After Clearing the Infinite Flow, I Tamed the Mad Dog Boss - Chapter 9

Chapter 9

That punch cleared Lin Qizhi’s head in an instant, and his body quickly shrank back to normal.

He clutched his painfully swollen chin and huddled on the floor for a long while before he could finally manage to speak.

Tears welling in his eyes, he said, “I’m sorry, Brother Qin. It was my fault. But next time, can you please hit a little lighter?”

Qin Xian asked, “You want there to be a next time?”

Lin Qizhi shook his head frantically. “N-no, no, no!”

Holding his chin, he got up from the floor and tried to move closer to Qin Xian for a bit of security.

But Qin Xian simply shifted half a step to the side.

Lin Qizhi: sob.

It really wasn’t his fault that he was timid. As he sobered up, the “coworkers” in the office, who had all looked like normal people before, were now standing up as well.

Just a moment ago, they had even worn vivid, lifelike expressions. Now there was only emptiness, like puppets.

“Noise is prohibited in the office…”

One of them slowly opened its mouth, and the others also took stiff steps forward, muttering nearly identical words.

“Slacking off is prohibited. Performance points will be deducted…”

“One chat session costs two hundred points…”

“The company does not need people who lie flat…”

Qin Xian turned to Lin Qizhi. “Looks like you’ve got a lot of resentment about going to work.”

Lin Qizhi gave an awkward smile. “Our lousy company’s PUA is way too intense. Who’d want to come to work here? But why would a big shot like you come to a garbage company like this?”

Qin Xian didn’t answer.

Back then, did he even have a choice? Fresh out of college and unlucky enough to run into a trash company like this, while desperately needing money.

“Grab something to defend yourself. And a reminder: even though this is a dream, if you die here, you’ll turn into an idiot in reality too.”

Lin Qizhi’s scalp went numb, and he immediately prepared to crawl under the desk.

Qin Xian sneered. “Good, good. The dog walked into its own cage. As long as the exit is blocked, we can catch you alive.”

Lin Qizhi instantly stopped moving, but one of the coworkers had already pounced at him. Frightened out of his wits, he screamed and hurriedly ran circles around the desk.

Qin Xian couldn’t be bothered to help him or protect him. He simply picked up a chair and put on a spectacular office beatdown scene.

Of course, he was the only one beating everyone else down.

Whether the face looked familiar or not, Qin Xian smashed the chair straight into their temples. Amid the spraying blood, his expression grew colder and colder.

As Lin Qizhi circled the desk and stole occasional glances, he nearly peed himself.

The scene from yesterday, when Qin Xian slit the boss’s throat, had appeared again. This time it was even more brutal. Looking at the corpses on the floor, Qin Xian was as cold and ruthless as a murderer.

Fortunately, those “coworkers” didn’t keep their human forms for long. One by one, they sprouted ant-like limbs, their faces twisting into tangled balls of thread, and some unknown vocal cords somewhere in their bodies let out shrill screams.

They swarmed forward, but Qin Xian’s evasive movements made them crash into one another instead. The flesh-colored threads on their heads tangled chaotically, looking exactly like a pile of data cables carelessly mixed together in a drawer.

Qin Xian took two steps back and glanced down. Countless threads on the floor suddenly shot up like snakes, lunging for his neck and torso and trying to bind him.

With so many threads attacking from all directions, avoiding them was impossible.

These threads were soft but resilient. Physical attacks did little to them. Unless something could cut them, or… fire.

Qin Xian quickly rushed to Lin Qizhi’s side and said in a low voice, “Find sunscreen spray, air freshener, or alcohol.”

Before he even finished speaking, he violently flipped over the nearby desk and pinned the charging threads beneath it.

Qin Xian jumped up, stomped hard on the desk, and urged, “Hurry!”

“Ahhh, who even has that stuff? Wait!!” Lin Qizhi scrambled to his feet and dashed to his seat, grabbed two cans, and threw them to Qin Xian.

Qin Xian caught them and saw that they were actually portable liquid gas canisters for a cassette stove. Those were even better than sunscreen spray.

The office banned high-power appliances and open flames. Who knew when Lin Qizhi had hidden these away.

The desk beneath Qin Xian shook violently. His weight alone was no longer enough to hold the enemy down.

He simply leaped aside. Threads erupted furiously from beneath the desk, and then were met by Qin Xian, who had raised the gas canister and a lighter.

With his right hand, Qin Xian flipped open the safety latch on the gas canister. After igniting it, he hurled it at the mass of threads.

A burst of fire exploded with a roar. The flames caught on the flesh-colored threads and started burning immediately. The threads began to melt, writhing nonstop.

“Low-level things really do have a lot of weaknesses.” Qin Xian carefully stepped back and lit another gas canister before throwing it over.

The monster struggling in the flames still had enough strength to resist, extending several threads stubbornly toward Qin Xian.

Qin Xian only added fuel to the fire, flinging all the printed documents near the printer onto it.

Lin Qizhi followed his example, pulling out reports, files, and bid proposals and tossing them all into the flames, looking more like he was venting pure rage. A roaring blaze erupted in the middle of the office.

A strong, nauseating stench immediately spread everywhere. Qin Xian told Lin Qizhi, “Cover your nose and mouth. We need to go.”

With that, Qin Xian kicked open the office door and dragged Lin Qizhi out with him.

“Screeeech!!!!” The monster roared and rolled toward them like a fireball.

Lin Qizhi shouted, “Holy crap, how is this thing so hard to kill?!”

In the next second, because he wasn’t fast enough, the flaming threads wrapped around his ankle. He was dragged across the floor in two miserable rolls before hurtling helplessly toward the fireball.

“Ahhh! Brother Qin, help!!”

Qin Xian turned back, grabbed Lin Qizhi’s upper body like he was pulling up a radish, and yanked with all his strength to haul him out.
Lin Qizhi let out a bloodcurdling scream from the pain, but his leg was finally freed from the coils of those lines.

“Brother Qin! My leg feels like it’s dislocated, aaahhh!” Lin Qizhi shouted.

Qin Xian said nothing, his expression cold. He simply hoisted the man onto his back, charged down one floor, then jumped straight out through the open corridor window.

Lin Qizhi shrieked, “Brother Qin!!! This is the third floor!!!”

Qin Xian’s voice was terrifyingly calm. “This is a dream. Either you wake up, or you can experience what it feels like to be smashed to death.”

Lin Qizhi couldn’t say a word. He could only scream as he experienced free fall.

The next second, covered in sweat, Lin Qizhi jolted awake. He sat bolt upright and hurriedly felt himself all over in a panic.

No injuries. No monster. He was inside a tent now, and Qin Xian was sitting beside him, having also opened his eyes.

Lin Qizhi stared blankly. “So… we just solved it like that? Is it dead? Burned to death?”

Qin Xian’s black eyes quietly regarded him.

Lin Qizhi nervously touched his arm and asked carefully, “What’s wrong, Brother Qin? Did we not kill that ghost?”

But in the next instant, Qin Xian, who had been sitting there quietly, suddenly lunged at him. With overwhelming force, he slammed Lin Qizhi to the ground and clamped his cold hands viciously around his throat.

Lin Qizhi instinctively grabbed Qin Xian’s wrist and struggled desperately.

Qin Xian lowered his head. Under the shadow of his bangs, his gaze was eerily calm.

“H-help!” The suffocating pressure sent Lin Qizhi’s survival instincts into overdrive. He reached out, clawing at the tent while his feet kicked wildly.

The commotion finally drew the others’ attention. A flashlight beam shone in from outside the tent, and a security guard yanked the flap open.

Seeing a murder scene inside the tent, the guard was badly startled and roared, “What are you doing!? Stop right now!! Are you trying to kill someone!?”

Qin Xian ignored him completely and increased the pressure on his hands.

The guard immediately pulled out a baton and rushed at Qin Xian, only to be kicked to the ground by Qin Xian in one blow.

The noise alerted the others. Two passersby also came running over, screaming as they raised their phones to call the police.

“Hello! Is this 110!? Someone’s killing a person over here, at Bianjiang Park!”

“Let go! Do you know what you’re doing!?”

“Help! Someone’s being murdered!!!”

Amid the passersby’s shrieks, Lin Qizhi was making his final struggle. His lips had already turned a bluish purple, and his expression was growing hazy, but he still stared fixedly at Qin Xian.

Qin Xian let out a cold snort. “Stop acting. I’m not letting go.”

Lin Qizhi’s face changed, his expression turning sinister, and the passersby beside them vanished in the blink of an eye.

“Y-you… how did you… know?”

The thing forced out those few words.

Qin Xian smiled. “Dreams within dreams are your usual trick. I stopped falling for that a long time ago. How was the performance? Thanks for taking Lin Qizhi’s form. It made you easier to kill.”

The thing panicked, and its struggling grew even more violent, nearly flipping Qin Xian over.

That strength was worlds apart from before.

But Qin Xian didn’t give it the chance. He used all his strength and, with a sharp crack, twisted the “Lin Qizhi” in his grasp until his neck broke.

After a moment of dizziness, Qin Xian opened his eyes and saw the inside of the tent. He was still sitting on the ground, while Lin Qizhi was sleeping beside him.

“Mother of-!” Lin Qizhi suddenly shouted and sat up.

He turned around in confusion and saw Qin Xian beside him. Immediately, he yelped again, wrapped the blanket tightly around himself, and frantically scooted away across the ground from Qin Xian, not stopping until he had pushed the tent outward into a huge bulge.

Only after seeing Qin Xian sitting there, looking at him speechlessly without moving, did Lin Qizhi finally stammer, “Brother Qin, you… you’re insane. You actually saw through the hallucination that monster made.”

Qin Xian replied, “Looks like you could feel everything that happened just now.”

Lin Qizhi rubbed his phantom-painful neck and nodded carefully. “Yeah… the moment I entered the dream, it felt like sleep paralysis. I could see my body moving and talking, but I couldn’t control it. When I saw it approach you, I knew it must have taken over my body. I was freaking out, afraid you wouldn’t notice and get hurt by the monster. I never thought…”

He paused, then said with a little grievance, “Brother Qin, when did you figure it out? Right at the beginning?”

Qin Xian answered, “In the tent. I didn’t have a weapon just now, so the best way was to strangle you. If I scared you, then I’m truly sorry.”

Though his words said sorry, his tone didn’t sound even a little bit apologetic…

Lin Qizhi shivered again. After taking a while to overcome his fear of Qin Xian, he obediently thanked him. “Brother Qin, anyway, thank you for saving me. How much do you want? Five hundred thousand? Don’t worry, even if I don’t have the money, I’ll borrow it and give it to you!”

Qin Xian stood up, massaged his leg, and replied, “No need. Give me one month of your salary. And then do me a favor.”

“What favor? I’ll do my utmost!”

“If I have to go out for something, help feed the dog at my place.”

Lin Qizhi had already calmed down from his terror, and Qin Xian’s request moved him deeply. He had saved his life, and all he wanted in return was something this small, along with a simple favor a friend might do for another.

Brother Qin might sometimes seem a bit like a killer, but in reality, he was such a great person!

Lin Qizhi agreed readily. “No problem! I’ll definitely come to your place and give your dog the best service! Not only will I handle feeding, I can also clean up, brush its fur, and walk it!”