Ch 97: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

Inside Fangzhou, Song Rushuang and the others were leading their parents on a tour of Fangzhou’s hidden facilities.

Before the apocalypse arrived, they had feared raising suspicion, so when they showed the parents around at noon they hadn’t even entered the teaching buildings. Now that the parents knew the truth, the three girls could finally present the campus they were so proud of without holding anything back.

To the parents, it felt like unlocking a secret map.

They explained things as they walked. Near the east gate, Sun Wei spotted the familiar small truck.

Fu Qing sat in the driver’s seat and greeted them, then looked at Sun Wei. “Once everything inside is unloaded, I’ll have a robot return the car key to your dorm.”

“No rush, no rush,” Sun Wei said quickly. “Thank you, Principal.”

The parents realized what was happening and offered their thanks as well.

Not for retrieving the truck, but for the entire shelter Fu Qing had built, and for the survival skills she had taught the students.

Fu Qing waved it off casually, rolled up the window, and drove toward the cold storage area to unload the cargo while everyone watched her leave.

Vehicles rarely entered the campus. Students and parents along the road stopped and moved aside to let her pass first. Few parents recognized Fu Qing, giving students the perfect opportunity to introduce her.

After hearing who she was, some parents’ expressions changed, clearly having heard rumors already.

Others simply praised her as a young and accomplished principal, unaware of the full truth and therefore missing the complicated looks on their children’s faces.

“Young and accomplished,” indeed.

Near the storage area, unloading the frozen meat required almost no effort from Fu Qing. Robots handled everything.

She opened her account and checked her teaching points balance.

After the livestream earlier, the system had once again notified her that her influence on the world had increased, awarding 300 teaching points.

Her current balance stood at 812 points.

The uneven total reflected expenses such as paying teacher salaries.

After a year of operation, the principal was still far from wealthy, but Fu Qing felt no anxiety. Translated on Hololo novels. Most of the teaching points she earned had been invested in transforming the campus.

Developing the western plain alone had cost nearly three thousand points, but in return it provided farmland several times larger than the campus itself.

Purchasing agricultural tools and professional equipment had also consumed significant resources.

Over the past year of quiet construction, Fangzhou’s outward appearance remained unchanged to avoid suspicion from passersby, yet internally it had undergone earthshaking transformation.

The campus was now roughly divided into three major zones:
a residential area,
a public facilities area including the athletic field, simulation training chambers, and medical center,
and an agricultural zone, partly inside campus walls and partly on the external plains.

The campus was surrounded by high walls equipped with watchtowers and guard posts. Security was tight. Vulnerable sections had traps installed in advance, and shards of glass lined the tops of the walls as additional protection.

All rooftops were fitted with solar panels capable of supplying basic electricity needs. Fu Qing had already purchased wind turbines for the plains, but since those lay outside Fangzhou’s protection, installing such large structures early would attract attention. They remained stored in the system warehouse, waiting until chaos fully erupted in a couple of weeks before deployment.

By then, no one would have the energy to interfere.

Fangzhou was designed to support roughly 8,000 to 10,000 refugees at maximum capacity. Electricity demands for living needs, livestock operations, medical facilities, and water treatment were enormous.

To ensure redundancy, besides solar and wind power, Fu Qing had constructed an underground biogas facility near the agricultural zone, along with systems for biological power generation and heat supply.

Combined with emergency diesel generators and large diesel reserves, the energy infrastructure was temporarily complete.

Beneath the residential and public facility areas stretched an expansive underground complex.

It included storage rooms, cold storage, underground shelter modules, activity areas, a morgue, and an incinerator. The escape tunnels dug by the infrastructure class as extracurricular work had officially been completed in early August.

During the final month, while students were home for vacation, campus robots handled the finishing work.

Some local students returned during their free time to help, rushing to complete the project.

Originally, the tunnel had been planned at about one kilometer in length. After surveying nearby terrain and buildings, however, the exit was relocated inside an abandoned factory, forcing the tunnel to extend further.

The final underground escape passage measured 1.3 kilometers and had been reinforced structurally. In emergencies, it could evacuate 8,000 people within ten minutes.

The exit location had been chosen with extreme care. Xu Mingyue and a group of students investigated countless sites before settling on this one.

The exit needed to meet several strict conditions:
it had to be concealed,
unlikely to attract zombies or refugee crowds,
and spacious enough to hold evacuees temporarily after emergence so they wouldn’t immediately draw attention or face combat upon exit.

Ironically, places difficult for zombies to enter were exactly where fleeing civilians tended to gather. Many abandoned buildings were eliminated for this reason. Dense forests avoided crowds but lacked sufficient cover. By the time a full evacuation became necessary, Fangzhou’s surroundings would likely already have fallen, and thousands gathered outdoors even a kilometer away would easily attract zombies.

After extensive searching, an abandoned factory entered Xu Mingyue’s consideration.

It was a chemical plant.

Shut down years earlier for failing environmental standards, it had been abandoned ever since. Fortunately, it had produced food additives, meaning most materials were biodegradable. Years later, contamination had dissipated. Using teaching points approved by Fu Qing, Xu Mingyue personally brought testing equipment to confirm the site’s safety.

The plan was finalized. One group immediately began digging the tunnel, while another undertook a special mission: transforming the factory itself.

To ordinary people unfamiliar with the details, a chemical plant, especially an abandoned one, seemed extremely dangerous.

Even though national policies governed proper disposal, enforcement was never perfect. Fear of lingering toxic pollution discouraged most explorers.

Compared to abandoned food factories or warehouses, chemical plants offered little reward for scavenging, and anything valuable had likely already been removed long ago. This deterred even more people.

Those who might still enter would likely be desperate individuals fleeing zombies with nowhere else to go. The factory’s redesign was meant specifically for them.

The students selected for the task were all former art majors.

After days of brainstorming, they carried their painting supplies to the site.

The first thing they did was paint a massive red skull onto an old sign they found.

Streaks of dried paint trailed downward like blood washed by rain and then congealed again, creating a chilling, bone-deep sense of dread.

Beside the skull, the same red paint spelled out the concise warning “Danger!”, styled like a local caution meant to warn children and passersby.

Next to it they erected a large signboard written in more formal, official language, stating that hazardous chemicals were present inside and that entry was strictly forbidden due to extreme toxicity.

Afterward, they deliberately weathered and distressed the signs so that the finished product looked as though it had stood there for years, worn and damaged by sun and wind.

Combined with the rusted wire fencing nearby and the eerie, abandoned factory buildings in the distance, the entire place resembled the kind of deserted industrial site no one dared approach in films, easily frightening ordinary people unaware of the truth.

The tunnel exit was set inside one of the warehouses. Numerous empty storage tanks left behind were stacked together; several formed a recessed U-shaped arrangement, with the escape tunnel opening hidden in the center. Translated on Hololo novels. From the warehouse entrance, other tanks blocked the view completely. Unless someone walked deep inside and searched carefully, the exit was impossible to discover.

At the warehouse entrance, the art students installed another warning board about dangerous chemicals.

With that, the escape tunnel’s exit could be considered almost completely secure.

Of course, about once a week a student team would still walk the tunnel route, both to check for structural risks and to inspect the factory and warehouse for signs of human activity, ensuring no surprises when the passage was eventually used.

…

Construction of the residential and public zones was nearly complete. The agricultural area, however, was only about seventy percent finished and still short of Fu Qing’s original plan.

This was mainly because the parents had arrived earlier than expected.

If parents had discovered anything unusual before the apocalypse and left the campus during the final hour, Fu Qing and the students would have had nowhere to cry about it.

So features like the artificial lake and the small woodland remained untouched for now.

Her goal today was to complete as much of the remaining construction as possible, or at least store unfinished components in system space.

Fu Qing glanced again at the newly increased balance in her account, silently calculating costs before opening the system marketplace.

【Cost: 300 Teaching Points】
【Obtained: Recirculating Aquaculture System ×1】

【Cost: 100 Teaching Points】
【Obtained: Selectable Fish Fry ×2】

【Please select two species (automatically deployed after system construction or manually released): grass carp, common carp, crucian carp, black carp, sardine, salmon, catfish…】

Fu Qing had researched fish farming beforehand.

Previously, however, her points were almost always spent immediately upon earning them, so the fish farm planned after dismantling the artificial lake had never been prioritized.

Spending points on fish fry pained her slightly. In the outside world they could be bought with money, and teaching points were far more valuable than cash.

After the first year’s construction missions, earning points would only become harder.

Still, without a suitable environment to raise fish immediately, she ultimately chose to purchase them through the system.

Aside from high-tech items like simulation chambers and realistic zombies, nearly everything in Fangzhou could theoretically be built or purchased normally. But system purchases had two advantages: secrecy and speed. Many times she had no choice but to grit her teeth and spend points.

With the newly earned 300 points, her budget felt slightly less tight. After scanning the options, she quickly selected two species:

Tilapia and catfish.

Though less common on dining tables than traditional carp species, their meat was tender and nutritious. Their poor reputations came not from the fish themselves but from their resilience. They could survive in polluted waters, accumulating heavy metals while appearing perfectly healthy, making consumers wary.

But that resilience was exactly what Fu Qing valued.

Both species grew quickly. Carp required about a year, while tilapia matured in four to six months and channel catfish in as little as three to four months, allowing up to three harvests per year.

They also tolerated crowding well. The same-sized pool could hold nearly twice as many catfish as carp and at least one and a half times as many tilapia.

Inside Fangzhou’s walls, space was precious. Producing double the yield from the same area made the choice obvious.

They also consumed less water and electricity.

Both fish were omnivorous and undemanding about feed, unlike delicate species that died easily if water quality fluctuated.

Combined with their strong reproductive ability, a single batch of fry could sustain long-term breeding without future restocking.

The greater concern might eventually be overpopulation.

The 300-point recirculating aquaculture system was likewise chosen to conserve space and water. A standard pond cost only 100 points but required far more land for equivalent output.

Every part of Fangzhou, surface, rooftops, and underground, was already fully utilized. Expanding further would mean extending the walls themselves, no simple matter. After careful consideration, Fu Qing chose the advanced system.

Fangzhou already raised chickens and ducks. During summer she added rabbits, and now fish joined the ecosystem. Fresh protein supplies were essentially secured.

Human food was solved. Animal feed, however, still needed planning.

Animal feed sources boiled down to several categories: insects, grains, processed kitchen waste, and forage grass.

Kitchen waste was already abundant, divided between composting, biogas production, and feed processing.

Forage grass had been prepared earlier. Granny Liu had planted alfalfa when the plains were first reclaimed. Rabbits ate it primarily, while chickens, ducks, and even humans could consume the tender leaves.

Grains could simply be allocated from harvested crops.

For insects, Fu Qing selected black soldier flies, rich in protein and fat and favored by poultry and fish alike.

Larvae could be dried into meal for long-term storage, and since they fed on kitchen waste, feed production required no additional input.

【Cost: 100 Teaching Points】
【Obtained: Vertical Insect Farming Unit ×1】

【Cost: 50 Teaching Points】
【Obtained: Black Soldier Fly Larvae (3-day stage)】

The system produced extremely high yields and required only a small room.

In moments, 550 points vanished. With a resigned “might as well” mindset, Fu Qing purchased one final item.

【Cost: 100 Teaching Points】
【Obtained: Spirulina Cultivation Pool ×1】

Algae would supplement nutrition for animals, especially fish. With this, the feed ecosystem was complete. All installations would wait until the artificial lake was dismantled.

Demolishing the lake would be too conspicuous right now. Many students still hadn’t explained everything to their parents, so Fu Qing decided to wait.

Fangzhou currently had sufficient food supplies anyway. Over the past year they had harvested potatoes, wheat, carrots, onions, and dried beans, all carefully stored.

Most daily meals still relied on food purchased externally, both to build reserves and avoid suspicion.

After storing everything in the system’s magical backpack, Fu Qing checked her balance again.

Only 162 teaching points remained.

The next item she wanted cost 300.

Fu Qing sighed silently.

Teaching points were never enough.

Most point-generating tasks had already been completed. Her popularity rating had stalled at 83%, far from the next milestone of 100%.

Where else could she earn points?

As she pondered, a notification suddenly appeared, almost as if responding to her thoughts.

【Your influence on this world has deepened again!】
【Reward: 200 Teaching Points】
【Please continue your efforts!】

Fu Qing blinked.

…What?

Did rewards really just fall from the sky?

And why did it say “again”? Why was the reward 100 points less than usual?

Confused, she asked the system.

The system replied: 【This reward is an additional bonus triggered by new developments in a prior event, therefore the amount is smaller.】

Her confusion only deepened. Just as she was about to ask what development it meant, another notification appeared.

A private message from Su Huaijin.

“Principal, I think we just made the trending charts.”

A short, straightforward sentence, followed by an innocent blinking emoji.

₊˚.🎧📓✩