Ch 49: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

The students stood there, eyes unfocused and hollow, staring as the simulated zombies lined up neatly in front of them.

Only Lu Yan looked genuinely delighted, reaching out to pat one of the simulated zombies with pure, undisguised joy in his eyes.

Qi Zhengfei: “…”

He recognized that look. It was exactly the expression possessed by deranged medical villains in TV dramas.

At some point, the students had unconsciously crowded together like a flock of trembling quails. From beneath their puffed-up “feathers,” a faint, directionless voice murmured in protest:

“B-but… the first half of class was about emergency wound treatment. These zombies don’t even have injuries…”

“That’s fine,” Lu Yan said with a pleasant smile. “They will soon.”

…They will soon?

Qi Zhengfei turned those five ominous words over in his mind. Translated on Hololo novels. Combined with the rooftop setting and the earlier mention of a “throwing people” game, a horrified realization nearly burst out of him.

No way?!

Lu Yan casually slung an arm around one zombie’s shoulders like an old friend and continued in a cheerful tone:

“Everyone should already be familiar with how simulated zombies work. I did some catching up this weekend and learned they can replicate any known type of zombie. You can even control variables, adjusting infection duration, level of decay, and so on. So, I came up with a hypothesis.”

He raised one finger.

“Suppose it can simulate the exact instant when the zombie virus first takes effect inside a human body.”

“At that moment, biologically speaking, the person has already become a zombie, yet their body remains almost completely human. That creates a wonderful situation. We can run experiments without any ethical concerns. Most importantly, it’s just a mannequin.”

He spoke with unmistakable satisfaction.

A chill rippled through the crowd.

Who had just called this teacher normal? This guy was clearly enjoying himself far too much.

“Fortunately,” Lu Yan continued, “the hypothesis proved correct. The simulated zombies do have this function.”

He tapped the back of the zombie’s neck beside him.

“A-007. Simulate the moment of viral activation.”

The zombie slowly activated.

A transformation unfolded like magic.

The decayed wounds covering its default appearance rapidly healed. Twisted, exposed flesh withdrew beneath the skin. Pale gray skin filled once more with color, as if someone long dead had suddenly come back to life.

Watching it, the onlookers felt as though blood still flowed through its veins, as though its heart still beat powerfully inside its chest.

It was the dream every survivor of the apocalypse had repeated countless times.

Time seemed to reverse. Years vanished in an instant. The ragged clothing of the wandering dead became neat again; dirt faded from its face, revealing confused eyes that reflected the soul of a living person.

…

No one laughed anymore.

Even joking felt impossible.

One by one, the students fell silent, staring fixedly as the simulated zombie became more and more human.

More and more like them.

They were supposed to experiment on something like this?

It looked exactly like a real person. How could they possibly hurt it? They couldn’t.

Memories surfaced unbidden, moments from simulation training when familiar NPCs had transformed into zombies before their eyes.

One second laughing and talking, the next lifeless. Skin still warm. Breath still trembling. Eyes filled with reluctance and longing for the world they were leaving behind.

Already zombies, yet the human part still lingered, refusing to depart.

How could Teacher Lu ask them to act against someone like that?

How could he?

The resistance grew so strong that anger toward Lu Yan began to stir among some students.

This new teacher was going too far. He ignored their feelings. He lacked basic morality.

Someone in the crowd opened their mouth to protest, but a sudden voice cut through first.

“Allow me to remind everyone,” Lu Yan said, still smiling. The expression seemed fixed on his face, almost habitual. If Yu Cheng had been present, he would have remembered that five years ago Lu Yan did not smile like this. Back then his smiles were genuine, and his irritation at being abandoned by Fu Qing had been just as genuine.

Lu Yan had already taken in every change in their expressions. Their dissatisfaction did not surprise him.

“This is a mannequin,” he said calmly. “And even if we go one step further, it represents a zombie. No matter how close it appears to the moment before death, death has already occurred.”

A student blurted out impulsively, “How do you know? What makes you so certain?!”

Facing a body that looked so alive, he protested instinctively out of pity.

The boy’s tone was sharp, his face openly resentful.

He could not understand how Lu Yan could speak about death so calmly, so indifferently. Behind every death lay suffering, shattered families, grief. The zombies he dismissed as painless shells had once been living people, loved by others.

He knew that.

Lu Yan’s cool amber eyes turned toward him. The boy stiffened but stubbornly met his gaze.

Lu Yan did not grow angry. He simply said quietly:

“Do not cling to false hope.”

The boy froze.

“If the countless deaths I’ve witnessed have taught me anything,” Lu Yan continued, “it’s that the moment zombification begins, everything is already over.”

“No emergency treatment matters anymore. Tears from family, cries from loved ones cannot restore a zombie’s reason. The suffering of the flesh disappears along with the soul. From that moment on, it is only moving flesh, incapable of carrying anything else. The thread holding that body together has already been pulled away. Do you understand?”

False hope made people believe in impossible miracles.

Those deceived by zombie believers were precisely the ones who refused to accept that their loved ones were truly gone.

The students listened, stunned. Translated on Hololo novels. Death stood naked before them, cruel and unavoidable, filling them with fear.

They could not stop imagining: what if the body lying before them were a parent, a friend…

And then they realized something.

Even after accepting the coming apocalypse, they had never truly accepted death itself.

All along, they had avoided the thought, comforting themselves with imagined protagonist halos. If they were the protagonists, surely the people around them would also be protected.

No one would die. The adventure would end happily, like the final page of a fairy tale.

But Lu Yan’s words shattered that fragile bubble.

His final sentence fell softly, yet echoed heavily through the rooftop.

“Do you understand?”

Do you understand that they are already gone?

Can you accept it?

…

Can you accept it?

Over the past four-plus years, Lu Yan had lost count of how many times he had asked himself that question.

To stop trying to save someone. To give up on the person who had been laughing and talking with you just seconds ago. To abandon someone who had once fought alongside you, even when they still appeared alive, their heart still beating, blood still flowing…

But they were already dead.

During those four years, however many times Lu Yan had knelt beside zombified friends, desperately attempting one more rescue, was matched by just as many times a pair of hands behind him had forcefully pulled him to his feet.

She would drive a dagger into the zombie’s eye socket and tell him again and again:

“He’s already dead. Let’s go. Save the next one.”

“Save the next one.”

“The next.”

“The next…”

“Come with me. Let’s kill them all and avenge them.”

…

Lu Yan had studied medicine since childhood and saved countless lives, yet the zombie virus was precisely the kind of illness doctors feared most: a one-hundred-percent fatality rate, no prevention, no cure. Every effort was futile.

He failed again and again, crushed repeatedly by despair so heavy it nearly broke him. Yet as long as that voice existed, as long as those hands were there to pull him up, he somehow still found the courage to stand and wrest another life back from death.

…

Some students now had tears welling in their eyes, overwhelmed by sudden pain and fear. Through blurred vision, they saw the young teacher blink, momentarily distracted.

He seemed to remember something. His gaze softened, his expression suddenly vivid and alive.

That expression… felt strangely familiar.

Many students sensed it at once.

A vague recognition stirred in their hearts.

But Lu Yan had already returned to normal and continued after the brief pause:

“If you understand this, then you understand the purpose of this class. Before the moment I described arrives, you must do everything possible, use every method available, to save that person.”

“Before the zombie virus takes them away, their life, their relationships, everything that makes them human, everything they once had and everything they might have gained in the future, rests in your hands. Do you understand?”

He asked again.

This time, after a brief silence, the answer came back firm and unified:

“We understand!”

The elementary-school-like chorus made the smile at Lu Yan’s lips deepen.

…

…

“Since that’s settled, let’s split into groups for your assignment.”

Before the students who had genuinely been frightened could even wipe away their tears, Lu Yan clapped his hands and ruthlessly declared the emotional segment finished.

The students were momentarily speechless.

This style felt suspiciously familiar… like someone else they knew.

“In the first half of class we covered common external injuries encountered during field exploration and combat, along with emergency treatment methods. The practical portion is simple: reproduce those injuries on a real body. Use your eyes to observe, your hands to feel, and memorize the characteristics of each wound.”

“Any method is acceptable. Divide into ten groups. Within one hour, create at least twenty different types of external injuries on the zombies. Photograph and document them. Your homework is to rank the injuries by severity and determine treatment priority. Submit it before next class.”

With a wave of his hand, the ten simulated zombies, already preprogrammed, activated simultaneously.

“Oh, right…”

As if suddenly remembering something, he added with a smile:

“Simulated zombies can only be used as teaching aids after being killed. The later you kill them, the deeper the zombification progresses. A medic’s physical ability determines their teammates’ survival. Good luck, everyone.”

The final word fell lightly.

All ten zombies opened their crimson eyes at once and roared, charging past Lu Yan toward the still-stunned students.

Everyone: “!!!”

The rooftop was cramped, and with so many people packed together they constantly interfered with one another. Translated on Hololo novels. It took frantic scrambling before they finally managed to kill all the zombies.

If they had been freshmen from two months ago, half of them would likely have been infected already.

There was no time to celebrate their improvement. The students stared blankly at the fallen bodies.

Now what?

“…Let’s just have each group claim one zombie first,” Qi Zhengfei said bravely.

Everyone began moving. He and Zhao Zhou were paired together. Looking around, Zhao Zhou spotted a corpse nearby.

“There’s one here nobody’s taken!”

Keeping his stiff neck rigid, he crouched awkwardly to lift the zombie. But the moment he turned its head, the cold body suddenly twitched beneath his hands.

A strand of saliva stretched between its teeth as the zombie opened its mouth wide toward him.

It wasn’t dead.

Zhao Zhou vaguely remembered a large classmate snapping this zombie’s neck earlier. So someone must have forgotten the finishing blow, leaving it mistaken for a corpse.

He reacted instantly, trying to dodge, but a sharp spasm of neck pain froze him in place.

Great. I’m about to get mocked again…

He could already imagine the familiar simulation voice declaring: You are dead.

As he resigned himself to humiliation, a slender hand suddenly reached in from the side, gripping the zombie’s jaw.

Crack.

Bone shifted with a sharp sound. The zombie’s jaw twisted sideways, hanging uselessly open, drool spilling as it failed to close its mouth.

Its jaw had been dislocated.

Zhao Zhou stared blankly at Teacher Lu.

“Temporomandibular joint dislocation also counts as a form of trauma,” Lu Yan said calmly. Squatting casually, he restrained the struggling zombie and flipped it over like meat on a cutting board, demonstrating for the surrounding students. Then, with another firm motion, crack, he forced the jaw back into place.

“But no free samples. If you want to include it in your assignment, you’ll have to figure out how to create it yourselves.”

Zhao Zhou stood there dumbfounded.

First thought: Teacher Lu just saved him.

Second thought: he had dislocated the zombie’s jaw bare-handed and then reset it.

Third thought: Since when was this about free samples?

Was this a grocery market negotiation?

…Wait. The zombie!

Now that its mouth worked again, the simulated zombie lunged. This time Zhao Zhou reacted in time, pulling out his pen and finishing it before it could attack.

As he withdrew the pen tip, he glanced at Lu Yan’s back. The teacher suddenly stopped and looked at him thoughtfully.

“Your movements are off.”

“Huh?”

“You slept wrong and strained your neck, right?” Lu Yan said casually, rolling his wrist. “Don’t leave after class. I’ll adjust it for you.”

Zhao Zhou immediately remembered the earlier scene of the zombie’s jaw being wrenched loose.

The cracking sound replayed in his mind on repeat. He imagined Lu Yan grabbing his head the same way and twisting—

Crack.

Zhao Zhou: “…”

He nearly jumped out of his skin.

“N-no, no need, really! I’m fine! Completely fine!”

Lu Yan, who had been preparing to recruit the clinic’s first patient so he could report progress to Fu Qing: “?”

By the time Zhao Zhou hurried away, his movements were twice as nimble as before. Clutching the simulated zombie, he scrambled back to his group and collapsed onto the ground in lingering shock.

Qi Zhengfei, who had witnessed everything, gave him a thumbs-up.

“…A medical miracle.”

₊˚.🎧📓✩