After Clearing the Infinite Flow, I Tamed the Mad Dog Boss - Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Ghost Path? Ghost-controlling? What a joke.

“So this is how you all got played for fools?” Qin Xian laughed.

The fat man immediately got worked up.

“Played!? Isn’t all this real? Look at this stuff. We used to think ghosts didn’t exist, but then our boss opened our eyes. Now we’ve got magical powers too. We’re not ordinary people anymore!”

Yeah, it looked like they really were idiots. No wonder these people had been fooled. But it was also troublesome. After all, society had no shortage of morons. Now that they had supernatural powers, even two people could cause massive casualties. It seemed peace and quiet would be hard to come by from now on.

“Aren’t you worried that coming into contact with these supernatural things might have serious consequences?”

Compared to ghosts and monsters from legend, anomalies were far more terrifying. Their feeding and growth were not as simple as eating a few people. Instead, they tried to expand their “contamination,” assimilating or devouring more people.

Powerful anomalies could control more than half a city in one go. It was said that S-rank anomalies could contaminate an entire province.

And dealing with things like that was even more hopeless-no one who did so ever came to a good end. Back in the Infinite Flow World, some people had chosen to cooperate with anomalies or seek power from them. In the end, every last one of them had been contaminated and assimilated.

“You’re in luck. I’ve decided to save your lives,” Qin Xian suddenly said.

The fat man’s eyes lit up.

“You’re going to let us go!?”

Qin Xian’s expression turned eerily kind. “Why would I? I’m sending you off for some tea.”

Once they were in prison, they could sever their connection to the anomalies.

The fat man froze for a moment before understanding what he meant, then immediately began struggling.

“Fuck your mother! You call that-”

Crack!

A black whip lashed like lightning against the concrete slab by his feet. The slab actually split cleanly in two, the crack extending all the way beneath his butt.

His rear clearly felt the impact. Part of it even went a little numb.

“Uh, uh, uh… I’ll listen! I’ll listen!”

Qin Xian calmly put the whip away and ordered, “Carry him on your back. Go find the police over there yourselves. Speaking of which, with all this commotion, why haven’t any police come closer? Did you use some kind of item?”

“It was talisman paper. Once it’s burned nearby, anyone who comes over gets trapped in a Ghost Maze…”

Interesting.

“Let me see it.”

“It… it’s burned up. We only had one.”

Qin Xian gave a cold snort and followed slowly behind him. At the same time, he searched his memory for any item or anomaly with that kind of ability. Perhaps it had something to do with hallucinations?

The range of this Ghost Maze was very small. As soon as they walked out of the mudflat area, a powerful flashlight beam swept over them. Qin Xian narrowed his eyes in displeasure and said to the fat man, “Go turn yourself in.”

The fat man swallowed and nodded. After taking two steps, he suddenly charged toward the police and, while running, pointed at Qin Xian in terror. “Officer, he’s got a gun on him!!”

“Tch.”

Qin Xian’s face darkened. He had originally planned to slip away once they got close to the police, but now he had no choice but to make a trip to the station.

He took out a dusty, tattered burlap sack and handed it to the police officer.

The officer opened the bundle and froze. Then he yanked the gun from his waist and pointed it at the three of them, shouting, “Don’t move! Hands on your heads and squat down!”

Qin Xian sighed and crouched as instructed.

He really had never enjoyed the privilege of having a police officer point a gun at him in this life.

The officer was on high alert and immediately used his radio to call several more people over.

After a noisy explanation of the situation, two more officers drew their guns, while the rest approached them cautiously and began searching them.

Just as they were about to search him, Qin Xian suddenly heard a familiar voice.

“Huh? Brother Qin, is that really you? I was just saying I had to find time to invite you over, and here you are showing up on your own?”

Qin Xian rolled his eyes outright.

“Huang Quxie? This is your jurisdiction?”

“Yeah.”

“Heh. Just my luck. My dog was barking like crazy when I left home today. Sure enough, nothing good happened.”

Huang Quxie smiled and reached out to pull him up. “Don’t say that. You haven’t broken the law, so why be afraid of us police?”

He greeted the two colleagues beside him. “This is the person who saved me and those siblings yesterday. The guns should be those two. Let them in.”

The other three officers nodded, but they still did not dare relax, following closely with guns and riot shields in hand.

After entering the interrogation room, the two men were placed in interrogation chairs, their hands restrained as they were questioned.

Qin Xian, meanwhile, was taken to an interview room.

In a rather sour mood, he sat down directly. Huang Quxie, however, poured him a glass of water with a smile before sitting across from him.

Huang Quxie spoke first. “Back in Fangu Village, I knew you definitely weren’t an ordinary person. I didn’t expect you to be that player who cleared it, Xuan. Your name has the character xuan in it too, so that’s why you used that codename, right, Comrade Qin Xian?”

Qin Xian crossed his legs and took a sip of water before speaking unhurriedly. “You investigated pretty quickly, Officer Huang Dehui.”

Huang Dehui froze for a second. He was just wondering how Qin Xian knew that when he suddenly remembered the police station lobby had the names and positions of every officer posted on the wall.

Huang Dehui laughed openly. “Well, there are rumors that when dealing with ghosts and monsters, you can’t use your real name. So I picked the alias ‘Quxie.’ You people don’t have many who use their real names either, do you?”
Qin Xian repeated his words. “You guys? Sounds like you know quite a bit. Tell me, how much have the police figured out?”

Huang Dehui replied, “I’m just a low-level cop, so I don’t know that much. Basically, there’s apparently another dimension out there, and humans were dragged into it to take part in a death game. One person won and made it out, while the others, in order to come back, brought the monsters from that world back with them.”

“That’s all?” Qin Xian asked.

Huang Dehui nodded. “That’s all.”

“Then what countermeasures do you have now? Are the recent incidents around the city being caused by other players?”

“Some of them are. But after they spread the seeds of the supernatural, a lot of new supernatural entities have been born here too. I really don’t get it. I can understand the logic of bringing supernatural entities back in order to return to the real world, but why, after coming back, would they go all out spreading them?! They even started some cults…”

The more Huang Dehui spoke, the angrier he got. “They’ve already brought disaster here, so why keep helping the monsters!? Why hurt their own people? Are they even human?”

He slammed a fist down on the table, his brow furrowed and his expression ugly, as if he wanted nothing more than to find one of those players helping the enemy and tear them apart right then and there.

Qin Xian silently took a sip of water and said flatly, “That’s pretty normal. They’re already bound to the supernatural. Spreading it increases their own power, doesn’t it? And once they have power, they can get money and authority.”

Huang Dehui ground his teeth. “Fuck, I really want to shoot every last one of them. Actually, when I first found out you were a player, I wanted to kill you too.”

Qin Xian gave a false smile. “Oh? Is that so?”

Huang Dehui nodded. “But you didn’t look like a bad guy, and you were there to save people, so I hesitated. Then after I came back and filed my report, I found out you were actually the only player who cleared the game. You’re seriously impressive.”

“You’re too kind. The police know all this because you’ve already captured players, right? You heard about me from them?” Qin Xian asked.

“Yes, but all we know is your codename and the weapon you often use. We don’t know anything else. The higher-ups have been looking for you, but no one has seen any trace of you. Where have you been hiding these past two months?”

“Two months?” Qin Xian frowned. “From my perspective, I only came back a few days ago.”

Heh. He hadn’t expected the Main God to leave him with a trap this big. His return time hadn’t matched the other players’.

“So that’s how it is… Does the Main God control when you all come back? That’s strange. Why didn’t the Main God just kill you outright? After all, with power that strong…”

“Who knows?”

Of course, that was because the rules of the world stood above the Main God. In the Infinite Flow World, supernatural entities had to act according to rules. For example, if the rules of a dungeon’s game stated that all survivors would live and receive rewards after winning, then those rules had to be followed. The game couldn’t end with a sudden betrayal where everyone was killed anyway.

No one knew exactly what these “rules” were, but even the Main God had to obey them. The Main God had once promised that the final winner of the game could leave the Infinite Flow World and return to reality, so the Main God had to let that person come back.

He just hadn’t expected that cunning bastard to tamper with the timing.

“…”

Seeing that Qin Xian didn’t want to say more, Huang Dehui immediately changed the subject. “Do you want to join us?”

Qin Xian said, “No.”

“I don’t mean this little police station of ours. I mean higher up. The people above want to bring you in. There’s a salary.”

The corner of Qin Xian’s mouth twitched. “You make it sound like I’m some rebel being offered amnesty.”

Huang Dehui quickly corrected himself. “Ah, I use that kind of phrasing too much. Not bring you in, not bring you in. I mean, they’re sincerely inviting you.”

“Not interested.” Qin Xian refused decisively.

He didn’t want to take orders from others, and he wanted to go to work even less. In a chaotic period like this, joining them would absolutely mean being swamped beyond belief. Besides, he was certain the people at the top wouldn’t fully trust him either.

“Come on, brother… The country needs you right now.”

“Don’t raise me to that level. I’m just an ordinary person. How much power could I possibly have?”

Huang Dehui exaggeratedly opened his mouth wide. “Ordinary person? As in, an ordinary person who defeated a giant supernatural entity and just now caught two gun-wielding criminals with his bare hands?”

Qin Xian didn’t speak, but his expression grew a little impatient. He even turned his head away, looking as if he might get up and walk out in the very next second.

Knowing he couldn’t persuade him, Huang Dehui could only sigh. “Fine. Looks like I can’t talk you into it. Then let’s change the subject. Tell me, what was the deal with those two people? What did you run into this time?”

Qin Xian turned back and answered, “I heard there had been an explosion, so I wanted to go see what was happening. Then I ran into those two when they attacked me. They’re from an organization called Ghost Path. The liquefied gas explosion was their doing too. This organization may be deliberately creating supernatural entities. Did you know about that?”

Huang Dehui answered gravely, “I know. We’ve already arrested several Ghost Path members. The higher-ups in that organization seem to include a few players. They use supernatural entities to play god and trick people, and they’ve attracted a huge number of drifters into joining. At first, they were only scamming money, but now they do every vile thing imaginable: murder, arson, drug trafficking. We started arresting them long ago, but the people we’ve caught are all mid- to low-level members. We haven’t even seen the shadow of the organizers.”

Had the situation really become this chaotic? No wonder things had been so unstable in the city lately… no, across the entire country. Major news stories with casualties were appearing all the time.