cops now? Heh. If the cops come, we’ll wipe them all out… Speaking of, didn’t we catch a cop a few days ago who came looking for someone? Wonder if he’s dead yet.”

Qin Xian saw Huang Quxie’s expression darken instantly.

So this one had also come to save someone. He just did not know why Huang Quxie had come alone. Where were the other police officers?

The villagers’ conversation continued.

“Dead? Definitely not. He’s got a nice face and a good body. Some rich ladies in the livestream liked him, so we sent him to the Borderline Group. Speaking of, don’t we have someone with an even better face right here? This face is worth money…”

The villager chuckled and reached out, trying to pinch Qin Xian’s face. But Qin Xian turned his head and bit down. As his teeth clamped hard, he jerked his head to the side.

“Aaaaghhh!!! My hand, my hand!!!!” the villager screamed, collapsing to the ground and rolling around. Qin Xian, meanwhile, smiled with half a severed finger between his teeth, then spat it onto the ground with a disgusted “Ptooey.”