Ch 20: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

“Hey, hey, careful!”

“Step on the left, the left! No, not there, a little higher—”

“Hurry up, it’s catching up!”

When the final class of the afternoon ended and Bai Tang walked out of the teaching building, she heard shouting all around her.

Several students were gathered at a corner outside the building, craning their necks and pointing at something above.

One of the girls had come to Bai Tang several times with questions before. They were fairly familiar, so Bai Tang called her by name. “Class is over. Why aren’t you heading to the cafeteria?”

As she spoke, her gaze dropped, and she noticed the students were all wearing a new kind of belt around their waists, fitted with a protruding buckle.

They had not had those before. What had the principal done this time?

“Ah, Teacher Bai.”

The girl turned, saw it was her, and immediately greeted her with excitement.

Both Bai Tang and Zhao Yunxiao were young, not much older than the students, and had good personalities. Teachers like that were often popular during one’s school years.

Especially Bai Tang, who loved anime culture and had plenty of shared interests with many students. Aside from assigning somewhat brutal homework, she was generally well liked.

Facing her, the girl showed none of the usual stiffness reserved for teachers and pointed upward. “He insists on winning once in the climbing race. Once they finish, we’ll go eat. Teacher, stay and watch the result too.”

Bai Tang responded and looked up.

At first, she did not see the “he” the girl mentioned.

Instead, she saw a zombie clinging to the outer wall of the teaching building in an unnatural posture.

Its fingers were visibly sharper than a normal person’s, gripping tightly into the cracks of the wall. Veins bulged grotesquely. Those hands were less like human hands and more like a beast’s claws.

Searching for its target, the zombie kept turning its head. When its skull twisted nearly one hundred and eighty degrees and its eyes met Bai Tang’s below, the stack of books in her hands suddenly fell to the ground.

The girl was startled by the clatter and turned.

She found that Bai Tang, who usually radiated pure shut-in energy, disliked moving, and rarely reacted dramatically, now looked like a bowstring pulled taut, staring at the zombie without blinking.

The muscles in her cheeks trembled unnaturally. Her lips moved as she muttered something.

“Run…”

The girl jumped, not catching it clearly. “Teacher Bai, are you okay?”

“Run. Run.”

It was as if Bai Tang had finally found her voice. She repeated it twice more, hoarse.

She pushed away the girl’s hand that tried to steady her, yet her own feet seemed nailed to the ground, paralyzed by fear, forgetting how to move.

The girl stared at her, at a loss.

At that moment, a calm voice sounded from behind.

“A-003, cease action. Return to storage,” Fu Qing ordered.

The zombie high above immediately stopped scanning. “Instruction received.”

Remembering Fu Qing’s prior settings, it obediently dropped straight down in two controlled jumps before landing on the ground with a sound like an engine shutting off, then jogged toward the sports hall storage room.

The boy who had been competing midair blinked. His opponent had abandoned him without even turning back. “Hey?” he said, confused.

Fu Qing watched A-003 leave, then walked over to Bai Tang, bent down, and picked up the scattered books, handing them back. Her voice was unusually gentle. “That wasn’t real.”

“I introduced ten realistic zombies into Teacher Hao’s class. They can simulate different types of zombie behavior. I sent a private message to the other teachers beforehand. Didn’t you see it?”

There was something in her steady tone that smoothed over frayed nerves, gradually pulling Bai Tang out of a waking nightmare.

“I… I might have been gaming and didn’t check the notification. Then I went straight to class…”

She looked uncharacteristically flustered, clutching the books to her chest and pushing up her slipping black-framed glasses.

Though she was explaining, she was clearly still shaken.

The surrounding students had not even processed why the realistic zombie had been called away by the principal. The girl who had been talking to Bai Tang stood there, half-understanding, her hand still suspended in midair, confused.

Fu Qing did not press further. Instead, she turned to the others. “No more realistic zombie practice for today. Go back.”

Class time was too short, and there were only ten realistic zombies. Not everyone had gotten enough exposure. Fu Qing had specifically allowed students to rent them freely after class for extra practice.

As long as they registered through their watches, the zombies would be linked to the borrower’s personal data, so she was not worried about them going missing.

She had not expected Bai Tang to be startled like this.

The students responded vaguely and dispersed.

After giving instructions, Fu Qing pulled up the system and sent out a campus-wide notice with the same content.

This had been her oversight. Although she had sent a message in advance, not everyone checked notifications promptly. Granny Liu was elderly and barely knew how to use a smartphone, let alone the system.

Even the method of assigning homework through the watch had taken Bai Tang a long time to teach her. This time, it was entirely possible that Bai Tang and Zhao Yunxiao had also missed the notification.

Before students used the realistic zombies again, she had to ensure every teacher was aware of their existence.

…

Meanwhile, at the cafeteria line, Song Rushuang felt her wrist vibrate slightly. Before she could react, her watch activated automatically and projected a notification.

It opened on its own without her input?

Song Rushuang muttered, “Is this something important?”

“I think this is the first all-campus announcement since the one explaining the purpose of points,” Shen Qingqing said, looking at her own watch as her expression turned serious.

The last time points were mentioned, it involved bringing parents and relatives into the shelter. It had been critical information no one could afford to miss.

With high expectations, they tapped into the notice. After reading it, however, they were confused.

There did not seem to be anything particularly special about it.

“Isn’t it just saying we can’t borrow zombies before tomorrow? Is that really worth a special announcement, and a mandatory read at that?” Song Rushuang blinked, hesitant.

“No idea…”

Zhang Han had not taken practical combat. Her PE class was scheduled for tomorrow morning. She had been eager to check out the storage room after dinner, so she could not help feeling disappointed.

They looked at each other, none of them quite figuring it out.

*

A corner of the cafeteria.

“Have some hot soup.”

Fu Qing set down her tray and slid one of the two bowls toward Bai Tang.

The latter was slumped on a bench, looking wilted. Only when she heard Fu Qing call her did she pick up her chopsticks listlessly.

She stirred the soup twice and unexpectedly fished out a large meaty bone. Bai Tang looked surprised. “Did you scoop up one of the cafeteria’s veteran staff for me?”

That kind of sarcasm only came from someone with experience…

Seeing that she still had the energy to complain, Fu Qing snorted lightly. “Just eat.”

Fangzhou’s cafeteria came with free soup and fruit as standard. The menu rotated weekly. Today happened to be winter melon pork rib soup.

A whole barrel of it, steaming hot. Lift the lid and the aroma hit you from afar.

Unlike the cafeteria at Fu Qing’s old school, where the soup was so thin it might as well not exist, with only faint egg strands and a few stray vegetable leaves.

The tuition she had squeezed out of the system, aside from allocating a large portion as financial aid for needy students and setting aside some for scholarships, had almost entirely been used to improve campus life like this.

Bai Tang paused, feeling a little guilty.

She had almost forgotten she was no longer a student. The person sitting across from her was her superior.

But perhaps the fright earlier had dragged her back to a certain point in memory. For a fleeting moment, it felt as though she had returned to not long after graduation, sitting in the small, warmly decorated room she had once lived in.

Time had turned. One day she woke up and saw a zombie pressed against her bedroom window. Its features were flattened by the glass from pressing too hard. The corners of its mouth were curled upward. It stared at her without moving.

One year and three months after the virus outbreak, beginner zombies had started to develop climbing ability.

Large groups of zombies that had once been trapped outside buildings began to gather and attempt to climb to higher floors.

That month, many humans who had barely survived by hiding high up in buildings died when zombies besieged and invaded them. The remaining humans either fled cities for remote wilderness, or stopped living alone and began forming settlements, building defenses, and resisting zombie attacks together.

Bai Tang had been just one of the countless who died then.

She held her bowl as steam rose around her face, hiding how pale she was.

She shivered suddenly, recalling something, and hurriedly lowered her head, blinking rapidly.

Fu Qing acted as though she noticed nothing, pushing her tray closer.

“Why aren’t you eating?”

“Oh. I am.” Not wanting to reveal anything, Bai Tang instinctively lowered her head and took a large sip.

The ribs had been stewed until tender. A light press with the lips and the meat slipped clean off the bone. The flavor had melted into the broth. Warmth flowed into her stomach and spread through her body, finally bringing some color back to her cheeks.

“It’s really good,” she murmured.

“Then eat more.” Fu Qing drank her soup. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Bai Tang picking up vegetables. Her fingers were slender, the knuckles slightly more prominent than usual.

A sign of being too thin.

Just as Fu Qing had retained the physique honed through five years of apocalypse survival, each teacher had been resurrected in the state they were in at death.

Bai Tang was not skeletal, but she was clearly undernourished. Living off canned food and a small amount of vegetables grown on her balcony, no matter how carefully she rationed, there had been limits.

Of course, compared to many who had been driven out by hunger in less than a month, she had done remarkably well. Otherwise, the system would not have rated her survival ability so highly.

Halfway through the meal, after regaining some composure, Bai Tang brought up the topic herself. “Those zombies… what are they for?”

She sipped her soup and looked at Fu Qing across from her, suddenly noticing how quiet she was while eating.

No. The principal might be sharp-tongued, but she did not actually talk much in daily life. Bai Tang silently revised her impression.

“For practice.” Fu Qing ate quickly but without looking rude. “All kinds of practice. Fighting, running, climbing. Realistic zombies can simulate real scenarios. They’ll be more engaged.”

“Climbing… that explains it.” Bai Tang nodded slowly.

She had been so shaken earlier that her mind had been foggy. Now she recalled that there had indeed been another boy climbing above the zombie.

The realistic zombie’s agility had been set at the level of just learning to climb walls. Because of that, the boy had moved slightly faster.

The zombie had stretched out its hand desperately, barely brushing his ankle, roaring in frustration below.

Bai Tang fell silent.

After seeing Fu Qing off that day long ago, she had stared at her retreating back and felt envy more than once.

If she had been as agile and capable, would she have left that room long ago?

Then staying would have been her choice, not something forced on her.

If she had recognized the danger sooner, she might have relocated earlier. Perhaps her ending would have been different.

But these students were not like her. They were striving to catch up to Fu Qing’s pace.

With this training, they would not have to experience what she had.

“That’s really good,” she said softly.

When she had first been summoned back by Fu Qing, she had resisted the thought of going through the apocalypse again.

She did not want to face the same fear, the same loneliness, the same pain.

But now, she felt faintly that maybe this time the ending would be different.

Maybe their endings would all be different.

Suddenly, Bai Tang put down her bowl and clasped Fu Qing’s hand sincerely. “Principal, you’re amazing. I’ll follow you wholeheartedly.”

Fu Qing’s lips twitched. She could not tell whether Bai Tang was joking or being serious. “Then the monthly game cartridges…”

Without hesitation, Bai Tang replied, “Those are definitely still required.”

Fu Qing: “……”

Fu Qing laughed. “What you’re doing matters too.”

You’re also helping change that ending.

Bai Tang’s hand, now holding chopsticks again, froze midair at those words.

When Fu Qing stood to return her tray, a notification suddenly popped up.

【Teacher “Bai Tang” has deepened her relationship with you.】

【She will work even harder!】

【Reward: 50 Teaching Points】

Fu Qing stopped in her tracks, staring suspiciously at the floating prompt.

That works too??

She had been complaining to the system about too few missions and too few teaching points. Who would have thought there was another way to earn them?

Unlike Hao Zhenye’s case, no mission had been issued. Perhaps because Bai Tang’s favorability did not directly affect school operations, it was more like an achievement point in a game, a hidden reward that only appeared when triggered.

Fu Qing felt like she had just figured something out.

Looks like she needed to interact with her teachers more often.

Still, for a management system, it was quite something. The message after increasing favorability was that she would work even harder…

Fu Qing glanced at Bai Tang, who was still quietly moved, and for a moment felt a trace of sympathy.

₊˚.🎧📓✩