Ch 36: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

“Quick, quick, quick, get out of here!”

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… why is one missing again??”

The main gate let out a heavy creaking groan before finally collapsing with a thunderous crash, unable to bear the strain any longer, sending dust billowing into the air.

Dense rows of arms stretched through the doorway, reflected in every terrified pair of eyes.

The three boys all wore expressions as if the sky had fallen.

At the same time, they received a system notification.

【The shelter has fallen. Failed to organize all residents to escape successfully. Instance clear failed!】

【Calculating results. Individual team member scores will be announced shortly…】

【Your weekly usage time has ended!】

The capsule pod opened from above and below. The person lying inside opened their eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment to readjust, then let out a defeated sigh and sat up.

“Sigh… failed again because of that kid who keeps running around…”

“Is this an escape instance or a brat collecting simulator?”

Qin Yufei complained, ruffling his hair in frustration.

As he stood up, his roommate suddenly nudged him with an elbow.

Following the direction indicated, he saw a frail looking boy standing at the doorway of the simulated combat pod room.

“Yu Cheng.”

The three of them exchanged glances, suddenly feeling oddly guilty, like they had been caught doing something wrong.

Four people shared one dorm. Three had secretly come to run a team instance, only to be unexpectedly discovered by the fourth. No matter how you thought about it, it was awkward.

But they had really wanted to try team mode.

When Yu Cheng met their gazes, he seemed to freeze for a moment, clearly startled. “I… I’ll go next door. No, I’ll go run laps at the field…”

Before the three could respond, he turned and hurried away.

Qin Yufei and another roommate, who had been about to speak, fell silent. Wang Huai ran a hand up the back of his neck and clicked his tongue.

*

Fu Qing browsed through the system’s monthly data summary.

In the second month after school began, she held another monthly exam as usual. This time, it took place late at night.

Students needed to survive on campus for the entire night until dawn.

Since Hao Zhenye had reported that practical combat classes had already introduced methods for fighting intermediate zombies, Fu Qing added a certain proportion of intermediate zombies this time. Considering their current level made solo kills extremely difficult, she allowed teams of up to four people.

Because the testing environment was set at night, even with teammates nearby, the psychological pressure remained intense, making it ideal for evaluating mental resilience.

Fu Qing specifically instructed the system to include a stress measurement value in the summary column.

In the end, she selected both the students with strong stress resistance and those with poor stress tolerance.

Quickly scanning the statistics provided by the system, Fu Qing’s gaze stopped on the final line, and her brows slowly furrowed.

“Pull up his exam recording.” She tapped one of the names.

Among the students with the weakest stress tolerance, most had chosen defensible locations and endured the entire exam there, or sought out strong teammates and hid behind them in support roles.

Only one person was different.

He neither formed a team nor hid anywhere.

Throughout the entire exam, he kept moving constantly, ultimately dying within a horde of zombies.

Fu Qing actually remembered Yu Cheng’s name.

She recalled that during the first monthly exam, he had voluntarily given away the harness he obtained. Among the people or teams who received those hundred harnesses, some had chosen to share with companions they came with, like Su Huaijin and Qin Yufei, but no one else had gone as far as Yu Cheng, who did not even keep a single one for himself.

It was only an exam. No one would truly die because of it. His self sacrificial behavior was therefore even harder to understand.

And even earlier than that, Fu Qing had already noticed him.

The system obediently pulled up footage from Yu Cheng’s perspective during the exam. Fu Qing played it at increased speed, watching all the way until he was swallowed by the zombie horde.

The boy clutched his head, trembling with fear, red eyes overflowing with tears, yet a trace of relief flashed across his expression.

“He did it on purpose.”

Fu Qing pressed pause, speaking with certainty, her expression dark and unreadable.

The system did not understand. 【What do you mean, on purpose?】

“He’s deliberately seeking death, but doesn’t want it to be obvious. He wants to attract my attention,” Fu Qing said.

What was this supposed to be? A form of punishment?

But he knew he wouldn’t truly die during the exam.

So it was more like practicing death.

Fu Qing suddenly asked, “What’s his combat pod clear rate?”

The system quickly checked. 【…0%.】

In one month, across a total of four hours, Yu Cheng had allowed himself to die again and again inside the combat pod.

Repeated death was actually common during training. Combined with the two monthly exams, Yu Cheng’s deaths had always appeared reasonable within combat situations. Although Fu Qing had noticed him, she had never realized the scale of the abnormality.

If she had not added psychological screening this time, Yu Cheng’s deliberate self destructive behavior might have continued many more times.

Fu Qing stood up, thought for a moment, then sat back down and instructed the system to send Yu Cheng a private message.

Ten minutes later, inside the principal’s office.

The thin, freckled boy stood nervously before Fu Qing.

Looking at him, Fu Qing remembered the first day of school, when she had watched through system surveillance as Yu Cheng and his roommates desperately fled for their lives.

She rubbed her cheek. Seeing his tense expression, she realized she was not used to conversations like this.

One looked at the other, while the other stared at the floor. In the end, Fu Qing sighed and spoke first.

“Why are you trying to die?”

System: 【……】

Host! Don’t you think that sounds like a provocation?

Fu Qing also realized something was off. Looking back at Yu Cheng, she saw he had indeed grown even more frightened.

He stammered, “You… you noticed?”

Fu Qing: “……” Apparently, no explanation was needed.

“A zero percent clear rate is too conspicuous. It would be hard not to notice.”

“I… I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Fu Qing suspected that when Yu Cheng said “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he meant he hadn’t meant to be discovered, not that he hadn’t deliberately been seeking death.

Yu Cheng said, “I wanted to clear it a few times too… but later I realized clearing it was too hard. I couldn’t even manage that…”

He lowered his head.

Fu Qing looked him up and down. Two months after school started, he was still thin and frail, completely unlike the other Fangzhou students whose presence had grown increasingly fierce. Walking among them, he almost looked like a different species.

She should have noticed earlier.

With more than two thousand students, it was still difficult to manage everyone perfectly.

Fu Qing looked at him. “If I hadn’t noticed, how long were you planning to continue this death practice?”

“Until the virus outbreak? What was the goal? To stage a carefully planned death in the real world, and then have everyone see you as a hero?”

Her speaking pace was slow. Normally, even her casual tone carried a hint of sarcasm, yet now there was none. That calmness only made Yu Cheng unable to lift his head even more.

Those shameful thoughts he had hidden away were exposed and laid bare under daylight. His face turned pale as paper.

He remembered how people described Fu Qing on the forums.

Things that were impossibly difficult for him were effortless for her. She simply could not understand his way of thinking.

Yet he wanted so badly to become someone like her.

Yu Cheng’s lips trembled, his voice falling softly into the room. “I… I made a mistake. They wouldn’t forgive me… so I thought maybe if I died, they would forgive me.”

“But I don’t dare to die,” he said with difficulty, full of apology. “I’ve taken up a very precious spot. I shouldn’t die either. So I thought… maybe after the apocalypse begins, I could die then. Maybe before dying, I could still save a few people.”

He comforted himself with this idea, placing the value of his life in saving others. By arranging an “exit” for himself, he allowed himself, fearfully, to keep living a little longer.

Fu Qing listened quietly. After Yu Cheng finished speaking and lowered his head again, she asked, “What mistake did you make?”

Yu Cheng flinched as if struck.

Several thoughts flashed through his mind.

The principal didn’t know? If he told her, would she expel him?

Maybe that would count as atonement. Then he wouldn’t have to live every day in anxiety over occupying someone else’s place.

He clenched his teeth and said, “I… during the mock exam, I failed to save a classmate when he was dying… He collapsed right in front of me. I wanted to pull him, but I couldn’t move at all. Later I saw Qin Yufei run past me to help, but it was already too late…”

“Wang Huai’s blood splashed onto my face. I still remember how warm it felt… and the way he and Qin Yufei looked at me before they died…”

Qin Yufei had been so brave, which only made Yu Cheng feel even more despicable.

Fu Qing pressed her fingers to her brow. “That’s all?”

Yu Cheng blinked. “Huh?”

“I mean,” Fu Qing said, “this is the mistake you’re talking about?”

Yu Cheng stared blankly. “I caused the deaths of two roommates… isn’t that enough?”

He felt as if he were standing in prison, absurdly insisting to the warden that his crime was severe enough to deserve a longer sentence.

“You should have expelled me back then…”

Fu Qing asked in return, “Do you need me to remind you? The students expelled at that time included one who attempted to molest a female student, one who maliciously framed others and caused seven deaths, and one who pushed a classmate outside and listened while she was bitten to death. Which capital offense did you commit that justified me wasting an expulsion slot on you?”

What did that mean?

Yu Cheng froze.

He suddenly realized the principal had likely known all along what he had done.

Yet she had not expelled him.

“But I watched someone die without helping…”

“That was not watching someone die without helping,” Fu Qing interrupted calmly. “That was lack of ability.”

Yu Cheng didn’t understand at first and looked at her in confusion.

“In a crisis, prioritizing self preservation is human instinct. Only when you can protect yourself do you have the capacity to protect others. When you can barely take care of yourself, how are you supposed to save anyone?”

As she spoke, Fu Qing pulled up Yu Cheng’s personal file.

“During the mock exam, your sprint burst speed was 5 meters per second… why was it so slow…” she muttered casually. “After two months of training, your latest monthly exam shows improvement to 6.08 meters per second. Much faster.”

“Including advanced combat training, your total beginner zombie kills have reached twenty eight. Your fastest kill time is forty three seconds.”

“An hour and a half into the second monthly exam, you escaped successfully while surrounded by four zombies simultaneously. At three hours and ten minutes, three zombies attempted to attack you. You lured one away while running and killed it in an isolated area.”

“During the mock exam two months ago, the zombies chasing you and Wang Huai numbered only three.”

Fu Qing closed the panel. “Yu Cheng, do you know that the you of today could have saved Wang Huai back then?”

Yu Cheng stared at her blankly, mouth slightly open, as though his thoughts had completely stopped.

Fu Qing was too logical. Just like her speech at the opening ceremony, even when discussing humanity’s possible extinction, she remained calm. She never resorted to emotional comfort. She did not say, “It wasn’t your fault,” nor did she soften her voice and hold his hand to tell him his life mattered.

She simply presented the data, placing two months of silent growth before him.

Telling him that he could not only save the Wang Huai of two months ago, but also the version of himself from back then.

Yu Cheng suddenly choked up, a powerful ache swelling in his chest.

Her words became a lifeline, holding up the version of him that had been on the verge of collapse.

The emotions he had suppressed for two months finally found an outlet. He hastily wiped his tears in front of her, only for more to fall. “I really can…”

Even though compared to the principal he was so ordinary, so mediocre, so worthless?

Fu Qing did not answer. She grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and pulled it over his head, covering his face completely.

“Come with me.”

They crossed the campus together. Many people saw Fu Qing along the way, but no one knew who the person following behind the principal, still unable to stop quietly sobbing, was.

Only when Fu Qing stopped did Yu Cheng, peering out from beneath the hood, see the familiar white capsule pods ahead.

The principal had brought him to the simulated combat pod classroom.

Before coming, Fu Qing had checked. Two pods were currently unused. She gestured for Yu Cheng to lie down in one while she operated the control panel.

As the system connected during loading, a faint prickling sensation flashed through her mind, something that had never happened before. She paused briefly in confusion, but since the system gave no warning, she paid it little attention and lay down in the other pod herself.

The room was quiet. Blue light bands flickered from pods currently in use. The students scheduled for the next time slot had not yet arrived. Yu Cheng relaxed slightly when he heard Fu Qing say:

“Log in. Then choose team mode.”

Yu Cheng froze in surprise.

The principal was going to team up with him?

Yu Cheng had never teamed up with anyone before. Not in the combat pods, not in the monthly exams, not even during regular practical combat training. He had always been alone.

And he had never heard of the principal teaming up with anyone for training either.

Yet now, she was taking the initiative to partner with him.

As Yu Cheng thought about it, rumors about “Anonymous Visitor” suddenly surfaced in his mind.

“…Okay,” Yu Cheng said.

His heart was beating a little faster.

The pod door closed, and he soon appeared inside the training field. After opening the team function, he received a team invitation.

The inviter had no nickname. Behind the default Anonymous Visitor name was a string of random numbers. Looking closely, the ID matched the one sitting firmly at the top of the leaderboard.

That mysterious person really was the principal.

Yu Cheng quickly accepted.

Fu Qing opened the menu. Yu Cheng watched in astonishment as she selected a high level instance he had never seen before.

There were fewer than a hundred instances in the combat pod system. After several visits, he had become familiar with nearly all of them. Unable to hold back, he asked, “Principal, what is this?”

White light suddenly burst forth, swallowing his vision. Beside him, he heard her calm voice say:

“My memory.”

……

What had the principal just said?

Her memory?

The scene had already finished loading, yet Yu Cheng had no attention left to observe his surroundings. His mind buzzed loudly.

What did she mean, her memory? Weren’t combat pod instances supposed to be built in scenarios like game storylines, just as everyone said?

Could it be… the instances they had been playing were not games at all, but things that had truly happened?

And the people who died inside them… were real individuals, not NPCs?

Yu Cheng’s thoughts tangled into chaos.

He felt like he had just learned something unbelievable.

While still dazed, he felt someone bump his shoulder.

“Hey, why are you spacing out? Missing your mom or something?”

He turned around. A young woman stood behind him, her short hair sticking up stubbornly like wild grass, dyed a blazing red with cheap hair dye. When he looked at her, she tossed something into his hands.

“Hold this.”

The object had some weight. Yu Cheng almost failed to catch it, earning loud laughter from the girl.

She wasn’t conventionally delicate looking, yet there was something strangely captivating about her. Yu Cheng blushed.

After awkwardly steadying it, he felt a damp chill in his hand.

He looked down.

It was a can of beer.

“Who drinks cold beer in winter? Xiao Juan, are you crazy?” someone shouted.

The girl kicked him casually as she walked past. “Drink it or give it back.”

“I’ll drink, I’ll drink,” the other person hurriedly said, protecting the can. “Not easy, you know. Half a year since the virus outbreak and we can still drink beer.”

He dramatically wiped imaginary tears.

“You should thank xx. If she hadn’t noticed while passing by, who would’ve guessed that family had a cellar hidden under the master bedroom floor? Packed with food and drinks. Must’ve been stockpiled when the virus first broke out. Too bad zombies got in. The whole family died, even the youngest kid didn’t make it.”

A middle aged man spoke. By the end, his tone grew heavy.

Even after half a year, they still hadn’t grown used to seeing fellow humans die.

While they talked, Yu Cheng secretly observed his surroundings.

This appeared to be an abandoned warehouse in a remote area. No high rise buildings were visible nearby. A brick wall surrounded the compound, and two guards holding homemade spears stood by the iron gate. Including himself, about seven or eight people sat around a bonfire in the courtyard.

Some were grilling meat. Some were dividing up beer. Others repaired damaged weapons.

Two vehicles and three tents were parked nearby. From their conversations, Yu Cheng gradually understood that this was a survivor group living through the apocalypse, occupying an empty warehouse on the outskirts as their base, driving out daily to search for supplies and food.

Most of them were young. The middle aged man was the oldest, yet he looked only in his thirties.

The atmosphere was lively.

Someone suddenly cheered, “Thanks to xx! That’s why we get to eat so well tonight!”

The name they spoke was blurred out. After saying it, everyone’s gaze turned in the same direction. Yu Cheng followed their line of sight and was startled to discover that the person they were looking at was the principal.

Thick clouds covered the night sky. The only illumination came from the blazing bonfire before them. Under the firelight, Fu Qing looked younger than usual.

She held a dagger in her hand, appearing thoughtful, as if recalling what she had been doing at this moment in the past. Hearing the cheers, she casually raised an eyebrow.

After the routine thanks ended, everyone turned back to their own activities. Fu Qing still hadn’t remembered what she had originally been doing at this point in the instance.

She twirled the dagger lightly in her hand. The person sitting in front of her jumped three feet into the air.

“Are you trying to cut my hair or my head?!”

Fu Qing finally remembered. She had been about to give someone a haircut.

Xiao Juan passed by and said indignantly, “Lu Yan, how can you doubt xx’s skills? Look how well she cut my hair.”

Lu Yan stared. “…You’re really going to say that while wearing a hairstyle that looks chewed up by a dog?”

Xiao Juan rolled her eyes dramatically. “I don’t talk to people with no aesthetic sense.”

Another person laughed. “Xiao Juan, did xx dye your hair too? Very… unique.”

“Yes!” Xiao Juan said proudly.

The teasing continued until Fu Qing finally spoke. “I still have a can of green hair dye left. If you like, I can dye yours too.”

The man’s playful grin froze instantly. “That won’t be necessary…”

Lu Yan burst out laughing. Xiao Juan smirked triumphantly. “See? I’ve got someone backing me up.”

She immediately turned back, clinging to Fu Qing’s arm and rubbing against it. “xx-jie, I’m going to be your follower for life.”

As she leaned closer, the gleaming dagger in Fu Qing’s hand twice brushed past Lu Yan’s neck. He stopped laughing and clutched his head in protest. “I’m still sitting here, you know!”

……

Yu Cheng sat by the bonfire hugging his knees, completely absorbed.

He had never seen the principal like this before.

At school, aside from Teacher Bai, no one dared speak to her this way.

Sometimes when Yu Cheng passed the teachers’ dining table in the cafeteria, he always felt that although the principal sat among them, there was an invisible distance separating her from everyone else.

She listened when others joked or talked about their day, but she never truly joined in.

Unlike now.

With Xiao Juan clinging to her arm, a faint smile actually appeared on her face.

Yu Cheng rubbed his eyes. The smile vanished in an instant.

A shadow fell beside him. Turning his head, he saw the middle aged man holding a disposable plate piled with several sizzling grilled sausages, sprinkled with pepper and giving off an irresistible aroma.

The man snapped apart a pair of disposable chopsticks, smoothed the rough splinters, and handed them over. “Hungry, right? Eat up. Just grilled them, nice and fragrant.”

“You’re pretty lucky. You just got here and already get a meal this good. Back during the coldest part of winter, you couldn’t even find a rabbit hair in the mountains. We survived the whole season eating nothing but potatoes, cabbage, and canned beans.”

He was extremely easygoing and talkative, warmly enthusiastic in a way Yu Cheng wasn’t used to.

When teaming up inside a memory based instance, the system automatically assigned an identity that allowed extra teammates to fit naturally into the world setting.

For example, Yu Cheng had now become the “tenth member,” newly joining what had originally been a nine person survivor team.

Perhaps because this body was set to begin in a starving state, the smell of grilled sausage suddenly made him ravenous. Translated on Hololo novels. He accepted the plate and began eating greedily, mumbling a thank you through a full mouth.

Halfway through eating, he remembered the principal was still busy and cautiously glanced in Fu Qing’s direction.

Lu Yan and Xiao Juan were still bickering noisily. Yu Cheng heard Lu Yan take a moment to quietly ask her, “Why are you so quiet today…?”

The middle aged man noticed Yu Cheng’s gaze and assumed he was curious about the three of them. He explained, “You’re new. You’ll understand later. Don’t let their age fool you, they’re very reliable. Ever since they joined, life’s gotten much better for us.”

He skillfully pulled foil wrapped roasted potatoes from the bonfire and tossed them aside to cool.

Yu Cheng realized this uncle was probably the team’s cook. His skills were excellent. The sausages were grilled perfectly, their skins crisp and golden, bursting with oil when bitten into.

The steaming roasted potatoes peeled easily. Sprinkled with salt and pepper, the soft potato melted instantly on the tongue.

It wasn’t fancy food at all, yet Yu Cheng felt an unmistakable sense of happiness.

The man beside him kept chatting endlessly like a kind elder, unconcerned by Yu Cheng’s quietness or social awkwardness, simply urging him to eat more.

Not far away, the others pulled out a deck of cards. Laughter mingled with rising smoke, drifting into the night sky.

Yu Cheng suddenly found himself sinking into the atmosphere.

As if he had truly blended in and become one of them.

If he met people like this in a real apocalypse, he thought, he would surely consider himself lucky.

*

The group joked and laughed until midnight before crawling into their tents one by one to sleep.

Yu Cheng was assigned a bed as well. The middle aged man brought him a thick quilt, saying the nights were cold and telling him to wrap himself tightly.

He fell asleep in a haze.

When he woke in the middle of the night, he saw a beam of flashlight light swaying outside the tent.

He tried to sit up, but sudden dizziness struck him. A sharp pain stabbed through his temples and forced him back onto the bed.

His whole body felt cold, his limbs weak. A muffled groan escaped him, but the moment he made a sound, a hand suddenly reached from behind.

It clamped tightly over his mouth, the palm frighteningly cold.

“Someone’s entered the camp. Don’t make a sound.”

It was Lu Yan’s voice.

The flashlight beam swept past again. Using that faint light, Yu Cheng finally saw the inside of the tent clearly.

The tent zipper hung open. At the entrance lay a motionless figure, a large pool of blood spreading beneath him.

Yu Cheng recognized the clothing, and his pupils widened.

It was the middle aged man who had been taking care of him.

Before sleeping, the man had insisted on lying near the entrance so the night wind wouldn’t blow onto everyone else—

“I’m not afraid of the cold anyway. And if you guys catch a cold, you can’t fight. If I catch one, it won’t affect my cooking,” he had said with a cheerful laugh.

In the blink of an eye, he had become a corpse lying in the freezing wind.

The sound of an engine starting came from the warehouse courtyard. Yu Cheng’s body turned ice cold as he lay completely still. Sensing his stiffness, Lu Yan slowly released his hand.

The vehicle creaked across the muddy ground outside the warehouse. The headlights vanished. Even after the night returned to silence, Yu Cheng still had not recovered his senses.

For the first time inside an instance, he felt such overwhelming immersion.

If he hadn’t gone to sleep and had chosen to help keep watch, would this have happened?

If he hadn’t slept so deeply, could he have heard something, woken in time, and stopped it?

If…

Heavy guilt and self blame reddened Yu Cheng’s eyes.

Yet beneath those emotions, for the first time, he also felt an uncontrollable anger igniting in his chest.

₊˚.🎧📓✩

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