After Clearing the Infinite Flow, I Tamed the Mad Dog Boss - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

What sort of eerie creature had an ordinary black dog as its original form?

Qin Xian searched through his memories.

During the time he had spent surviving in the Infinite Flow World, he had encountered plenty of animal-type eerie creatures, but ninety-five percent of them had been the lowest-level mobs in the instances. They were just ordinary animals that had mutated after being contaminated. Compared with normal animals, they were only a little more ferocious and unafraid of death. For small and medium-sized mutated animals, a grown adult could beat them to death with a few swings of a stick.

Of course, the remaining five percent included some terrifying eerie creatures. Coincidentally, the strongest one among them had also been canine-shaped.

It was called the Calamity Hound. Red and black flames coiled around its entire body, and it could devour its enemies’ luck. Not only was it enormous enough to destroy a house with ease, it could also drain its opponents’ fortune and make them suffer one unlucky accident after another.

It was, in short, an extremely troublesome thing to deal with.

But that dog’s original form couldn’t possibly have been this small. Besides, the Calamity Hound had already been killed by him.

Maybe the dog in front of him was just an ordinary animal from the real world that had been infected?

Qin Xian lifted his foot and brought the tip of his shoe closer to the black dog.

The black dog’s long, pointed ears stood up warily. It lowered its head and inspected the tip of Qin Xian’s shoe, but made no other move.

“Hey.” Qin Xian lightly nudged the meat of the black dog’s thigh with the toe of his shoe.

The black dog finally moved, pulling its leg back and tucking it beneath its belly. The two pointed ears on top of its head stood tall, angled toward Qin Xian. It looked to be on fairly high alert.

Seeing this, Qin Xian bent down and held his hand in front of the dog’s black nose.

The black dog leaned in and sniffed. It showed no signs of fear or aggression. Qin Xian remembered certain pet bloggers saying that this was how animals gathered a person’s scent, and that if they didn’t attack or run away, you could try petting them.

So Qin Xian simply placed his hand on the dog’s head and stroked it a couple of times.

The fur on its head was short, a little coarse and prickly against his palm, but it felt pretty good when he smoothed it down. Each time he stroked it, the dog’s pointy ears would flatten slightly to either side. It was kind of amusing.

Fine, then. He couldn’t see any major problem with it. An animal that might have been contaminated by the eerie could cause trouble if he let it out, so he might as well keep it at home and observe it for a while.

With that thought, Qin Xian patted the dog’s head and turned back inside to make food.

After being run ragged for most of the night, he was starving. He simply boiled two eggs, then cooked some Tangyuan he found in the fridge. Just like before he had ever experienced the Infinite Flow World, he cobbled together a passable dinner.

He carried the bowl over, pulled out the only chair by the dining table, and had just raised his chopsticks when he suddenly saw the dog on the balcony twitch its nose, nose the door crack open, and limp over to him.

The dog’s black eyes stared straight at the eggs and tangyuan on the table.

Qin Xian remembered that it hadn’t touched the dog food at all. “You won’t eat dog food, but you want my dinner?”

Back when he lived at his old family home in the countryside, his grandmother had kept a yellow native dog. Naturally, that dog had never had the chance to eat dog food in its life. Whenever the family ate, it would sit by their feet and stare expectantly at everyone’s chopsticks.

Qin Xian picked up a peeled egg and was about to put it on the floor, but the moment his hand came near the black dog, it suddenly stretched its head forward and snatched the boiled egg right out of his hand.

Its red tongue swept over the pad of his finger, wet and slick. When he brought his hand up to look, it was unmistakably covered in shiny dog drool.

Qin Xian frowned and got up to wash his hands. When he came back, the black dog had already finished the whole egg and was now staring at the other one in his bowl.

Qin Xian returned to his seat, smacked the dog on the head first, then pointed at its nose and said, “If you want to stay in my home, you have to learn the rules. No eating from my hand. Also, is your tail injured? I haven’t seen you wag it at me once. Heh. Suspicious.”

He narrowed his eyes and scrutinized it.

The black dog tilted its head. Its tail still didn’t move. That was only natural, of course. Dogs couldn’t understand human speech.

Qin Xian ignored it and unhurriedly finished the entire bowl of tangyuan. Then he peeled the remaining egg as well. After a pause, he still tossed it into the dog’s mouth.

Watching the black dog swallow the egg in two bites, he said, “Looks like I need to give you a name…”

The dog blinked and listened intently.

Qin Xian glanced at the empty bowl and said, “Then I’ll call you Tangyuan.”
Tangyuan: “…”

Somehow, Qin Xian could read a trace of reluctance on that dog face.

But what was wrong with the name? It was pretty cute.

“Just be grateful I wasn’t eating cornbread earlier.” Qin Xian reached out and patted the dog’s head, then pointed at the balcony. “Now go sleep on the balcony.”

“Huff.” Tangyuan tossed its head unhappily and let out a low growl.

Expressionless, Qin Xian lifted a foot, pressed it against Tangyuan’s leg, and nudged. “Go. Balcony.”

“Ngh!” Tangyuan gave another low sound, limped one step away, then stopped moving.

Qin Xian stood up and bent down, intending to scoop the dog up and carry it over himself.

But the moment he lowered his hands, Tangyuan suddenly barked. It glared fiercely at the person in front of it, fangs showing beneath its taut lips.

Qin Xian frowned. He grabbed the dog’s muzzle and forcibly shut those bared teeth back in. Sitting in the chair, he looked down at the dog from above, narrowed his eyes threateningly, lowered his voice, and asked slowly, “What? I saved you and now you want to bite me? Don’t make me slap you.”

Tangyuan’s growl weakened. Its eyes seemed to clear a little. After staring up at Qin Xian for a few seconds, its drooping tail swayed once. It gave a soft “ngh,” turned around, and slowly went back to the balcony.

Out on the balcony, Qin Xian had piled some old clothes into a temporary dog bed for it. Tangyuan climbed onto it with its tail hanging low and lay down.

Raising a dog also meant training a dog. If you didn’t establish its place from the very beginning, it might develop bad habits, or even start hurting people.

Qin Xian had no intention of spoiling the dog like a son. If it wanted to stay in this home, it first had to understand its position.

He glanced through the glass door from a distance. The dog on the pile of old clothes had already curled into a ball and closed its eyes.

So far, it was still fairly obedient. It was just too cold toward people.

When he looked up at the clock on the wall again, the hands had already reached three in the morning. Fortunately, his boss was dead as a doornail, so he didn’t have to go to work tomorrow.

Qin Xian changed into pajamas, flopped onto the bed, and played on his phone until almost five before turning off the light and falling asleep.

As his breathing gradually evened out, Tangyuan stood up on the balcony and pushed open the sliding glass door into the living room.

Its steps were steady. Its leg was not lame at all.

Qin Xian’s bedroom door was not fully shut, leaving a narrow crack.

Through the gap, the person on the bed could be seen with shoulder-length black hair spilled across the pillow. His skin, long deprived of sunlight, was almost too pale, and even in the dark, the contours of his face and his expression were visible.

His thin lips were pressed together slightly, and the downward curve of his eyes made him look a little less sharp.

The sound of canine breathing gradually grew clearer. If someone had been looking in from the window opposite at that moment, they would have seen, to their horror, a pair of blood-red beast eyes burning in the darkness.

The uneasy presence made Qin Xian furrow his brow. His breathing lost its steadiness, and his eyes snapped open.

But there was nothing outside the crack in the door. Everything around him was quiet, with no sign that anything strange had happened.

The next day, it was already past ten when Qin Xian finally opened his eyes in discomfort. Ever since entering the Infinite Flow World, he had not had a single good night’s sleep, and last night he had been startled awake again. His mood was not exactly great.

Irritably raking a hand through his messy hair, Qin Xian simply leaned against the headboard and started playing on his phone.

When he saw the red “99” bubble in the upper right corner of WeChat, he knew there would be something interesting to read after waking up today.

The messages had exploded in the company’s WeChat group. By now, everyone knew that the boss had died in his own company, and that his death had been gruesome.

Scrolling through the chat history, Qin Xian even found uncensored photos of the corpse posted in the group.

He tapped them open and looked, his expression still calm in the face of the bloody, horrific scene.

[A: Aaaah, that’s terrifying! Delete it! Have some respect for the dead, or watch out, he might come find you tonight!]

[B: Ugh, I heard he died from eating cash and bank cards. What even happened? Was he sick or something? Why would he eat money?]

[C: It’s true! He ate my wallet too. The police took it away. But even if they gave it back, I wouldn’t want it anymore. It was covered in stuff…]

[A: I had nightmares all night yesterday. I was scared to death, seriously. Amitabha.]
[D: I don’t dare click on the picture… My friend saw the body with his own eyes, and now he’s already a little mentally unstable. He won’t eat or drink.]

[E: Don’t you all think this is way too creepy? The city hasn’t been peaceful lately. It feels like a lot of people have died. I heard some people have even gone missing.]

[B: I’m planning to go pray at a temple today.]

Qin Xian ignored the endless screaming and arguing and picked out a few key pieces of information to read.

The people who came out of the Infinite Flow World had brought back “seeds”? If they were called that, then they probably needed to be planted somewhere and slowly cultivated.

Could City A be hiding a seed? What did it look like? Where was it? How could it be removed?

As Qin Xian thought it over, he opened the job-seeking forum. To his surprise, his post had actually gotten a reply.

[Anonymous2684: OP, I really do feel like I’ve been haunted by a ghost lately. Seriously, there really is a ghost. But I don’t know if you’re some real expert or a scammer, so I want to meet offline.]

Qin Xian replied: [Sure. McDonald’s on Huiguang Road, two this afternoon.]

[Anonymous2684: Sure. See you this afternoon.]

With new progress at last, Qin Xian’s mood finally recovered a little from his awful sleep. He got up, changed clothes, and pushed the door open, only to run into Tangyuan standing in the living room, craning its head to look at him.

Qin Xian froze for a moment. Only then did he remember that there was now another living creature in his home. And he’d forgotten the dog here all morning without feeding it anything. No, wait. There should have been dog food out on the balcony.

Qin Xian went to the balcony for a look. Sure enough, the dog food in the bowl hadn’t been touched at all.

So it really wouldn’t eat a single bite of kibble. Was he supposed to make dog meals every day from now on? Absolutely not.

He carried the dog bowl over to Tangyuan and ordered, “Hurry up and eat.”

Tangyuan, however, remained unmoved, sitting in place and staring at Qin Xian.

Qin Xian wasn’t in a great mood to begin with, and his tone turned even more severe. “Eat.”

Tangyuan turned its head away. It refused.

“Tch.” Qin Xian set the bowl down, grabbed a handful of dog food, and used his other hand to grip the dog’s muzzle. He forcibly pried open a gap and shoved the kibble inside.

A low growl rumbled in Tangyuan’s throat. It twisted its head, about to spit the food back out. But before it did, its eyes rolled upward, and it saw Qin Xian’s gaze-cold, dark, and in a very bad mood.

It obediently stretched its neck and swallowed all the dog food.

“Good.” Qin Xian’s gaze instantly warmed. He even smiled for 0.1 seconds.

“As a reward, I’ll boil you some eggs. Hm? There’s still a piece of chicken breast in here…”

Qin Xian rummaged through the fridge and finally dug out a rock-hard piece of chicken breast from some forgotten corner. Who knew how long it had been sitting there?

But since it was frozen that solid, it probably hadn’t gone bad, right?

He found a small pot, threw the still-frozen chicken breast straight in to steam, and added three eggs while he was at it.

While he waited, he took out a pack of biscuits and made himself a glass of milk.

“Woof.” Tangyuan stood beside the dining table and suddenly barked.

Qin Xian glanced down at the things in his hands and replied, “No. Dogs can’t drink milk, so don’t ask me for any. Fine… I’ll give you a biscuit.”

He had indeed starved the dog all morning. Helplessly, Qin Xian took out a biscuit and tossed it over. Tangyuan opened its mouth and caught it with ease, then crunched it twice and swallowed it down.

Qin Xian lowered his head and asked, “Is it good? If it’s good, wag your tail for me.”

Tangyuan tilted its head and didn’t move.

Qin Xian snorted coldly. “I’ll throw you out tomorrow.”

The dog’s tail wagged once.