Ch 52: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

Including Song Rushuang, the students had always treated each instance inside the simulation combat chamber as if it were a game dungeon.

They assumed it was fictional and unreal. So although rationally, for the sake of training effectiveness, they immersed themselves as though it were the real world, completing each scenario seriously and saving every resident within it, emotionally they still regarded it somewhere deep down as a fabricated story, merely special training environments deliberately created by the school to help them adapt to an apocalyptic future in advance.

Within these instances, they always held a subtly superior perspective, observing and judging the suffering and struggles of the NPCs.

Game after game, they watched characters repeat the same stories again and again, only to reach different endings each time based on the players’ choices.

It inevitably created the feeling of a god controlling fate.

They discussed on the forums which adventures were more exciting, which NPCs were unforgettable, and complained about troublesome NPCs who delayed their progress.

Kind and lovable NPCs received gentler treatment, while annoying or inconvenient ones were avoided with faint traces of guilt.

There was nothing inherently wrong with that.

Because inside the simulation combat chamber, they were players, the “Fourth Calamity.”

It was a game. Their training ground.

But what if that was not the truth?

……

Even as she entered the instance, Song Rushuang remained dazed.

The people in the hall had all been shaken by the revelation and forgotten to form teams. She ended up selecting a familiar instance alone and entering it by herself.

This was already her fourth time playing this instance. Because its setting closely resembled the neighborhood near where she lived, she believed it might someday become relevant and had intentionally practiced it repeatedly.

The scenario resembled Instance 004 somewhat, though set at a different point in time. Here, the zombie tide had already erupted, causing a massive chain-reaction car crash on the highway. The “protagonist’s” vehicle was trapped in the middle, and she needed to break free from the chaotic crowd, escape the congested roadway, and safely return to a residential complex one street away.

Having played the same instance many times, Song Rushuang had long developed muscle memory.

In a haze, she passed two hidden “plot triggers” purely by instinct, escaped from the crushed and deformed vehicle, and ran forward for quite some distance.

Not far away, zombies climbed onto car roofs, scrambling across collided vehicles on all fours. They pressed their faces against sunroofs, peering down at trapped passengers, creating scenes both grotesque and surreal.

Screams echoed everywhere. Flames shot skyward. Thick black smoke billowed upward. People behind her ran forward like mad, and from time to time someone was knocked down and devoured. Amid the chaos, only Song Rushuang, as a player, seemed out of place, staring at the hellish world with a detached, unreal gaze.

Had all of this once truly happened?

Was this a real world no different from the one she lived in?

Her limbs stiffened as her mind and senses overloaded, dissolving into indistinct noise.

Until a cry jolted her awake.

“Mom! Mom!”

Song Rushuang snapped out of her trance and looked toward the sound.

In the middle of the highway sat a sedan, tightly wedged between vehicles on all sides. Inside was a little girl, about four or five years old, her face streaked with tears as she desperately slapped the window with her small hands.

“Mommy!”

Her mother sat motionless in the driver’s seat, held in place by the seatbelt, head tilted sideways, blood flowing from her mouth and nose. She had clearly died in the crash. The little girl, secured in a child safety seat, had miraculously survived unharmed.

But if left alone, within minutes she would be swallowed by the zombie horde. Her ultimate fate would be infection or starvation.

This was a “fixed event.” To return home, the protagonist inevitably had to pass the car where the little girl was trapped.

The first time she played this instance, Song Rushuang had tried to save the child. But the car doors were completely warped and jammed. The only way to rescue her was to break the window, and when the protagonist awakened she had no suitable tools. After several attempts, Song Rushuang abandoned the effort as zombies approached too quickly.

Every time afterward, she rushed past this point as fast as possible, as if covering her ears could make the girl’s desperate cries disappear.

But this time, by sheer coincidence, Song Rushuang stopped.

The little girl’s cries carried on the wind, clearer than ever before.

Her heart pounded violently as she turned her head.

About forty meters behind her stood a stalled bus. There had to be window-breaking tools inside.

But the bus windows were covered in bloody handprints, and shadows moved within. They might already be zombies. Even if the bus were safe, going back forty meters meant deliberately moving closer to the zombie tide. Combined with the time needed to find tools, break the window, and rescue the child, her chances of survival would drop drastically.

“But…”

“To hell with it,” Song Rushuang cursed.

Without hesitation, she turned and ran toward the bus.

Two minutes later, Song Rushuang came running back, gripping a red emergency hammer in her hand, her face smeared with blood.

She smashed the window, reached inside to unlock the door, unfastened the little girl’s seatbelt, then hoisted the still crying and struggling child onto her shoulder. Facing the zombie horde closing in, she clenched her teeth and sprinted toward the residential complex at her fastest speed.

By the time she finally cleared the instance, her clothes were soaked with sweat, and she looked utterly disheveled.

Panting heavily, Song Rushuang stared at the results panel that appeared before her.

Because of the added burden of the little girl, her completion time had been delayed by a full eleven minutes. She had also failed the optional objective of gathering supplies along the way. Her rating dropped, leaving her with only a B-, worse than even her first attempt.

Every statistic looked terrible. Only one detail changed.

When she expanded the detailed list, the number under “People Rescued” silently shifted from zero to one.

It was not part of the instance’s grading criteria. It did not affect the rating or grant bonus points. In the past, Song Rushuang would have considered it as insignificant as all the other omitted data.

But now, she no longer thought that way.

That extra person mattered.

The dull ache in her shoulder from carrying the girl faded rapidly as the instance ended. Song Rushuang stretched instinctively, then suddenly paused. Lowering her head, she murmured unconsciously,

“I wonder… in the real world, did the person who passed by, someone like ‘me,’ stop to save her…”

Her voice grew softer and softer until it was almost inaudible.

Because she realized that regardless of whether the girl had been saved back then, within five years she would end up like everyone screaming, crying, and desperately struggling to survive on that highway. Either a walking corpse, or a handful of dust scattered across barren earth.

*

When Song Rushuang left the combat chamber, she still had not sorted out her emotions.

Only on the walk back to the dormitory did she remember to open her student watch and check the forum.

The forum had already exploded.

The homepage refreshed constantly as new posts appeared one after another, all centered around the simulation combat chamber instances and Teacher Lu’s identity.

[I’m confused. How could the instances be real events?]

[No. If both Teacher Lu and the instances are real, then this isn’t something that already happened.
It’s something that is going to happen.

What the instances show are futures that haven’t occurred yet.]

[So… the principal and teachers all traveled back from the future?]

The students, suddenly confronted with such shocking information, found it hard to accept.

In truth, the idea of “time travelers” had been raised before.

As early as the opening ceremony, people had questioned how Fu Qing could predict future events so precisely.

The fully immersive simulations, the holographic watches, technologies clearly beyond their era, combined with the mysterious restriction that prevented them from revealing apocalypse-related information, and the inexplicable decision they had all made to choose Fangzhou University during college applications… all these unbelievable events seemed explainable only if the principal were a time traveler or a novel-like protagonist possessing a system.

But the principal had never given an answer, so these theories remained speculation, growing increasingly fantastical through repeated private discussions.

Of course, others argued that time travel and prophecy sounded too much like fiction. They tried to find scientific explanations instead. Perhaps the principal was actually a secret agent sent by the state, secretly preparing civilian forces to resist an impending disaster, which explained access to advanced technology not yet released publicly.

As for why a group of students had been chosen, perhaps similar missions existed elsewhere, and schools like Fangzhou had already been established across the country.

Students, with their relatively simple social networks, would also be less likely to leak sensitive information abroad.

—The apocalypse might even be the result of actions by foreign nations. The predicted timeline might not be prophecy at all, but intelligence gathered by agents and analyzed by experts.

As for the inability to reveal information, perhaps it was some form of subconscious psychological influence. That part was left to personal interpretation.

Human instinct rejects the absurd and the irrational. Because this explanation felt more realistic, it gained many supporters. Until now.

The appearance of a younger Teacher Lu inside the Xiao Juan instance shattered that theory completely.

Guessing about time travelers and confirming that one truly existed nearby were entirely different things.

Knowing the apocalypse would happen and realizing someone around you had already lived through it were also entirely different.

The students were losing their minds.

Amid the chaos, many began trying to analyze and organize the overwhelming information.

[Everyone calm down. Based on dialogue between the protagonist’s teammates in the Xiao Juan instance, the story takes place about half a year after the virus outbreak, near the end of winter. And the Teacher Lu in the instance looks much younger than he does now. No one disagrees with that, right?]

In terms of appearance alone, aside from hairstyle, Lu Yan had not changed dramatically.

The greater difference lay in his temperament.

[So let’s assume there is at least about a three-year time gap between Teacher Lu and the Lu Yan in the instance. But in our reality, the instance’s events occur more than a year in the future, around February 2031.]

[Can we hypothesize that after the instance storyline ended, “Lu Yan” survived in the apocalypse for roughly three more years, then died and returned to our timeline, becoming Fangzhou University’s “Teacher Lu”?]

As soon as this analysis was posted, many agreed.

[That actually lines everything up… including the principal’s statement that humanity goes extinct five years after the apocalypse. Teacher Lu didn’t survive past five years…]

[Holy crap, I’ve got goosebumps.]

[Can the teachers see the forum?? Is it okay for us to speculate like this?]

[Reply: The principal has never stopped us from speculating, and they definitely know about the simulation instances, so I think we’re fine for now.]

Soon, dissenting opinions appeared.

[I don’t think this is time travel, for two reasons.

First, Teacher Lu’s appearance has changed. If this were time travel, it would mean physical time travel, not just consciousness transfer. That would mean the older Teacher Lu returned to the current timeline after surviving several years in the apocalypse. But then where is the younger version of Teacher Lu who should exist in this timeline?

Second, the instance worlds are not completely identical to ours. Has anyone played Instance 036? Its location, though censored, almost perfectly overlaps with the map of City B that I visited this summer. Even the street names match. I assume they’re the same city.

However, a famous century-old shop mentioned by NPCs in the instance does not exist in the real City B.]

Two minutes later, the same poster replied again:

[To make sure my memory wasn’t wrong, I checked the map again. I’m certain. I hid in that shop with NPCs during the instance. Someone even said it was a famous tourist spot, but the owner couple had turned into zombies and their craft would be lost.

But when I searched for that shop just now in the real City B, there was absolutely no information about it.

If anyone has a simulation reservation soon, try Instance 036 to verify.

In short, time travel implies movement within the same timeline. But I think the world the teachers once lived in might be a parallel world extremely similar to ours.

A parallel world connected to ours in time.

In that world, the apocalypse has already arrived and humanity went extinct. Our world has not yet reached that point. Everything the principal and teachers are doing… is to save our world.]

₊˚.🎧📓✩