Ch 16: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

The Fangzhou students were stunned.

The principal had been on the scene for what, a few seconds? Half a minute?

And it was over just like that?

The troublemaker who a moment ago had been swaggering around waving a beer bottle and vowing to “teach them how to behave” was now lying face-down on the ground, so peaceful he looked dead.

Qin Yufei had been worried the principal could not handle it alone. Only now did he realize, with a kind of sad embarrassment, that he had worried for nothing. For all that he was a bona fide P.E. student, broad-shouldered, muscular, nearly one-meter-ninety tall, he had not helped at all. Feeling deeply ashamed, Qin Yufei lowered his head, and at the edge of his vision a flash of pink appeared.

He focused and saw that a fully loaded strawberry boba drink was still hanging from Fu Qing’s left wrist.

Qin Yufei: “……”

After doing all that, not a single drop had spilled. The principal was terrifying.

For some reason, on campus, the thing they feared most was running into the principal. But outside campus, faced with a problem they could not solve, the moment he saw her appear, Qin Yufei almost felt his eyes sting.

The students felt it with absolute clarity: she was on their side.

As that thought formed, a rush of safety followed. It even made Qin Yufei feel a little embarrassed remembering what he had once posted on the forums.

How could he have suspected the principal like that?

Thinking carefully, she had not done anything wrong. The school’s course arrangements were all for their sake.

The simulation drills were brutal and unreasonable, sure, but could they be more brutal than the apocalypse? More unreasonable than the people they had run into today?

Qin Yufei’s thoughts were a mess. On the day of the simulation drill, he had watched his roommate turn into a zombie with his own eyes, then been infected himself. When he regained clarity and realized he had, while out of his mind, infected who knew how many classmates, he had nearly broken down. It had even driven him for a time into embracing conspiracy theories.

But what happened today changed his mind.

Just then, Fu Qing looked toward the seven students standing in the courtyard.

When their eyes met, Qin Yufei instinctively looked away in shame, and then he heard the voice that had once echoed from loudspeakers and the auditorium, a voice that had seemed impossibly distant, now landing clearly in his ears.

“You did very well.”

Plainly said, yet it carried a weight that pressed on the heart.

Several of them, Song Rushuang included, froze. Their eyes darted away, and their cheeks actually grew warm.

The drunk troublemakers had sobered a little by now. One of them stepped forward, cleared his throat, and, putting on the air of an elder, frowned at the group of young people.

“I’ll admit Old Hu drank too much and acted impulsively, but no matter what, you can’t hit someone, can you? Leave your contact info. We’ll take him to the hospital. We’ll pay what we should pay. If you hit someone, you bear legal responsibility.”

They had been the ones to throw the first punch. Now that they could not win by force, they suddenly wanted to talk about “reason.” Qin Yufei almost laughed from anger.

Just then, two figures rushed through the courtyard gate.

It was the pair who had carried the dog to the hospital in the first place.

The boy swept his eyes over the scene, like a head eunuch barging into court with crucial evidence, one step from shouting “Hold!” and then very smoothly presenting a phone to the emperor.

“……” Emperor Fu Qing took the phone he was shoving over with exaggerated eyebrow waggles and saw it displayed an ongoing call, the other party labeled “Dog Owner.”

The “dog thief”… the dog-carrier lowered his voice. “Principal, we got it onto the car. The owner is on the way to the hospital.”

It was almost funny. The chubby Samoyed had “slowly come to” the moment they reached the street corner, even sticking out its tongue and licking its owner’s palm a few times.

The warm, wet tongue was soft. The girl burst into tears.

She rubbed the thick fur on the dog’s back twice, then carefully parted the blood-tinged fur at the top of its head and realized the blood came from a tear in its ear. Suddenly it made sense: the drunk had swung wide. The beer bottle had smashed against a nearby table leg, and flying shards had cut Maomao’s ear.

The situation had been too urgent. In the chaos, no one had noticed the little chubby dog lying on the ground was playing dead.

“When it gets punished for doing something wrong, it always lies there without moving… I can’t believe it was pretending today too.” The girl cried and laughed at once.

Even so, they still needed to go to the hospital for a check, just in case.

Before leaving, the girl grabbed the two boys and insisted on exchanging contact information.

Worried the situation in the courtyard might not be resolved, she even made them keep the call connected so she could hear what happened next.

Sure enough, after the dog was sent away, those men still would not let it go. They even demanded compensation from the people who had tried to help.

“Compensate my ass!”

Furious, the girl asked Fu Qing to put the call on speaker.

“Since you want compensation, then let’s talk about compensation.”

“Maomao is a show-grade Samoyed. The purchase price was 12,000 yuan, and I still have the receipt. She’s three and a half this year. In the three years she’s been with my family, including food, medical care, training, and daily care, the monthly cost has been about 6,000 yuan. I have all the receipts for every item and service.”

“On top of that, Maomao is an emotional support dog my parents gave me to help with my mental health. She’s now not in her right mind because you assaulted her. If anything happens to her, I don’t want to live either. I will demand full compensation at market value, plus emotional damages.”

“If you want to sue, I’ll accompany you anytime. My family’s legal team will probably be delighted to take this case and double their year-end bonus.”

She delivered the whole speech in a cold, unbroken stream, leaving the men’s faces green with fury.

At the words “not in her right mind,” the two boys who had carried the dog both looked away, one at the sky and one at the ground, making it very clear they had heard nothing.

In the corner, Zhang Han’s eyes had already widened when she heard “6,000 a month.” She counted on her fingers and felt the world collapse. “My allowance is actually less than a dog…”

Fu Qing was surprised too. The person on the other end really was a genuine rich young lady.

The drunk men finally seemed to give up. Faces pale, they went to haul their unconscious companion off the ground. Nearby bystanders were also scolding the staff for refusing to provide surveillance footage. From the sound of it, a wave of bad reviews was unavoidable, and the barbecue shop employee did not even dare lift his head.

Fu Qing turned off the speaker and stepped aside.

“Is it settled?” the girl asked softly.

Fu Qing gave a short “Mm.” The girl immediately dropped the earlier imperiousness and sounded delighted. “Thank you so much today. You’re all students from the same school, right? I’ll definitely come to your school to thank you properly. Can you give me the address?”

While eating, she had overheard the conversation at the next table and could tell they were classmates.

“Right, my name is Zhao Tingting.”

Fu Qing wanted to refuse, but Zhao Tingting wheedled and would not let it go, so she had to agree, giving her the school address and her own contact information.

After hanging up, Fu Qing looked at the nine people in the courtyard and recorded each of their information in the system.

“Today, the four who stepped in to help, plus the five who responded to a classmate’s distress call, will each receive three points as encouragement.”

They had not expected such an extra reward. The nine of them blinked, then cheered.

They excitedly began discussing points, while Fu Qing looked toward the troublemakers.

They had gotten a wet towel from the shop and were grim-faced as they wiped their companion’s nosebleed.

Their low, oppressive mood was sharply separated from the students’ joy.

When the man’s face hit the table, it seemed his lip had split as well. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth, staining the towel red. Fu Qing stood still, watching for a while.

Saliva. Blood. Wounds.

These were the main routes of viral transmission in the apocalypse.

For a long stretch of time, every new cut on her body had made Fu Qing anxious for ages, forcing her to think hard about where it had come from.

But in this peaceful era, people did not have that kind of burden. They treated wounds casually.

The used towel was tossed into a trash can. Fu Qing forced herself to look away.

She could not say why, but she felt something was off.

The instinct that had helped her dodge countless dangers in the apocalypse was sounding an alarm.

A drunk going berserk was common. Conflicts during sightseeing were common. Even driving a car into a crowded downtown area as “revenge on society” had happened more than once in recent years.

And yet perhaps that earlier comment had lodged itself in her mind: “Hasn’t anyone noticed there’s been more bloodshed lately?”

And now even the students had nearly been dragged into a violent clash.

For the first time, Fu Qing seriously tried to recall the “accidents” that had been happening around her lately.

Only a week had passed since she was reborn. She had spent most of that week on campus, with a stable, orderly routine, and she did not follow the news much. But in her previous life, when she was still an ordinary college student, she had paid close attention to social headlines.

Five years into the apocalypse, she had often longed for the old, peaceful life. Yet now, looking back, when she shifted her focus beyond herself, she gradually realized certain things she had ignored.

Before the virus outbreak, it seemed there really had been a long stretch of time when society felt especially turbulent.

All kinds of deaths happened frequently. Many events that, on their own, would have been enough to sear themselves into memory and ring like a warning bell, instead came one after another within that single year.

Chain-reaction highway pileups. Gas explosions in residential compounds. Major passenger plane crashes.

Shootings, poisonings, random killings.

Some man-made. Some “accidents.”

Society did not fail to respond, but because incidents like these were not happening only in China, people eventually arrived at a conclusion: it was a wave of worldwide “bad luck.”

Experts analyzed it as a category of employment crisis triggered by a worsening economy. Rising living costs and increasing unemployment were said to be fueling social instability.

With people on edge, even minor friction could be endlessly escalated, and everyone was urged to stay calm and keep an even temper.

Back then, Fu Qing was still a student. She lived in the dorms, lived off her parents’ inheritance, and rarely interacted with people outside campus. She could not exactly empathize with those societal shifts, so at first she did not realize there was a problem.

But now, thinking back, the most terrifying period was when the trending list seemed to change shape every single day. Disasters and deaths flooded the feeds. People barely had time to mourn before they were forced to face yet another death.

Something about that was clearly wrong.

Fu Qing searched her memory carefully and realized with a jolt that it seemed to have begun from that summer.

Could it be connected to the outbreak that came later?

She asked the question inwardly.

The system remained quietly silent, like a pebble tossed into a deep cave, falling endlessly without any echo.

*

That night, two newly posted threads sat pinned on the forum homepage and sparked heated discussion.

[Got a distress signal today. I was about to call a car, and then the watch said someone had already rushed over. I just want to ask if the classmate who called for help is okay?]

[Too excited to sleep. Any classmates who were there today want to talk about it?]

Most people had been busy enjoying their hard-won day off and knew nothing about what happened at the barbecue shop. It was not until they opened the forum at night that they realized something was up.

The first post had gone up earlier. The poster’s tone was serious. They said they had received a distress call from a classmate, but after someone else responded first, the wristband stopped broadcasting the signal. The more the poster thought about it, the more uneasy they became. They regretted not rushing over sooner, and came to the forum to ask, so that if something really had happened, they would not be haunted by guilt.

Because it involved classmates’ safety, the thread quickly climbed past a hundred replies. Several other students chimed in saying they had also received the signal, which only made everyone lurking in the thread more worried.

Not until more than an hour later did one of the nine people who knew the truth finally see the post and hurry in to reply.

Once everyone learned it had been a false alarm, that no one had been harmed, and that their classmates had been the ones who stepped in to help, they finally relaxed.

The discussion gradually shifted to the wristband’s “distress function.”

[Doesn’t anyone think this feature is really convenient? The OP said it even syncs the sender’s location. Even calling the police can’t be that precise.]

[I’m the one who sent the signal. We were facing off with the troublemakers and they had weapons. I was probably too nervous, my heart rate kept shooting up. The watch automatically detected the change in my body and asked if I wanted to call for help.

There was also a small line of text saying that if I didn’t respond within 30 seconds, it would automatically send the signal. In other words, even if I passed out or lost consciousness, or if I was in the middle of fighting and couldn’t operate it in time, it would still find help for me.]

[!! Firsthand account, bumping this.]

[This is such a good feature.]

[If the apocalypse really comes, this will be huge! When communications collapse, the watches can keep the whole school united.]

[I don’t know why I suddenly feel a little moved… whether it’s the classmates who stepped up to help strangers, or the ones who responded to the distress call right away, or the OP who came to the forum because they couldn’t stop worrying. Everyone is a good person.]

[So proud. First time I’ve felt like Fangzhou students are actually one unit. When something happens, everyone really shows up TT]

[Has anyone thought about this: if those 21 people hadn’t been expelled, we wouldn’t have this effect. We’d also have to worry about the distress signal going to the wrong person. What if they rushed over not to save us, but to kick us while we’re down?

If the apocalypse really comes, Fangzhou students will have prepared early and will probably have more supplies than others. A distress call will always be made at someone’s most vulnerable moment. If the “reinforcements” who arrive aren’t reliable, we’re finished…] [holy crap, the more you think the scarier it gets] [the more you think the scarier it gets +1]

[I’m lucky to have you all, my brain would never get to that layer]

[Honestly, isn’t that the principal’s credit?] [hahaha, principal-approved, quality guaranteed?]

……

The second thread was posted after the first.

The poster was one of the people who had been on scene with Qin Yufei. They had witnessed everything. Seeing that many people in the first thread were curious about what had actually happened, they decided to step up and tell the whole story in vivid detail.

Their writing was quite good. After reading the main post, classmates felt as if they had been there.

Notably, after this incident, the poster was clearly conquered by the principal. The segment describing Fu Qing’s arrival through to the resolution was especially detailed.

And so, this time, the discussion focus swerved completely toward Fu Qing.

Like the nine involved, the other students also hadn’t expected the principal to be that good in a fight.

[I didn’t expect the principal to be the one who handled it… I apologize for what I posted on the forum before.]

[Did the principal come because she also received the distress signal? And she arrived later than the five classmates who responded first, which means she must have been farther away. Based on what the OP in the other thread said, once other people arrive, the signal to students stops sending. So can I reasonably guess that when we’re in danger, regardless of distance, regardless of whether someone gets there early to help, the principal will keep receiving the signal until she arrives?] [holy crap]

[Feels pretty possible]

[Combined with the previous thread, I’ve changed my view of the principal]

[Using the drill to weed out classmates with questionable character, offering a chance to earn a free shelter slot, strengthening our apocalypse survival ability through courses, installing an emergency alarm system in the watch, rushing to rescue at the first moment… if you think carefully, hasn’t everything the principal has done so far been for our good?]

[When you put it like that, it really does seem so… my feelings are kind of complicated…]

[The principal was so cool today!]

[The classmates who stepped in today were cool too! Suddenly I feel really glad I got into this school. My sense of safety is through the roof QAQ]

……

At first it was all reflection, but further down the thread, the tone took a very strange turn.

[If you savor the OP’s description, it’s kind of hilarious. The principal one second: “If you have something to say, say it to me.” The next second: “If you can’t talk properly, you can also not talk.”]

[That’s what you call courtesy first, force second (leans back)]

[Summary of tonight:

Drunk guy makes one sound, principal: “Bang!”

Drunk guy makes two sounds, principal: “Bang bang!”]

[Precise. Correct.]

[I’ve never heard someone’s head make such a crisp sound!]

No one knew which of the nine it was, but one of them had been camping the forum all night, posting enthusiastically. The sudden shift in style deeply proved that students could only stay serious for three seconds at most.

[When she’s being sharp-tongued to us, I feel terrified. When she tells troublemakers “we can fit a few more bodies here,” I suddenly feel amazing. Can anyone understand me (pokes fingers together)]

[I get it! It feels like the reassurance of being hauled home by a parent…]

[“If you’ve got something to say, we’ll talk when we get back to school.”]

[Why is it kind of cool]

[Why wasn’t I there ahhhhh]

[My focus is on the strawberry boba. That app has recommended it to me a bunch of times and I was never tempted, but after seeing the principal drink it, I suddenly want to buy one tomorrow…]

[Doesn’t anyone think the principal is insanely strong? How is she that good at fighting? She looks about the same age as us.]

[Damn it, it just makes me feel even more useless.]

……

The thread wandered farther and farther off topic. By the end, the classmates collapsed into bed in tears of laughter, deciding they would run a couple extra laps tomorrow.

*

When Fu Qing got up the next morning, she habitually opened the teacher page and glanced over it. Her gaze suddenly stopped on the “Student Favorability” column.

“……” She rubbed her eyes, thinking she must be seeing things.

The needle on the gauge had swung dramatically, already faintly nearing the midpoint.

【Student Favorability: -13%】

In just one night, it had risen this much?

Nearing the 0 mark, did that mean most people’s attitude toward her had shifted to “neutral”?

They might not understand her, but they were no longer as wary as before.

Fu Qing found it odd, until the system prompted her to open the forum and she finally understood why her favorability had reversed overnight.

The forum was lively again this morning. Some people had gone to bed early last night and hadn’t seen the threads. Today their roommates dragged them online to catch up.

As more and more people read the posts, favorability continued to tick upward slowly, and might even turn positive by the end of the day.

The system was delighted: 【Congratulations, host! Favorability can finally surpass zero.】

Fu Qing: “……That’s quite an achievement.”

Was there any principal more miserable than her?

Other people started from zero. Who started from the negatives like she did?

Exerting every effort, only to finally return to the starting line.

Not to mention, she still hadn’t reached zero. Even if she did become positive, it would only mean the students were finally looking at her without prejudice, acknowledging her existence as principal.

Closeness was still far away, let alone full trust.

Fu Qing sighed inwardly. A long road ahead.

To be fair, dealing with those drunk men hadn’t been difficult for her. Even if they hadn’t been scared off and had chosen to fight, it would only have taken a bit more effort. People before the apocalypse were still constrained by the morals and laws of civilized society. No matter how reckless they got, they wouldn’t be as ruthless as those who had struggled to survive after the end came.

Fu Qing had seen two groups beat each other bloody over a single crate of canned food, even setting fire to the other side’s camp. She had seen brothers turn on each other over unequal resource distribution, relatives become enemies, one of them cut off the other’s head and stroll away.

Compared to that, a drunken brawl over pride was childish, like kids playing house.

So Fu Qing didn’t think it was a big deal.

The forum’s speculation was basically correct. As long as a student’s wristband issued an alarm, Fu Qing would receive it immediately.

The distress signal sent to her had no distance limit. Even if the student calling for help was surrounded by no one, even if it crossed half of China, she would still be the first to know.

She had dragged more than two thousand barely-adult students into this. She had to be responsible for them.

So even without a system quest, Fu Qing would have gone to that barbecue shop.

She didn’t think any of that needed to be said.

……

Fu Qing soon noticed the effect of the favorability increase.

Students who had previously avoided her at all costs, after reading the posts, stopped hiding from her.

When she went to the cafeteria for breakfast, a few girls even worked up the nerve to sit at the table next to hers. The whole time they ate, they kept sneaking glances at her, raising their eyebrows at each other while chatting on their phones.

The system very openly snooped around and came back to report excitedly: 【Host, they said, “I suddenly realized the principal’s hands are so pretty.”】

【Girl B said, “At this distance, a sneaky photo won’t be noticed, right? Someone cover for me.”】

【Girl C said, “I want her to hit me.”】

Fu Qing: “?”

Was that… right?

₊˚.🎧📓✩