Ch 54: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

All of the teachers had experienced the apocalypse.

The instances inside the simulation chamber were very likely events that had truly happened, and some of them might even be the teachers’ own memories.

The flood of information crashed down on the students all at once, far beyond what they could emotionally bear.

The campus felt unusually quiet that day.

In classrooms, everyone listened attentively for once.

A girl stared at Bai Tang at the podium and suddenly recalled a day shortly after the semester began, when Teacher Bai had reacted abnormally strongly upon facing a simulated zombie.

Teacher Bai had frozen in fear, unable to move, yet instinctively pushed the student away, telling her to “run.”

Later, the principal had arrived in time, halted the zombie, and even issued a campus-wide notice suspending zombie rentals.

Back then, the girl had not understood the principal’s intention. She had thought the announcement was an overreaction.

Now, she finally understood.

“…”
She unconsciously bit the dry skin on her lower lip. Her note-taking slowed as she stared absentmindedly at Bai Tang’s back.

Bai Tang turned to write on the board. Her grown-out bob was tied into a small ponytail at the back. Because she was short, she had to strain onto her tiptoes to reach higher sections, leaving behind neat lines of increasingly confident handwriting.

The person who had once seemed so much like a student at the beginning of the semester had now become a proper teacher.

Teacher Bai, who froze at the sight of zombies yet still remembered to push students to safety in her fear… when she had been attacked by those wall-climbing zombies, had she been about the same age as them?

The difference was that no one had warned them about the apocalypse back then. No one had taught them how to survive.

The apocalypse destroyed their lives, took away their families, killed them… and then brought them back, placing them before these students.

Was that a gift, or a cruelty?

With what kind of feelings had the principal and teachers sorted through everything they learned from apocalypse and death in order to teach them?

Another strip of skin tore loose. Her lip split slightly, and the salty metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.

The girl quickly lowered her head to wipe away the blood, then used the motion to brush the corner of her eye with her fingertip. Gripping her pen tightly, she hurriedly scribbled several meaningless words into her notebook as if to conceal something.

Today, she had understood many things.

For example, how Teacher Hao got the scar on his face, and why he killed zombies so skillfully yet always with visible disgust.

Why Teacher Liu often mentioned a clever, gifted granddaughter who was no longer around.

Why Teacher Zhao never dared look directly at simulated zombies.

And why the teaching staff at the school seemed so oddly assembled, ranging from freshly graduated shut-ins to retirees who had been out of work for over a decade, as though the principal had hired them without any selection at all.

Because death itself was unreasonable. It fell equally upon everyone.

And perhaps the teachers rarely left Fangzhou’s campus because, in this world, they had nowhere else to go. No homes to return to.

…

After class ended, the girl remained seated for a while. Many others did the same, slumped over desks scrolling through the forum or staring blankly at the lecture slides.

If someone from another school walked in, they probably would not understand why so many people looked sorrowful while reading posts that resembled triumphant “face-slapping” stories.

Suddenly, someone in the corner shouted, breaking the lifeless silence.

“Quick, check the announcement!”

*

[“Simulation Combat Chamber” Fully Upgraded!]

[New Feature: Replay]

[Users may now view a historical archive of cleared instance recordings. Users may also choose to upload their own cleared runs for others to reference… ]

“Does this even count as an update?” Zhang Han lay on her dorm bed scrolling through the announcement, puzzled. “Weren’t we already able to upload gameplay recordings to the forum? This just looks like they added an internal video archive organized by instance. It’s more convenient, sure, but what’s the big deal?”

The forum had indeed always allowed recordings to be uploaded, though with restrictions. Only players who cleared an instance could view others’ recordings.

“Can you finish reading first?” Shen Qingqing shook her head, helpless at Zhang Han’s impatience. “The important part is below.”

She scrolled down herself and reread carefully.

Her intuition told her this feature was far from ordinary.

Seeing Shen Qingqing’s focused expression, Zhang Han hurried to read on.

[The “Replay” function includes two modes: “Companion” and “Experience.”]

[Selecting Companion mode will allow the simulation chamber to generate a virtual character based on the uploaded clear data, enabling the uploader to act as a team partner during the instance. Note: teammate limits vary depending on instance mode.]

[Selecting Experience mode allows the user to enter the perspective of the uploader. Control authority will be handled by the uploader’s recorded actions, granting a fully immersive experience of their playthrough.]

[Users may even perceive portions of the uploader’s intense emotions in order to better understand their decision-making logic.]

Zhang Han froze upon reading the second option.

After a moment, she did exactly what Shen Qingqing had done, scrolling back up and reading it again.

“Immersively experiencing a previous player’s perspective… does this mean what I think it means?” Zhang Han looked up.

Simply experiencing classmates’ recordings was not particularly enticing.

But at that moment, the same name appeared simultaneously in both their minds.

—Anonymous Visitor.

*

Less than half an hour after the announcement was released, the room housing the simulation combat chambers was already packed.

After students who had just exited confirmed that the archive for Instance 004 truly contained a recording left by Anonymous Visitor, no one was willing to leave.

Many students who had already used their instance attempts that week refused to wait until next week. They began stopping people in line outside the chamber and proposing trades on the spot.

“I’ll swap you my reservation for next week and buy you a meal. Anything under fifty, order whatever you want.”

Although reservations were required for the simulation chamber, the schedule was flexible. Students could privately exchange time slots as long as both parties agreed and submitted the change through their student watches.

But as more and more students arrived after reading the announcement, anyone holding a slot for that week instantly became highly sought after.

The offers grew increasingly outrageous.

“Whoever swaps with me, I’ll bring you meals for a week! Any boys’ dorm, delivery to your door. Girls too, I’ll bring it downstairs.”

“I’ll do two weeks! I’m in the girls’ dorm!”

“…Seriously? We’re competing now? Fine, I’ll do a month. My home’s local. On weekends I’ll bring homemade chicken soup, ribs, plus the amazing duck feet and milk tea from near my house.”

“That’s excessive! Whoever gives me their slot, I’ll handle your meals, packages, water runs, and seat-saving for the entire month…”

A girl about to enter the room was suddenly blocked by countless hands reaching toward her from all directions.

She struggled to push through. “No trades! Move aside!”

Milk tea and duck feet meant nothing. Nothing could stop her from rushing toward the principal.

Just to enter an instance one week earlier, one group desperately tried to bribe while another desperately refused. The entire scene looked surreal to anyone watching.

A boy had only come to watch the spectacle, but after being shoved back and forth, he finally snapped.

“Can you all stop competing so hard? It’s just a clear-run video, isn’t it? Now that there’s an archive, and the people who came out earlier already confirmed Anonymous Visitor’s recording is in there, why don’t we just download it and watch it on the forum? Why do we have to go into the simulation combat chamber ourselves?”

Next to him, another boy with a face full of acne scars looked at him like he was an idiot.

“Are you dumb? The point of the new feature obviously isn’t the replay. It’s the companion mode and the immersive experience. Both of those require going into the chamber yourself. What’s the use of just watching a recording?”

“Tell me, do you want to team up with the principal or not? Do you? Do you?”

He was so excited that he nearly sprayed saliva onto the other boy’s face. The boy hurriedly wiped his cheek, imagined the scene, swallowed unconsciously, and admitted honestly, “Yeah… I do.”

“Exactly.” The acne-scarred boy rolled his eyes. “And the experience mode is even more insane. You step into the principal’s first-person perspective. She ‘controls’ the actions, and you can even feel some of her emotions. How is that any different from having a top-tier player teach you step by step? If you still can’t learn with that, you might as well pack up and go home to farm.”

“?” A classmate from the farming elective was offended out of nowhere. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? Why are you looking down on farming as a profession?”

What did that have to do with them?

“…Sorry.” The pockmarked boy hadn’t thought of that and quickly apologized. After apologizing, he looked back at the first boy. “Now do you get why we’re fighting for it—wait, where’d he go?”

In the time it took him to apologize, the person he’d been talking to had somehow squeezed his way to the front.

The guy who had just been acting all detached and above it all now had his hand raised higher than anyone’s, bouncing up and down in the crowd.

“Look at me! I’ll wash your dirty clothes and stinky socks for a whole month! By hand! No pollution, no harmful chemicals!”

Boy: “…………Damn it!”

If he’d known, he never would have told him. Why did he have to run his mouth?

*

After finally breaking free from the overly enthusiastic crowd and getting into the room, Lu Dongyu’s hair was a complete mess from all the squeezing.

The offers her classmates had made were extremely tempting, but she did not regret refusing them for even a second. Staring at the neatly lined rows of capsule-style simulation pods in the room, her eyes shone.

Only an idiot would trade away the chance to enter a week early and clear an instance alongside the principal.

Lu Dongyu lay down in a pod with practiced ease. The hatch closed, and she quickly entered the main interface.

She had already played Instance 004 before. But she knew her own skill level, and had no intention of challenging the hidden boss-level mutated cat. Before playing, she had carefully studied forum guides, avoided every trap, and aimed only to clear steadily so she could add her own name beneath the principal’s record.

Now she opened the cleared instance records and found Beginner Instance 004 without difficulty. Sure enough, there was a new option at the bottom of the page that hadn’t existed before.

[Replay]

She tapped in. The first thing she saw was her own clear-run record. After the update, it did not only replay the first-person perspective. It also allowed students to review their runs from a third-person, god’s-eye view. Used properly, it could yield major benefits as well.

There was a toggle asking whether to upload the record to the public hall. It made Lu Dongyu instantly nervous. Only after confirming several times that sharing was turned off did she finally relax.

Her record was not something she could show anyone.

In the upper-right corner of the record page was a button: [Share Clear-Run Record]

Quite a few students who came to the simulation pods today had checked Instance 004. Two of them had even achieved decent results, so they chose to upload.

But Lu Dongyu ignored the other records. Her gaze locked onto the very top entry.

[Player Nickname: Anonymous Visitor]

[Clear Time: 5min 19s]

[Overall Rating: SSS]

[Visibility: Visible to All]

There it was. The principal’s record.

Lu Dongyu instinctively went to tap it, but stopped at the last second. After hesitating for a second, she decided to check other instances first.

Once she entered an instance, who knew how much time it might take? It would be better to confirm whether there were other updates, or whether any particularly strong students had uploaded records.

Returning to the instance selection page, the screen was filled with all kinds of instances, color-coded by difficulty: beginner in light green, intermediate in yellow, advanced in orange, and hell difficulty in dark red, instantly clear at a glance.

Lu Dongyu stared at the three dark red instances floating at the very top, and, almost involuntarily, reached out to tap one.

She knew perfectly well that no one had ever cleared a hell-difficulty instance, let alone uploaded a record. But… she just wanted to look. Just to see.

The page that loaded made her freeze.

On the otherwise empty screen, there was exactly one record.

And the ID on it was one she now knew all too well.

[Player Nickname: Anonymous Visitor]

[Clear Time: N/A (time tracking not implemented)]

[Overall Rating: N/A (scoring not implemented)]

[Visibility: Visible to All]

Lu Dongyu’s gaze went still, her pupils tightening slightly.

She reacted and quickly checked the other two hell instances.

Sure enough, they also had corresponding clear-run records, and the uploader was still Anonymous Visitor.

Unwilling to accept it, Lu Dongyu randomly opened more than a dozen instances in a row, and finally spotted the pattern.

Not every instance had a record uploaded by Anonymous Visitor, but the higher the difficulty, the more frequently her name appeared.

For the students, this was unquestionably great news.

The harder the instance, the more valuable a predecessor’s experience became, and this was the principal’s experience.

But… Lu Dongyu could not understand why Anonymous Visitor’s records had no clear time or rating.

Any instance played inside the simulation pods automatically came with statistics.

Unless the principal had not “played” those instances inside the simulation combat chamber at all…

Her mood slowly sank.

The answer was already obvious.

Connecting it to the forum’s theories, Lu Dongyu finally dared to be certain.

Every instance that had a clear-run record was the principal’s lived experience.

The primary purpose of opening the historical archive might be to show those experiences to the students.

Once she understood that, Lu Dongyu felt both shaken and exhilarated, yet also oddly bitter.

The principal might not teach in person, but what she was offering the students could be the most valuable thing in all of Fangzhou.

But what had it cost her to offer it?

For Lu Dongyu, simply because her own play wasn’t impressive enough, she was afraid to even upload her record publicly. Yet for the principal, what she had to share was her real memories, her emotions, and perhaps things she never wanted to face again.

Lu Dongyu thought again of Xiao Juan.

If that had truly been something the principal and Teacher Lu lived through, she could not help wondering. No one at the school had managed to save Xiao Juan so far… so had the principal done it back then?

After just one night together inside the instance, many people had grown fond of that “character” and cried at her death.

Then what about the principal and Teacher Lu, who had lived beside her and fought alongside her for months?

What had it felt like for them, losing such an important friend?

Lu Dongyu suddenly did not dare think further.

The page was still on the hell-instance clear-run record. She tapped replay.

As expected, a warning popped up.

[Warning: You have not cleared this instance and cannot use the replay function. Please return after clearing it!]

Lu Dongyu let out a small sigh, her heart heavy with wistfulness.

Who knew how long it would take her to catch up to the principal.

She really wanted… to help her as soon as possible.

₊˚.🎧📓✩

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