Ch 24: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

Before the system alert went off, Fu Qing had been at a nearby auto dealership looking at cars.

The system only handled infrastructure. Vehicles outside campus were obviously not part of its in-store catalog. Fu Qing needed a car—for transportation and for stockpiling supplies before the apocalypse.

But before she could make a decision, the system’s shrill alarm exploded in her mind.

“Yongxin Road Pedestrian Street”…

Fu Qing was local. A map surfaced automatically in her mind. The pedestrian street was just one block away.

She did not hesitate. She left the dealership and sprinted toward it.

Within a certain radius of the pedestrian street, both motor vehicles and non-motor vehicles were prohibited. Borrowing a car would be slower than running.

Relying on her familiarity with the area, she cut through a shortcut. As she neared, she saw waves of terrified people running toward her—fleeing from the chaos behind them.

They crashed head-on into her as she ran against the current.

Fu Qing wisely abandoned the idea of pushing through the crowd. She darted to the side and took a narrower side path. Rounding the final corner, the open stretch of Yongxin Road came into view.

The pedestrian street, normally bustling, was now deathly silent.

Shopping bags, clothes, and lost shoes lay scattered everywhere.

Dark red stains marked the ground. A few injured people in corners clutched their wounds and groaned.

Near the entrance checkpoint, several uniformed figures lay on the ground.

Fu Qing’s gaze sharpened.

Now she understood how things had escalated this far.

The attacker had targeted the people most likely to cause him trouble from the start.

An SUV of that size, with that horsepower, rampaging at full throttle—without armored vehicles, nothing could stop it. Tire spikes required advance placement; against a sudden assault, they were useless.

If the patrol officers had hesitated to shoot out the tires because of nearby civilians, and let it break into the crowd…

The outcome was inevitable.

Faint sirens wailed in the distance—still some way off.

Fu Qing wasted no time. She ran toward where the screams were loudest.

She finally saw the SUV Song Rushuang had described.

It was staring up at the two figures in the tree like a predator.

The system notified: [Host, the student who sent the distress signal is in the tree.]

Why is she in a tree?

Fu Qing frowned instinctively. But there was no time to think.

She picked up a brick from the ground and hurled it at a storefront window beside her.

The glass shattered explosively.

The noise successfully drew the driver’s attention.

Through the windshield glare, Fu Qing felt his gaze lock onto her—cold, viscous, like a snake’s tongue licking across her skin.

The tree stood between them, but they could see each other clearly.

Fu Qing remained expressionless, unmoving.

She dropped the brick casually and brushed dust from her hands.

The engine answered with a furious growl.

As the SUV lunged forward, she turned and sprinted in the opposite direction.

At that acceleration, the vehicle could cover dozens of meters in the blink of an eye. Perhaps the driver feared losing control at top speed; he did not slam the pedal all the way down.

That hesitation gave her a chance.

She ran along the same route she had used to arrive. Thanks to Song Rushuang’s warning, she had already visualized possible scenarios and memorized the terrain.

She headed straight for the plaza at the far end of the street.

Halfway there, she suddenly veered into a branching alley.

Behind her, the SUV drifted cleanly into the turn with almost no delay—professional-level handling.

If Song Rushuang had seen that, she would have realized the earlier sluggish turns had been deliberate bait—an invitation for pursuers to close in. Sinister to the extreme.

Fu Qing, relying on her sharpened senses, adjusted instantly.

The driver was skilled.

Cold, cautious—and yet bloodthirsty.

More dangerous than a mere madman.

After the turn, a straight road stretched ahead.

No obstacles.

Fu Qing was calculating how to use terrain when she noticed the SUV deliberately slow down.

Headlights flared.

Her elongated shadow trembled in the beam, amplifying the oppressive tension.

He thought she had nowhere to run.

He was toying with his prey.

Fu Qing realized this—and her lips curved slightly upward.

In that instant, she was back in familiar territory.

Hovering between life and death.

Adrenaline surged.

Her mind became crystal clear.

She stepped into the plaza.

Earlier, Mid-Autumn festivities had filled it with food stalls arranged in rows. White plastic tables and chairs had been knocked askew during the panic. Drinks and food were splattered everywhere.

Without hesitation, she plunged into the maze of tables and chairs, weaving through them fluidly.

The SUV roared out of the pedestrian street and, as she expected, did not attempt to avoid the obstacles. It smashed straight into the seating area.

Plastic tables and chairs offered no resistance. They were flung aside effortlessly.

Just before reaching the end, Fu Qing stepped onto one plastic table.

Using the elevation, she drove her legs hard and vaulted onto the roof of a nearby stall.

It was nothing more than a wooden frame with a cloth canopy, selling handmade trinkets—incapable of bearing her weight.

She did not linger.

With a light push of her palms, she flipped down gracefully like a cat, landing behind the stall on concrete.

There was a narrow path between two rows of shrubs.

From the pursuer’s perspective, she appeared to be fleeing into another escape route.

Sirens were now very close.

Under pressure, he would make only one choice.

“BOOM!”

The SUV obliterated the stall in front of it.

The wooden frame collapsed. Merchandise and canopy fabric scattered across the hood.

At the very bottom edge of the windshield, a flash of red appeared—

Too late.

The front bumper slammed directly into a fire hydrant hidden behind the stall.

The car jolted violently.

The hydrant, struck at high speed, bent sideways. A towering column of water blasted upward, instantly obscuring the driver’s view.

That was the moment Fu Qing had been waiting for.

The instant she landed behind the stall, she had not hesitated.

As if predicting the vehicle’s trajectory, she rolled sharply sideways—slipping into the driver’s blind spot just before the stall collapsed.

By forcing his eyes to track her supposed escape direction, she had guided his focus away from what lay beneath the car—

The fire hydrant.

As the SUV was forced to a halt, Fu Qing appeared like a phantom beside the driver’s window.

One hand gripped the roof rack’s crossbar. The other formed a tight fist and drove her elbow into the corner of the window.

The glass shattered with a crash.

Shards rained down over the driver’s head.

Fu Qing saw a face streaked with blood.

The person responsible for all this carnage was a young man in his early twenties. Soft, bloated, flesh puffed with excess fat—no wonder he relied on machinery to kill.

When he saw Fu Qing, something bloodthirsty flashed in his pale, wide-set eyes.

He reached under the passenger seat and pulled out a gleaming short knife, slashing toward her with a hoarse roar.

“Die!”

Before the blade could reach her face, Fu Qing moved.

Lightning-fast, she seized his wrist.

Crack.

His wrist dislocated instantly.

His hand went limp, and the knife clattered into the seat gap.

The man stared in shock at his twisted wrist. He had clearly not expected her to move that fast.

Before he could even cry out, Fu Qing grabbed his collar with one hand, unbuckled his seatbelt with the other, and with a single violent yank—

Dragged him straight out through the shattered window.

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

One moment, he had been the hunter.

The next, a trapped beast.

He was heavy. Under normal circumstances, it would have been impossible to pull him through a car window.

But under Fu Qing’s grip, he felt himself lifted effortlessly from the driver’s seat.

Fragments of glass still clung to the frame. As his body scraped past, sharp edges bit deep into his skin, slowly embedding into the folds of his flesh.

He finally screamed.

Fu Qing did not react.

She threw him onto the ground like a bag of trash.

By then, countless shards were lodged in his body.

He curled up, trembling in agony. Through blood-blurred vision, he saw a pair of short boots step into view.

Water from the ruptured hydrant washed blood from the car’s surface, staining the pavement red. She stepped through the flowing runoff and looked down at him from above.

“D-don’t touch me…” he whimpered, shoulders hunched, his large body crumpled in an ugly, pathetic posture.

The wail of sirens grew closer.

Time was short.

Fu Qing planted her boot on his shoulder.

The hard sole pressed directly against a glass shard that had not yet fully sunk into his flesh.

She leaned down slightly, voice calm and cold.

“From now on, you answer my questions.”

“If you lie even once, there will be one more shard inside your body to deal with.”

*

On the tree, Song Rushuang watched the SUV chase Fu Qing away and stood frozen.

It took several seconds—until both figures disappeared around a corner—for her mind to catch up.

“Principal!!”

She scrambled down the tree like a monkey, only to be caught mid-drop by her frantic parents, who wrapped her in their arms.

“Xiaoshuang!” Xu Mingyu’s eyes were red. She patted her daughter’s back repeatedly. “You’re not allowed to do that again!”

Song Jianguo checked her up and down before rushing to help the injured blonde girl.

At that moment, several police cars and ambulances stormed into the pedestrian street.

Armed officers and medics poured out, organizing rescue efforts swiftly and efficiently.

The injured officers were lifted onto stretchers along with other victims.

Song Rushuang broke free from her mother’s embrace and sprinted toward them.

“You need to send an ambulance after that SUV! I can show you the way!”

She did not say to send more police cars—she knew riot vehicles were already tracking the SUV via surveillance.

But they might not know about Fu Qing.

“Xiaoshuang?” Song Jianguo was confused.

Xu Mingyu frowned.

She had been focused entirely on her daughter earlier, but she vaguely remembered the SUV chasing someone away.

…Someone had drawn it off so Xiaoshuang could climb down safely?

Realizing her daughter’s survival came at someone else’s risk, Xu Mingyu’s heart tightened.

“That person is still in danger. You need to save her.”

“I can guide you,” Song Rushuang insisted.

The officer in charge scanned them and made a swift decision.

“Get in.”

He pointed to a riot control vehicle and signaled an ambulance to follow.

As the doors shut, two more figures climbed in—Song Jianguo and the blonde girl.

She was limping but determined.

“I remember what the driver was wearing,” she said quickly. “If he abandons the car and runs, I can identify him.”

No one wasted words.

Time was critical.

“They went that way!” Song Rushuang pointed.

The vehicle roared forward.

The officer asked, “Tell me what happened. You know that person?”

He had noticed something in her tone.

“Yes,” Song Rushuang said urgently. “That’s our principal. I sent a warning in our school group, and she saw it. She’s just a normal person! She doesn’t even have protective gear. Please hurry.”

She knew Fu Qing was strong.

But two legs versus four wheels?

And that driver was insane.

If she got caught—

Song Rushuang could not finish the thought.

Hearing that a civilian had deliberately drawn the vehicle away, the officers’ expressions hardened.

“That was your principal?!” Song Jianguo was stunned.

He recalled his daughter’s earlier description.

“She saw the message and her first reaction was to rush here to save her student…”

His throat tightened.

What an extraordinary teacher.

Entrusting his daughter to such a school—he felt reassured.

Then another thought struck him.

If the principal were harmed…

Would the school even survive?

“Please, hurry!” Xu Mingyu urged.

Everyone in the vehicle had already constructed the same mental image—

A brave teacher sacrificing herself to protect students.

Their faces grew solemn.

They silently prayed for her safety.

Thankfully, the road after the turn was straight.

They entered the plaza just in time to see the SUV.

It was surrounded.

Riot vehicles and police cars had arrived first, forming a tight perimeter. Red and blue lights flashed.

Through the gaps, they glimpsed the scene.

Two figures stood beside the vehicle.

One standing.

One lying down.

The one on the ground seemed unconscious. Medics were carefully lifting “her” onto a stretcher.

Song Rushuang’s eyes filled with tears.

“Principal!”

She leapt from the vehicle and rushed forward, ignoring her parents’ calls, only to be stopped by armed officers.

“That’s our principal! She saved me! Let me see her!” she cried, struggling.

She looked up—

And met the gaze of the officer blocking her.

Something strange flickered in his eyes.

Confused, she looked past his shoulder.

And saw Fu Qing.

Leaning casually against the SUV.

Idly turning a blood-stained shard of glass in her fingers.

When she heard the voice, she turned her head—slightly puzzled—and met Song Rushuang’s gaze.

Song Rushuang clearly read something unspoken in her principal’s eyes.

A complicated, indescribable look.

She also read:

“This is my student?”

“Should I pretend not to know her?”

Song Rushuang: …

Her crying stopped abruptly.

She sniffed.

“P-Principal.”

Fu Qing paused for several seconds.

Then simply said, “Mm.”

At least she did not pretend not to recognize her.

Song Rushuang did not know whether to laugh or cry.

Behind her, her parents and the blonde girl finally caught up.

They looked at the unconscious criminal on the stretcher, riddled with wounds.

Then at Fu Qing, calmly playing with what was clearly the “weapon.”

They inhaled sharply.

And slowly turned to look at Song Rushuang.

The officer: …This is your “ordinary civilian”?

Xu Mingyu and Song Jianguo: …This is your “kind-looking, animal-loving teacher”??

₊˚.🎧📓✩

Sandy: omg I’m enjoying this novel so much 😍😍😍