ACIFITFDB – Chapter 2

Chapter 2: No More Work If The Boss Is Dead…

“What’s going on? I think I just fell asleep and had a really terrifying dream.”

“Me too! But I can’t remember the specifics. Ow, I’m covered in a cold sweat.”

“Me too, this is too bizarre! Could there be some kind of poisonous gas in the office?”

“We haven’t opened the windows for ventilation in a long time, and they’re all closed. The central air is off too. Oh my god, did we just walk through the gates of hell? Quickly, open the windows!”

The office descended into chaos. Some people immediately opened windows for ventilation, while others continued to discuss the incident. Most attributed the problem to the air quality, rather than suspecting anything supernatural.

Qin Xian closed his eyes, carefully sensing the surrounding atmosphere. It felt normal; he detected nothing out of the ordinary.

Either this was the real world, but different from what he had imagined, or it was an unusual dungeon, so subtle that even he couldn’t detect anything amiss.

“Everyone, gather in the conference room within three minutes!”

“Everyone, gather in the conference room within three minutes!”

“Ev-ev-everyone… static… three minutes…”

The sudden, loud broadcast startled everyone.

“Is the broadcast broken?”

“Why are we having a meeting right before quitting time again…”

“I’m done with this, you idiot…”

Qin Xian’s expression turned grim.

What was happening? Was it a loop dungeon? Or was the dream the reality and this was the illusion?

He rose with a heavy heart and was the first to head towards the conference room. As he passed by, a colleague beside him shivered involuntarily, as if encountering something terrifying, and immediately made way for him.

He pushed open the conference room door, and a foul odor wafted out. General Manager Zhao’s body lay on the floor, already beginning to decay. It was unclear how long he had been dead there.

“Ah!! Someone’s dead!! General Manager Zhao is dead!!!”

Colleagues, drawn by the smell, let out screams upon seeing the horrific scene. The office dissolved into pandemonium. Qin Xian stepped back a few paces and took out his phone to call the police.

The phone rang twice, and someone actually answered. The person on the other end spoke clearly, asked Qin Xian a few questions, and then solemnly stated that officers would be dispatched immediately, requesting Qin Xian to secure the scene.

Seeing a colleague next to him raising their phone to call the police, he calmly said, “I’ve already called. Everyone, let’s go back to the office, the police will be here soon.”

The colleagues looked at him. Most didn’t have a strong impression of Qin Xian, but his words seemed to carry a certain magical quality, instilling fear and obedience.

The group returned to the office. No one was typing on their keyboards anymore. Most people gathered in small groups, intensely discussing the death scene they had just witnessed. Some were furiously tapping on their phones, likely sharing this major event with friends, family, or online acquaintances.

Compared to before, everyone’s expressions were now much more vivid, more lifelike.

Qin Xian opened the window and looked down. Sanitation workers were watering the flowerbeds, a young couple on the street were sharing a cup of milk tea, and a delivery rider weaved nimbly through pedestrians on his electric scooter.

It felt incredibly real, a realism he hadn’t seen in two years, nothing like being in a dungeon.

“Hey, who is he? Do we have anyone this handsome in our office?”

“It’s Qin Xian, it says so on his ID badge.”

“I think I remember him, but he barely ever talks… He’s this good-looking? And he has such a distinguished air.”

“Sister Li, go add him on WeChat later.”

“…No, no. For some reason, I feel a little scared looking at him…”

“You know what, you’re right. I feel a bit scared of him too, for no reason.”

Qin Xian turned to look at them. The colleagues, who had been chattering away moments before, immediately turned their heads and changed the subject.

“Sigh, the boss is dead, do we still have to come to work tomorrow…”

Most likely not, Qin Xian thought idly.

About ten minutes later, a team of police officers arrived and cordoned off the area outside the conference room. Two officers entered the office to question them, asking who discovered the scene and the last time they saw General Manager Zhao.

After the discovery of General Manager Zhao’s body, everything that followed proceeded without any unusual incidents.

Qin Xian looked out the window again. He still leaned towards this being the real world, as Infinite Flow dungeons typically didn’t have a police reporting option, and police rarely showed up to handle cases.

He approached the police officers and tentatively said, “Officers, we actually encountered something strange. We all fell asleep just now, and we all had a nightmare.”

The officer looked up abruptly and asked, “You all fell asleep? What kind of nightmare did you have?”

“Yes, yes, we did fall asleep, maybe for about ten minutes.”

“I don’t remember the specifics of the nightmare, do you all?”

Qin Xian: “I remember a little. I dreamed that General Manager Zhao called us to a meeting, but he had turned into a monster covered in fat and wanted to kill us.”

With his reminder, others suddenly recalled something.

“I think General Manager Zhao also turned into a monster in my dream! But then someone…”

Qin Xian: “Officers, could this be caused by some kind of hallucinogenic gas?”

A female officer instinctively replied, “It shouldn’t be…”

Her colleague immediately interjected, “It’s possible. We’ll check the air quality here later to see if there was any poisoning. Thank you all for cooperating with the investigation. Please provide your names and phone numbers, and cooperate if further investigation is needed.”

Qin Xian observed the reactions of the two officers. It was clear they had some suspicions about the cause of the collective sleep incident. The police had initially treated the case as a routine death investigation, but after he mentioned the strange occurrence in the office, the officers’ eyes showed a look of sudden realization.

These officers likely knew of things that defied common sense in this world.

Did aberrant entities exist in the real world all along? Had he just never encountered them before?

Qin Xian descended the stairs with a grave expression. To test the reality of this world, he directly hailed a taxi and had it drive him from the east to the west of the city, then circumnavigated the outer ring road.

As the taxi driver bid him farewell, Qin Xian paid with a cold expression. The taxi fare was 350 yuan, and his bank account still held over 6,700 yuan.

Now, Qin Xian could largely confirm that he had returned to reality. So far, he hadn’t encountered any dungeon that could simulate such a vast, complex, and realistic city, where every minute detail, every person’s behavior, and even the ants crawling in the flowerbeds were normal and logically sound.

So-called game dungeons were actually just unique, aberrant domains. Some were as small as a single building, while others could span a small town or half a city.

The sky had completely darkened. After having a bowl of beef noodles nearby, Qin Xian slowly walked home along the street.

Although it was more likely that he was in the real world, the situation had become even more fantastical. Aberrant entities existed in reality? Had they only appeared recently, or had they been there all along?

The streetlamp ahead flickered suddenly. Qin Xian stopped, frowning and staring warily ahead.

Passersby glanced at him strangely before walking past the flickering lamp with a chuckle.

The light flickered twice more, revealing insects dancing in the intermittent glow. There was nothing else unusual, just a simple short circuit.

Qin Xian frowned, displeased, and continued forward.

He lived in an old urban area. The road surface had been newly paved, but many other infrastructure elements and houses were very old.

There were no elevators in these buildings, which were six stories high. Many windows were old-fashioned casement windows, with ugly anti-theft bars installed outside.

Qin Xian stopped in front of a building, looking at the familiar surroundings.

This was where he grew up. He used to have a warm family; his parents ran a small noodle shop nearby. But after he went to college, both of them passed away from illness, and now he lived alone.

“Heh,” Qin Xian chuckled.

Why was he reminiscing about the past so much today? It was rather melancholic.

As he was about to go upstairs, he suddenly heard a soft whimper coming from the alley beside him. The light didn’t reach the alley, which was shrouded in darkness. Was it a small animal or an aberrant entity?

Qin Xian turned towards the alley. In the dimness, he saw a dark, curled-up shape.

Upon closer inspection, it was a black dog. There were bloodstains on its body, and the fur on its paws was matted with blood, forming knots. Its thigh had a deep, bone-revealing tear.

He was being too suspicious, he thought. He knelt on one knee, carefully observing the pitiful animal.

The dog lifted its eyelids and glanced at him before closing them again.

It seemed indifferent and wary, or perhaps it was too weak.

“It’s quite pitiful, but I can’t take you in. Although I’d like a dog, I can barely afford to feed myself right now.”

After all, he would be unemployed starting tomorrow.

The dog lifted its eyelids again and let out another soft whimper.

Qin Xian showed no expression upon hearing it. He stood up and turned to leave, not looking back even as the whimpers behind him grew more pitiful.

The black dog fell silent, its eyes fixed on Qin Xian’s departing figure. A trace of blood flashed in its pupils. Strands of black energy coalesced beneath it, forming a darkness darker than shadow. The black dog slowly sank into this darkness. However, before it could completely disappear, its ears twitched, and it immediately resumed its weak posture on the ground.

Qin Xian’s figure reappeared at the alley entrance. This time, he held a disposable cup and crouched down, pouring the water from the cup into the dog’s mouth.

The dog’s clear black and white eyes moved to look at him, and it began to lap up the water with smacking sounds. After drinking about half the cup, Qin Xian placed the cup aside and stood up. “There, you can drink water, so you should be okay. There are many kind people around here. Keep whimpering, and someone will probably take you in.”

With that, he left completely without looking back. Upon returning home, he collapsed onto the sofa, exhausted, and closed his eyes, drifting into a semi-conscious sleep.

However, after only about twenty minutes, his eyelashes trembled uneasily, and he opened his eyes. His gaze was clear, with no hint of sleepiness. This was a lingering effect of spending too much time in the Infinite Flow world; he couldn’t achieve restful sleep.

Qin Xian was used to it and took out his phone to search for discussions about supernatural events. He browsed through various bizarre rumors but found nothing noteworthy.

He then switched to searching the news and discovered some strange things.

The first news item was about a school suicide that had shocked the nation. This incident had sparked online discussions, with several hot searches trending. Amidst discussions about academic pressure and school bullying, a few comments caught Qin Xian’s attention.

[Netizen 1: My classmate is from that school. He said the school was haunted. When he went back after evening study, he saw a ghost hand holding the top student’s hand and leading him upstairs, then pushing him off the roof.]

The ghost hand mentioned in this post was similar to a common, weak aberrant entity in the Infinite Flow world.

He clicked on the replies to this comment. Several users from the same province agreed.

The second news item that caught Qin Xian’s attention was about a bus fire.

Although the police stated that the cause of the fire was under investigation, a considerable number of people claimed they saw the entire bus suddenly engulfed in flames.

The photos of the bus wreckage showed no signs of a major explosion. The sudden engulfment in flames did not conform to normal natural laws.

Then there was a gas explosion in a new residential complex, a serial killer in the city, and multiple disappearances.

These news reports were all from the past two months. Many netizens were lamenting that major accidents had become more frequent than before. Could the real world be having problems?

Qin Xian put away his phone and closed his eyes, activating the abilities he had gained in the other world as he would in a dungeon. When he returned to the real world, he had tried, and there had been no change; he seemed to have completely reverted to being an ordinary person.

But just now, he felt a subtle sensation.

Qin Xian’s closed eyes snapped open, his irises turning a brilliant gold.

This was one of the skills he had acquired in the Infinite Flow world, named “Insight.” It allowed him to see the true nature of things and detect the pollution aura emitted by aberrant entities, thereby locating them. Moreover, this ability could only be shielded, not deceived; if he could see it, it was real.

It sounded very useful, but he only had one use per day, lasting only a few seconds. Exceeding the limit would cause extreme strain on his eyes, even blindness.

The world before him remained unchanged. According to the “Insight” ability, this offered strong proof that this world was not fake.

His eyes began to sting. Qin Xian endured the pain and walked to the window to look out from a distance, still finding nothing.

The pain became unbearable, and he had to close his eyes. When he opened them again, they had returned to their normal dark brown.

Qin Xian stood by the bed, frowning in thought.

His skill had reactivated, but his other abilities had not yet fully returned. For now, only Insight was usable.

And the answer from the Insight skill was that this was indeed the real world.

That was truly bizarre. Had he never glimpsed the real world in his twenty-odd years? Or was there a more terrifying possibility?

Qin Xian thought with a dark expression: the sinister and gloomy Main God might not be so kind as to send him back so easily. Could it be that he had brought some “dirty things” back with him?

Qin Xian’s fingers tightened on the windowsill, his fingertips turning white from the pressure.

He didn’t want to become a sinner who brought about the world’s doom.

“Whimper…”

The familiar whimpering sound came from downstairs again. Qin Xian looked down. The stray dog was still curled up in the same spot, and no one had taken it in. Its mournful cries were even weaker than before.

Qin Xian frowned, looking down.

He didn’t know what this dog had experienced, or if it had been abused. But he knew that pets that had suffered brutal abuse were most likely to attract aberrant entities or even become aberrant entities themselves. This could lead to other casualties, and he should intervene.

He immediately turned around, found a clean bath towel from the closet, and went downstairs.

The black dog in the alley was still lying there, its tail stuck to the ground, unmoving, perhaps due to extreme weakness or fear. Even upon seeing Qin Xian again, it merely opened its eyes indifferently and watched him.

Qin Xian crouched down and carefully covered the dog with the towel.

As if sensing that the human was helping it, the stray dog remained still, allowing itself to be wrapped and picked up.

The smell of blood mixed with the dog’s scent and other odors assaulted his nostrils. Qin Xian wrinkled his nose slightly. “Tsk, you’re really dirty. Too bad I can’t give you a bath right now.”

The dog remained silent, showing no reaction. But one couldn’t expect a dog to understand human speech and respond.

Qin Xian carried it upstairs and placed it on the balcony.

There was no helping it; the smell was too strong. Since it was spring, the weather was neither too cold nor too hot, so placing it on the balcony wouldn’t be an issue.

Next, he rummaged through the medicine cabinet at home, found some expired disinfectant, bandages, and gauze, and simply and skillfully cleaned and disinfected the dog’s wounds, then bandaged them.

“There, it’s just a fractured leg. And a few open wounds. You probably don’t need to go to the vet. If you don’t die by tomorrow, I’ll keep you for now.” Qin Xian patted the dog’s head, turned around, and went back into his room, closing the balcony door.

Author’s Note:

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Recommending a friend’s work: “What, My Fishing Rod is From the Underworld!?” A bottomless wife-adoring maniac attacker who is hooked like a mandarin fish x A seductive but unknowingly spoiled and clingy fishing baiter. Fish can’t be caught, but everything else is reeled in, like fragments of people… [Trash Dog] by Ding Baizhuo Book Number: 9777400