After Clearing the Infinite Flow, I Tamed the Mad Dog Boss - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The city’s neon lights blazed through the night, staining even the sky with a hazy glow. It was pure light pollution.

But the darkness had never retreated. It still lurked in every corner of the city. Take the alley where he’d just picked up the dog, for example-without the residents nearby turning on their lights, there wouldn’t have been the faintest glimmer.

Maybe it was because it was too dark that no one had ever helped that dog.

Qin Xian stood before the window and looked down for a while. Then he picked up his jacket, put it on, and prepared to go out.

There were too many questions in his head, but sitting at home and brooding over them wouldn’t get him anywhere. He might as well take a walk.

It was the dead of night now, the hour when demons, ghosts, and monsters came crawling out.

“Awooo…”

The dog’s whine interrupted Qin Xian as he was pushing the door open. It seemed to be trying hard to make its presence known, reminding its owner that there was another living creature in the house.

An ordinary person might have gone over to comfort and pet it. But Qin Xian’s heart was currently not much softer than wood. After glancing toward the balcony to confirm the dog was fine, he shut the door and left.

From the residents’ fitness area downstairs came the thumping beat of square-dancing music. The moment Qin Xian reached the ground floor, he walked off in the opposite direction.

It wasn’t just that Qin Xian hated noisy places. Retirees who had company, along with the mood and physical condition to dance, were not exactly popular with the supernatural either.

The supernatural fed on humanity’s negative emotions. The more negative emotions there were, the more easily they were attracted. Hospitals, office buildings, certain schools, and so on were prime examples.

Qin Xian opened a map app, searched for the nearest hospital, and slowly wandered in that direction.

In truth, he did not want to deal with the supernatural again. His dream was to return to a normal world and live out a quiet life. But right now, doubt and unease were driving him to act.

Unfortunately, this hospital had no reputation and hardly any patients. Qin Xian slipped inside while the security guard was yawning, made half a circuit, and still saw nothing unusual. Even the inpatient department only had a sparse handful of people, and the doctors on duty were asleep with their heads on their desks.

Everything was normal.

“Tch.” Qin Xian walked out in a foul mood. Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly noticed a wet market nearby. On one butcher’s stall lay two huge beef marrow bones that hadn’t sold. Beside them, tomorrow’s fresh beef was being butchered, and as a sharp blade sliced down, the still-fresh muscle twitched like a worm.

Residual bloodwater spread across the floor, adding more stains to ground already coated in a layer of black grease.

Every day, several animals were butchered here, chopped apart… Minced scraps and blood flowed across the ground and were casually rinsed away with water, but some residue always stuck.

Day after day, customers stepped across that floor, their soles picking up a nauseating, tacky stickiness.

“Hey, handsome, you buying meat?”

Qin Xian snapped back to himself. He flexed his slightly numb hand and confirmed that what stood before him was nothing more than a perfectly ordinary wet market.

“If you’re not buying, please stand farther away. We’ve got work to do,” the butcher muttered unhappily.

Qin Xian looked at the stall. There was still some meat left on the two bones, but it didn’t look very fresh.

Something like this, a dog would probably love it… If he took them back, washed them, and roasted them over the gas stove, they would be enough for that dog to gnaw on for a long time.

He said to the butcher, “I want these two bones.”

“You want these?” The vendor looked suspicious. “Not getting some fresh beef? Just slaughtered. Hard to come by.”

Qin Xian’s face was expressionless. The cash he’d brought with him probably wasn’t enough to buy meat.

A few minutes later, Qin Xian bought the two big bones from the vendor for a low price.

At least this trip out had yielded something. Next, he would wander around a bit more and find a pet store to buy some affordable dog food before heading back.

But before he had gone far, Qin Xian heard the wail of police sirens in the distance. A black Santana and two police cars with sirens blaring were acting out a movie scene. The Santana was desperately trying to shake off its pursuers, even swerving straight off the road and onto the sidewalk. With a bang, it smashed into a fire hydrant, sending a column of water shooting into the air.

Qin Xian was the only person standing on the sidewalk. The Santana completely ignored his presence and charged straight at him. An anxious roar came from the police car behind it: “Move! Get out of the way!!”

As the danger drew closer and closer, Qin Xian neither ran nor dodged. Instead, he pulled out one beef bone, planted his right foot as a pivot, spun sharply in a full circle, and hurled the bone with all his strength.

The beef bone turned into a streak of white light and shot out with a sharp whoosh. The Santana’s window suddenly exploded, and the entire car lost control, veering into a flowerbed before slamming into a utility pole with a bang.

The police cars behind it screeched to a halt. Several officers rushed out with pistols raised and approached the Santana.

“Don’t move! Police!”

“Stop resisting immediately and get down! Otherwise we’ll open fire!!”

Watching from a distance, Qin Xian frowned. A man in black suddenly sprang out of the car and rushed through the police cordon at incredible speed.

“Stop! Don’t move! Otherwise we’ll shoot!!”

The police took off after him. Seeing there were no civilians around, they quickly fired two shots at the man. But the figure ahead did not stop at all. Clearly, they hadn’t hit him.

Across from them, Qin Xian saw everything clearly. It wasn’t that the police were poor shots. This man had dodged the two bullets with reaction speed far beyond that of an ordinary person.

“Hahahahaha! Trash!” The man in black laughed loudly, turning his head and raising a hand to flip the officers off in extreme provocation.

But the instant he turned back, his heart nearly stopped from fright. Someone had appeared in front of him at some point, holding a massive bone and swinging it viciously at him.

That speed. That distance!!!

“Thud!!!” White flashed before the man’s eyes, and then he knew nothing at all.

The officers chasing him slowed their steps, staring in astonishment at this righteous passerby. This guy had actually used a bone to knock the suspect out cold?

They looked down. The poor man in black lay on the ground with his eyes half-open, all his front teeth gone, blood pouring from his collapsed nose. He looked utterly miserable.
“Uh…” The police officer put away his gun and, for a moment, found himself at a loss for words.

“No need to thank me,” Qin Xian said first, his voice so calm it was as if he had merely happened by and picked something up for someone.

He stuffed the marrow bone into the plastic bag and rubbed his fingers together.

The grease clinging to his hand was sticky and disgusting.

If he’d known, he would have wrapped the bone in the plastic bag before holding it.

“What did he do?” Qin Xian tried to ignore the revulsion and tipped his chin toward the man in black.

His half-long hair had been casually gathered with a hair tie and draped over one shoulder, but because of his large movements just now, it had already come half loose.

Under the red-and-blue flash of the police car lights, his face looked exceptionally pretty and delicate. There was no way to tell he was the kind of ruthless person who could smash someone’s face into fractures with a marrow bone in the middle of the street.

Facing someone like that, the officer actually felt a little unnerved. He stammered, “Uh, he… this guy just robbed a shopping mall.”

“Just an ordinary robbery?” Qin Xian emphasized.

“Huh? Ordinary? People robbing shopping malls still isn’t exactly common these days, is it? And after robbing it, he even dared to speed down the street.” The officer was a little baffled.

“In any case, comrade, thank you for your courageous act!”

“No need to thank me. May I go over there and look for my other bone?” Qin Xian calmly pointed at the pitiful Santana not far away, its hood popped open.

“Ah… huh? What bone?”

The officer followed Qin Xian to the front of the car. He saw Qin Xian brace a foot on the car, rummage through the battered wreck, and lift out another beef marrow bone.

The officer: ???

So the car hitting the utility pole was this guy’s handiwork too?!

Qin Xian looked at the bone. “Ah. Can’t eat it anymore.”

A lot of shattered glass had embedded itself in it. Feeding it to a dog would be killing the dog.

Holding the marrow bone, he turned and raised it in front of the officer. “Do you need this? As evidence?”

“Ah… huh? No, uh, but you can put it back where it was…”

Without the slightest hesitation, Qin Xian tossed the bone back into the car, then turned to the officer and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

The officer nodded along almost instinctively. “Go ahead.”

Qin Xian asked, “Has anything strange happened recently? For example, anything supernatural?”

That question had clearly touched on certain internal information that was forbidden to disclose. The officer immediately replied, “Comrade, don’t believe random rumors online.”

Qin Xian pressed, “For example, did a company boss die at Cuiyang Tower this afternoon?”

The officer’s expression grew grave. “Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, I work there, so of course I know. The whole building was alarmed.”

That answer made the officer relax slightly, but he still put on a stern face and lectured him in a serious tone. “If you’re paying attention to this case, just wait for the police notice. For now, don’t believe rumors and don’t spread them. Don’t be so curious. Also, please provide your ID number and phone number.”

“Oh.” Qin Xian opened his mouth and replied coldly, then rummaged through his memory for a long while before reciting his ID number.

It looked like directly asking the police definitely wouldn’t get him any information. But the breakthrough point was indeed with the police. They had already come into contact with some supernatural incidents.

He could infer as much from the tiny changes in the officer’s expression just now.

So next… should he grab a police officer and interrogate him?

No. Assaulting an officer was illegal.

Qin Xian looked in the direction of the man in black. The police had already taken him away, probably rushing him to the hospital first to get his injuries treated.

That man would probably be detained at the hospital for the time being. This was the best chance to get close to him and search for the truth. Once he was sent to a detention center, finding him again would be troublesome.

Then it would be best to follow him to the hospital now. It was just…

He lowered his head and looked at the bone in his hand, remembering the dog he’d just picked up at home.

Sigh. If he’d known it would be this troublesome, he shouldn’t have kept a pet. He couldn’t even go out in peace.

But that dog didn’t seem like it urgently needed to be fed, and its wound had already been treated. He probably didn’t need to hurry back.

After weighing it for a few seconds, he carried the bone and hailed a cab to the hospital.

—————————

A little over ten minutes later, at the entrance of the City People’s Hospital, Qin Xian stood with a marrow bone in hand, sizing up the towering hospital building.

As expected of one of the city’s Grade-A tertiary hospitals, it was more than three times the size of the small hospital he had visited during his walk. Even late at night, people were still coming and going. The large red characters for the emergency department gave off an ominous crimson glow in the night. At the entrance, the doors of an ambulance stood open; someone had just been brought in.

He closed his eyes and sensed his surroundings. Unfortunately, there was nothing unusual nearby.

Qin Xian got a disposable mask from the hospital gatehouse, put it on, and headed straight for the emergency building.

By quite a coincidence, as soon as he entered, he saw the man whose face he had bloodied with a single bone lying on a gurney while a doctor used medicine to clean and disinfect his wounds.

The doctor cleaning the wound was talking with the police:

“Wow, whoever did this was brutal. Contusion to the nasal cartilage, several front teeth knocked out. What was he hit with?”

“…Uh, a beef leg bone.”

“What??? Was this… a fight at a wet market?”

Qin Xian listened to the conversation without changing expression, sat down in the nearest chair, and waited until the injured man finished his examination before following him to the inpatient building.

The police cuffed the man’s hand to the iron railing of the hospital bed and stood guard at the ward door, waiting for the person inside to slowly wake up.

Seeing that the officer had no intention of leaving, Qin Xian turned and walked away.

There was no hurry to find the man and ask questions for now. After entering the building, he had sensed an eerie presence.

Unfortunately, even after wandering through several floors, Qin Xian still didn’t truly trigger a strange incident. Not until he wandered back…