Ch 31: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

With the harness in hand, Song Rushuang and the other three finally felt a lot more at ease.

There were nearly 2,400 people on campus. With only a hundred harnesses to go around, on average one out of every twenty four students could get one. Their group of four having a single harness was already something to be grateful for.

Zhang Han bounced in excitement and nearly knocked Sun Wei over.

Shen Qingqing, though, saw Song Rushuang staying silent and knew she was still thinking about Yu Cheng.

After a moment’s thought, Shen Qingqing lowered her voice. “He feels guilty.”

After the opening assessment, Yu Cheng had probably been drowning in guilt the whole time.

So much so that he had likely developed a stress response and an excessive self sacrificing mindset, choosing to give up the harness just to “be a good person” in front of them.

Song Rushuang nodded, then shook her head. “We can’t help him.”

Qin Yufei could, but only if he was willing. Outsiders could not force it, especially since Qin Yufei was also someone who had been left with psychological scars from that incident.

Song Rushuang forced herself to set the matter aside.

Right then, the four of them passed a corridor window.

At some point the sun had dropped low, its golden light tracing the outline of distant mountain peaks. Dusk deepened, and Song Rushuang suddenly realized the problem she had overlooked.

“It’s going to get dark…” Shen Qingqing murmured, then suddenly turned to Zhang Han. “What time is it?”

“Six thirty,” Zhang Han said.

The assessment was only halfway done, with an hour and a half remaining, but the sun was about to sink below the horizon.

That meant they would have to endure the second half of the exam in darkness.

They had only just come out of summer’s long daylight, and had not quite adjusted. Now night was falling earlier and earlier by the day.

For a moment, the four of them went stiff.

They could hear zombies roaring below, but what filled their minds even more was what Zhao Yunxiao had said in class:

“Beginner zombies have degraded vision, but their sense of smell and hearing are sharper than humans. So when night falls, they gain an advantage. Remember, unless absolutely necessary, don’t fight them in the dark…”

So this was why the principal had scheduled the exam at five.

How had they missed that?

They exchanged glances, each seeing the same conclusion in the others’ eyes: find somewhere to hide and grind out the second half of the exam.

Song Rushuang glanced at the harness in her hands and decided instantly. “Let’s go. Rooftop.”

……

Sooner or later, the students all realized how much nightfall would affect the exam.

Those still outside began looking for places to hide.

The urgency created by the clock stripped away the steadiness they had shown earlier. Mistakes born of impatience increased, and in a short span of time the death rate began to spike.

Hao Zhenye watched the numbers climb and was not surprised, but he still frowned. “Principal, I want to request an adjustment to the PE schedule. Every month, at least two sessions should be held at night. They need to adapt to night operations as early as possible.”

The teachers did not know the real reason Fu Qing had arranged the monthly exam, which was to complete a system task. They treated it purely as a stage check.

Hao Zhenye had originally felt Fu Qing’s exam plan was a bit rushed, but that doubt had now vanished completely.

Live combat truly was the best way to uncover gaps in everyday teaching. He had not realized until now just how unprepared and inexperienced the students were when it came to fighting at night.

This problem was serious.

Ever since that one conversation with Fu Qing, communication between them had become smoother and smoother. Because of his personality, he was still awkward at times, but his tone when making requests and discussing things was far gentler than before.

Fu Qing nodded. “I’m thinking the same.”

As the sky fully darkened, the hardest part of this monthly exam was only just beginning.

*

Stars glittered across the night sky. It was a rare night with excellent visibility, yet for some reason Cheng Yihui still felt it was much darker than usual.

He had waited patiently in the tree for a long time, blinking hard, even wondering if something was wrong with his eyes.

Only after a while did it hit him.

Damn it. The principal hadn’t turned on the streetlights tonight!

The small grove where he was hiding already had very few lights. Only a winding path that cut through the trees had a handful of lamps along it. Now that the lights were off, with thick leaves overhead blocking the starlight, it was pitch black.

Cheng Yihui regretted it.

He had chosen this grove the moment the exam began because it had the most trees, making it easy to climb up and hide, and to maneuver around zombies.

He had never imagined that once night fell, the woods would become this terrifying.

The terrain was complicated, and even a little wind made the whole forest hiss and rustle. Every snap of a branch, every soft trembling of leaves, made him jumpy and suspicious.

As if behind every tree there were unseen eyes watching.

Cheng Yihui grew more and more panicked. The hand gripping the trunk began to sweat. He rubbed it hard on his pants, then felt something on his wrist scrape against his waistband.

The watch the school had issued.

…Wait.

Cheng Yihui jolted awake, like he had grabbed a lifeline. He lifted his wrist and lit up the screen.

The wristband had many offline functions. Besides the basics like time display, temperature display, heart rate monitoring, and an offline map once downloaded, he remembered it also included a compass and a flashlight for wilderness survival.

When he scrolled to the flashlight icon, he was so excited he nearly shouted.

He turned it on. A straight beam of light shot out from the face of the student wristband, illuminating a large area in front of him.

Because the wristband used solar charging, and to preserve battery life at night, it even allowed brightness adjustment and beam shaping, letting you tighten the cone or spread it wider. Translated on Hololo novels. The former was useful for lighting distant areas, the latter for seeing a broader area right in front of you.

Cheng Yihui happily tinkered with it for a while, his thoughts spinning outward. Later, they could even use the flashlight to communicate with one another.

Blink it on and off and you could send Morse code. That’s how it always worked in TV dramas, wasn’t it?

The more he thought about it, the more brilliant he felt.

If he suggested adding a code class to the principal, would she give him extra credits?

He was lost in his own ideas when, a beat too late, he noticed movement around him.

Not far away, someone coughed once.

Someone else was hiding in a nearby tree?

Cheng Yihui aimed the flashlight over and searched. Sure enough, high up among the branches, he spotted a person huddled there. When the light hit the person’s face, they went pale and made a gesture, waving their right hand.

Then they pointed at him, and turned the finger downward.

Cheng Yihui processed it, and finally understood. The two gestures meant:

Don’t shine the light on me. Move it away.

Look below you.

A soft scratching sound, multiplied, layered into a single continuous rasp.

Cheng Yihui belatedly moved the flashlight to the ground beneath his tree.

As the beam swept down, it suddenly illuminated a deathly pale, ghastly face.

Cheng Yihui nearly fell out of the tree.

One, two, three… there were five zombies surrounding the base of his tree!

So he had not imagined it earlier. There really had been something hiding behind those trees.

Cheng Yihui finally understood why, even though there were clearly other people hiding up in the trees just like him, not a single one of them had turned on their wristband flashlight.

In pitch darkness, zombies would be drawn to any nearby light source.

Turning on a flashlight in a forest so sealed off it did not let in a sliver of light was basically an announcement that you wanted every zombie to come straight to you.

Why hadn’t he remembered that lesson earlier??

Cheng Yihui wanted to cry.

He switched the flashlight off, clung to the trunk with all his strength, and resolved to spend the next hour or so up in the tree.

And

Once he got back, he was absolutely going to cram the key points from Zombie Traits class!

Never in his life had Cheng Yihui regretted slacking off as much as he did right now.

*

Fast, ragged breathing sounded in the dark. A flashlight beam bucked wildly with the runner’s stride. A branch snapped underfoot, and the person running went down hard.

“Get up, hurry.” Liang Yi turned back anxiously and reached for his roommate.

“How is there a tree root sticking out here? We never should’ve come into the woods in the first place, the terrain’s too complicated.” The roommate forced himself upright through the pain, then hissed. “Damn, I think I twisted my ankle.”

Several zombies let out thin, mournful moans, sniffing and searching for the food that had escaped.

Liang Yi silently narrowed the flashlight beam until only the faintest thread of light remained, and without a sound he helped his roommate up.

In the hush, they both heard the clink and clatter of metal striking metal.

The sound came from the pendant hanging at their roommate’s neck.

The boy with the twisted ankle looked like he was about to cry. “He never should’ve been allowed to take the exam with that flashy chain on. He ran, got it snagged on a branch, nearly strangled himself, and the metal chain got tangled up in the twigs. He couldn’t get it loose, and the zombies that caught up to him chewed him up. What kind of unlucky death is that?”

“He can be unlucky all he wants, but he dragged us into it, and now there’s one more zombie chasing us!”

The two of them wanted nothing more than for the exam to end right now so they could beat their beloved roommate to a pulp.

“Stop talking and think. What do we do?” Liang Yi frowned, deep in thought.

They’d been running like headless chickens for so long they could barely tell where they were anymore. He grit his teeth and flicked the flashlight back on. In the sudden brightness, he caught a familiar building silhouette flashing past.

“What are you doing?!” his roommate blurted in a whispery hiss.

A zombie’s rasping howl sounded only a few meters away.

Before the words had even finished, Liang Yi had already yanked the strap loose, taken off his wristband, and hurled it far off in one direction.

The wristband landed perfectly, wedged on a branch. The swaying light drew the zombies’ attention away. Liang Yi braced his roommate. “Come on. I know where we are.”

“You can do that?” His roommate was stunned. “But what about your wristband?”

“Get a weapon first, then come back for it. I’m counting on it to track my points.” Liang Yi said it like he already had a plan.

The ankle was not too badly sprained. His roommate limped along after him. The blurred outline of the building grew clearer as they approached, and he finally recognized it. “This is… the tool shed next to the experimental fields?”

He was overjoyed.

They dove inside, shut the door, and let out their breath.

Only then did his roommate remember to ask, “You didn’t even pick the farming class. How do you know this place?”

“It’s your own school. You should know it.” Liang Yi pushed up his glasses. “See? Comes in handy.”

His roommate admired him to the point of worship. “That’s insane. When our dorm went out together before, every time we got somewhere you’d look for the emergency exits first, then study the map. I used to laugh at you for being so extra. I was wrong…”

This was what it meant to plan ahead.

“And there are weapons in here.”

He gestured for his roommate to turn on the flashlight and dial the brightness down, then started rummaging through the storage shelves.

Before long, he came back with an axe, a hoe, a sickle, and a length of hemp rope.

“Based on last time, any campus facilities damaged during the assessment get restored when the exam ends. So we should be able to ‘damage’ these tools too.” Liang Yi looked thoughtful.

He sat down on the floor, chopped off the top of the hoe with the axe, leaving a long wooden handle, then used the rope to lash the sickle firmly to the end of the stick.

“Make do with this. The other end can brace on the ground like a cane.” Liang Yi handed the improvised weapon to his roommate, then picked up the axe and swung it a couple of times. “Rested up? Let’s go. Help me get my wristband back.”

His roommate took a couple of steadying breaths and pushed himself up. “Let’s go!”

……

In the dark, some people drew disaster by turning on a flashlight, while others used it cleverly to turn danger aside.

The teachers watched, sometimes nodding, sometimes shaking their heads with a sigh.

When they ran into students who had not even remembered their wristbands had a flashlight function, the teachers practically wanted to climb into the projection and knock them on the head to wake them up.

And at the same time, they saw even more clearly how smart it had been for the principal to schedule the second half of the assessment after dark.

With night introduced as an uncertain factor, the students’ responses varied wildly. Some simply gave up on chasing more points and focused on a safe, steady approach. Translated on Hololo novels. Those with harnesses hid up high on walls. Those without hid in trees, or found an empty classroom, locked the door, and waited quietly for the exam to end.

Others, like Cheng Yihui, ignored how light attracted zombies in the dark, or lost their judgment because of the darkness, and were eliminated in the second half.

Strengths and weaknesses, personality tendencies, all of it was laid bare under the sudden arrival of night.

Only a small handful, like Liang Yi, adapted quickly, even using the environment against itself to gain an advantage while everyone else had already pulled back.

……

On the roof of Teaching Building No. 2, the 1111 dorm group sat cross-legged on the ground, staring wide-eyed at one another.

They had found something to jam the door leading to the rooftop. If nothing went wrong, they should be able to hold out here until the exam ended.

The run upstairs had been hair-raising. They had discovered that even turning on a regular bulb could draw zombies inside the building, so they had to keep the lights off and move by flashlight.

But inside a building there were countless places for something to hide. When they passed one classroom, the half-closed door suddenly went, “Creeeak,” and slowly swung open.

In the dark, that sound alone was enough to make the back of your neck go cold.

Luckily, after a month of training, their hearts were a lot tougher. Song Rushuang and Shen Qingqing worked together again to deal with the zombie that popped out, and for the rest of the way they were especially careful to sweep their flashlights into every shadow, making sure nothing strange was lurking before they dared move forward.

They reached the roof without further incident. After resting a bit, they began taking stock of what they had gained today.

“How many points do you all have? One at a time.”

Song Rushuang went first. “I’m at 2 points right now.”

Shen Qingqing: “3 points.”

The two of them mostly killed zombies together. Whoever landed the finishing blow got the point.

Sometimes there were too many zombies to finish off one by one. To escape, they had to abandon follow-up strikes. Altogether they had killed five zombies, which was already a very solid result.

Zhang Han and Sun Wei were deeply ashamed. “We’re both at 0…”

“We’re completely useless deadweight…”

Song Rushuang comforted Sun Wei. “It’s fine. Didn’t you contribute the crutches?”

After thinking for a moment, Shen Qingqing also comforted Zhang Han. “It’s fine. Didn’t you replace Weiwei’s crutches?”

Zhang Han and Sun Wei: “……”

Why did it feel like they were less useful than the two crutches?

No, not “felt like.” That was simply the truth.

The crutches had more kills than they did. They shut down emotionally on the spot.

Song Rushuang glanced at her watch. “There are still forty-two minutes left. Are we really going to waste the rest of the time?”

Shen Qingqing hesitated. “Is there a way to help you get one more kill? Our kill counts should be the same. I’m one point ahead of you right now. That doesn’t feel fair.”

Song Rushuang did not care much about that, but Zhang Han and Sun Wei still had zero points. Since they had come out together, she did not want her roommates to walk away empty-handed.

The four of them fell silent at the same time and began thinking.

While thinking, Song Rushuang glanced at the safety harness Sun Wei had been holding for them all this time but had not yet used. Her eyelid twitched, and she suddenly made a thoughtful noise.

“Everyone,” she said after a pause, her expression grave, “I have a plan.”

Three heads immediately leaned in.

After a round of whispered discussion, Sun Wei’s expression became extremely complicated.

Song Rushuang asked, “Are we doing it?”

The other two looked at Sun Wei.

Sun Wei clenched her teeth. “We’re doing it.”

……

One minute later, Sun Wei looked at the safety harness her three roommates had hurriedly strapped onto her, then at the teaching building, which looked even taller than usual under the dim evening light, and asked sincerely:

“I just want to know… why me?”

According to Song Rushuang’s plan, one of the four would descend from the building using the harness while the other three stayed above to assist.

The three roommates inspecting the harness all froze at once.

“Well… you’ve got one injured leg and can’t really use it anyway,” Zhang Han said honestly. “If you’re hanging in the air, you won’t need your legs.”

“And if we’re even a second too slow and a zombie actually jumps at you, you still have one good leg to kick it away,” Shen Qingqing added seriously.

“Don’t worry. After you stay at Fangzhou a bit longer and gain muscle, you’ll be heavier and we won’t even be able to lift you,” Song Rushhuang reassured her.

As if to prove their low body-fat percentages, the trio simultaneously rolled up their sleeves and showed off their newly formed muscles.

Shen Qingqing and Song Rushuang had earned theirs from fighting zombies. Zhang Han had earned hers from digging fields.

Sun Wei: “……”

Sun Wei: “I don’t know if that counts as comfort, but thank you. I somehow feel worse.”

With a bitter face, she hopped toward the edge of the rooftop.

The carabiner was already locked in place. Song Rushuang dragged over an abandoned chair from the rooftop, tipped it over so the backrest extended outward, and ran the safety rope over the chair’s back so the rope would hang away from the wall instead of scraping directly against the building.

Song Rushuang sat on the chair herself, using her body weight to keep it from slipping. The three of them gripped the rope together, lowering Sun Wei not by standard rappelling technique but entirely through the strength of their arms.

They carefully controlled the speed while watching her intently as her figure slowly dissolved into the night.

As she descended vertically, Sun Wei passed many windows.

Occasionally a classroom would still be lit, and her silhouette would briefly appear in the light.

People hiding inside those lit rooms stared in shock when they saw her “passing by.” When they noticed the cast on her leg, their expressions turned into a complicated mixture of awe, admiration, and confusion.

Sun Wei could practically read their thoughts:

Everyone else has already given up and is lying low. Why is an injured person still grinding this hard?

Finally, when she reached the fourth floor, she heard faint movement from inside a window.

Sun Wei quickly raised her arm. In the darkness, only a large motion like that could be clearly seen by the three people on the rooftop.

The descent stopped instantly.

Suspended in midair, Sun Wei felt her heartbeat accelerate. She realized this might be the first time she was truly facing a zombie alone.

Trying to steady her nerves, she reached out and lightly tapped twice on the closed glass window.

The room inside was pitch black. Moonlight reflected off the glass, and in that pale glow she saw her own tense expression.

There was no response for a long time, and she could not see inside. She adjusted her position in the air and finally pressed both hands against the cold glass.

Leaning closer, her pupils slowly picked out the shapes of desks and chairs pressed near the window. Her breath fogged the surface slightly.

Then suddenly, a bloodless pale face burst into view from inside the room.

Bang!!

It slammed violently against the glass, making the entire window tremble.

The zombie seemed completely unaware of the barrier. Its eyes were stretched wide to their limits, showing huge swaths of white, blood vessels webbing across them.

Separated by only a pane of glass, it stared straight at Sun Wei.

In all eighteen years of her life, she had never experienced anything this terrifying. She almost screamed.

She had no idea where this zombie had been hiding before. She had not noticed it at all until it silently approached and delivered her a massive “surprise.”

Her wristband issued a rapid heart-rate warning, but she had already set it to Do Not Disturb mode. Now it buzzed relentlessly against her wrist.

Sun Wei forced herself to breathe deeply, raised a trembling hand, pressed it against the window, and pushed gently to the side…

The window was not locked. She pushed it open with ease, creating a small gap.

Night air flowed inside. The zombie seemed to sense the chill carried by the wind and, acting purely on instinct, squeezed its face into the opening.

The gap widened more and more.

Finally, it grew large enough for the zombie to thrust an arm through, wildly clawing toward Sun Wei.

Using the rope for leverage, Sun Wei swung her legs and dodged its grasp in midair.

Knowing there would be a simulation exam, the students had all tried to wear thick long sleeves and pants without hindering movement. As long as they were not bitten hard, areas covered by clothing were unlikely to be infected, so Sun Wei was not too worried.

Even though every instinct in her body screamed at her to run, to escape danger immediately.

She forced her rational mind to suppress that instinct.

Looking at the zombie, Sun Wei suddenly understood what it must feel like to hold a cat teaser toy.

When its attack failed, a low, beastlike growl rumbled from deep in the zombie’s throat. It grabbed the window frame with one hand and stepped onto the sill.

Sun Wei quickly tugged the rope twice.

This was their agreed signal. Two pulls meant they could slowly raise her upward.

Song Rushuang and the others responded immediately.

She rose about half a meter. Where their gazes had once been level, now the zombie could only barely brush Sun Wei’s calf when it reached out.

Realizing its prey was escaping, it grew even more enraged. Fury sped up its climb onto the windowsill.

The open window was pushed wider and wider, now just large enough for the zombie to squeeze half its body through. Feeling less resistance from the glass barrier, it eagerly stretched its arms toward Sun Wei.

Sun Wei held her breath.

On the rooftop, the three girls could now see an arm reaching out from the window.

Dirty, cracked fingernails nearly grazed the hem of Sun Wei’s hoodie.

“Wait… just a little longer…”

Shen Qingqing could not help whispering.

Wait until the limit distance…

A gust of wind swept past. Sun Wei’s body swayed, drifting slightly farther from the zombie. It roared, completely unaware of the danger of falling, one foot slipping into empty air as it staggered forward.

Now!!

Sun Wei suddenly dropped her arm.

At the exact moment they received the signal, the three girls above pulled together with all their strength, yanking Sun Wei sharply upward.

Almost simultaneously, the zombie lunged desperately toward her, missing its target.

A dark figure tumbled from the windowsill and plunged into the boundless night.

The sound of a body slamming into the ground, bones shattering, made their hearts seize.

The three girls trembled, but their hands never stopped moving. Only after hauling Sun Wei all the way back onto the rooftop did the burning ache finally explode through their strained muscles.

Ignoring their exhaustion, four heads lined up side by side, peering downward.

“Did it work?” “Did it work?”

A long moment passed.

【You have successfully killed one Beginner Zombie!】
【Points +1】

“It worked! It worked!” Zhang Han jumped up on the spot.

Song Rushuang was equally delighted. She had not expected the spur-of-the-moment plan to actually succeed. Using one teammate as bait to lure a zombie into falling to its death by exploiting height advantage had seemed safe but unlikely to work on the first try.

Thinking it over, though, according to Teacher Zhao, zombies infected longer had more fragile skulls. Even hard impacts could crush the skull and damage the brain, so dying from a fall made perfect sense.

The plan could have worked during the day, but daytime meant students moving everywhere across campus, making it hard for zombies to remain in one room long enough.

Only after nightfall, when both humans and zombies became quieter, was it easy to draw out an isolated zombie with a small disturbance.

…After reviewing it, Song Rushuang realized her plan had actually been surprisingly reliable.

However, since the exam had no team system, the points appeared to be randomly awarded to one member of the group. This time, the point landed on Zhang Han.

Which made Zhang Han the most enthusiastic. “Let’s keep going! There must be more zombies in other rooms.”

“If we can kill three more before the exam ends, each of us will get one point.”

The other two turned to look at Sun Wei.

Sun Wei sighed, swept her long hair up, and twisted it into a neat bun at the back of her head without using any clips or ties.

“Let’s do it,” she said, her entire aura shifting.

Zhang Han’s eyes sparkled. “Weiwei, you look like a true main character right now! I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Sun Wei: “……”

What kind of main character gets suspended in midair by her teammates as bait while hopping around on one injured leg?!

₊˚.🎧📓✩