Ch 113: Opening a Survival School Before the Zombie Outbreak

As soon as the plan was finalized, several people stood and left at Tian Xuejun’s signal to begin making arrangements.

They needed to coordinate with the local government, screen personnel, recruit volunteers, organize training sessions, and even arrange housing for the volunteers and their families. All of this had to be completed as quickly as possible.

The first group to be mobilized would naturally come from S City itself.

Although there was no direct proof, since Fangzhou was located in S City, the Zombie King would most likely concentrate its Believers there.

As for other regions across Huaguo, they would have to rely on local monitoring first. Once signs of intelligent infected activity were detected, requests for assistance would be sent to Fangzhou. The process would take several days back and forth, but there was no better solution.

There were simply too many provinces, cities, districts, and counties across the country. Even the national military could not provide full territorial coverage. Resources inevitably had to be concentrated in key areas, let alone Fangzhou, which had only a little over two thousand people.

Fortunately, the number of intelligent infected should not be very large.

While manpower was gradually falling into place, another, more critical problem emerged: how were they supposed to locate the Believers?

They were operating in the open, while the enemy remained hidden. The only certainty was that the enemy would likely target shelters, power stations, hospitals, and similar facilities.

But aside from reinforcing those locations, there seemed little else they could do.

They could only respond after the Believers made a move, allowing Fangzhou to dispatch teams reactively. Always being one step behind was far too passive.

“Can’t we use surveillance systems?” Song Rushuang asked. “I’ve heard that surveillance footage can now be combined with AI. Could AI identify special zombie traits? Maybe we could locate them before they act. Zombies don’t just appear out of nowhere. Before reaching their targets, they must pass through monitored areas.”

Her suggestion was quickly rejected by a bespectacled technical specialist.

“With current technology and conditions, that’s unlikely to work,” he said.

“Our nationwide surveillance network relies primarily on civilian internet infrastructure for data transmission. Once networks collapse, most cameras will fail immediately, and that’s not even considering power outages. Surveillance centers also require technical staff for maintenance. A single provincial monitoring center often employs over a hundred personnel across different roles. To keep national monitoring running at even a minimal level, we’d need at least seven or eight thousand core technicians.”

“And protecting those technicians would require even more manpower.”

“On top of that, data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity. A provincial data center can use as much power as a small hospital. If electricity becomes scarce, hospitals will obviously be prioritized. Adding AI analysis would increase power consumption even further. Spending that much manpower and electricity just to locate perhaps a few dozen or a hundred intelligent infected simply isn’t cost-effective.”

“Even if surveillance remained operational and AI performed initial screening, human verification would still be required, and those personnel aren’t even included in the seven or eight thousand technicians I mentioned.”

“And even then, AI plus manual review would still miss targets. Accuracy would be too low, efficiency too poor…” He shook his head with a sigh.

Though others lacked his technical expertise, they quickly understood.

Facial recognition could accurately match individuals appearing in surveillance footage with their identities. The problem was that they did not know who was a Believer and who was not.

Appearance alone was useless. Aside from brute-type zombies, most zombies looked almost identical to normal humans.

They had hoped surveillance might save manpower, only to realize maintaining surveillance itself required enormous resources.

“…,” Song Rushuang rubbed her temples.

Even with careful planning, reality rarely unfolded as smoothly as expected. Real-world constraints existed everywhere.

Sometimes the issue was not impossibility, but the need to abandon an option after weighing competing priorities.

For students accustomed to solving problems with clear answers, this was a lesson that required time to understand. In reality, theory alone was not enough. One had to consider feasibility, real-world limitations, and implementation. Every step afterward was as difficult as solving the original problem.

Finding the correct answer was only the beginning.

Fu Qing, who had been quietly listening, suddenly spoke.

“If we don’t need the entire national surveillance system running, and only maintain S City’s monitoring center, would the power consumption remain manageable?”

The technician nodded immediately. “Absolutely.”

At present, because of Fu Qing and Fangzhou, S City had become one of the most prioritized locations in the country outside the capital. Translated on Hololo novels. Resources and personnel were already being funneled there.

Fu Qing considered this for a moment. “If we abandon searching for all Believers and instead focus on locating a single specific individual, would it still be difficult?”

The technician answered without hesitation. “The main technical challenge is distinguishing intelligent infected from ordinary humans and normal zombies. But if you already have a specific target and can provide identifying information, locating them becomes much easier.”

Fu Qing visibly relaxed.

“I do have a specific target. She’s a young woman who came to S City from another region for work. She was also one of the victims of the major urban village fire last May. She didn’t die at the scene. She was sent to the hospital, then mysteriously disappeared after a week of treatment. Of course, hospital records may list her as deceased.”

She quickly provided a series of details. “Following this lead shouldn’t make it difficult to determine her identity.”

The elite-class students immediately felt a flash of realization.

A codename surfaced in all their minds at once:

Hooded Woman (Scar).

When Fu Qing had revealed the existence of the Zombie King, she had also mentioned the identity of the woman who fought her in Xishan that day.

Several of them slapped their foreheads internally. How had they not thought of this earlier?

As for Fu Qing’s remark that records might have been altered, it was naturally because the Zombie King possessed hacking abilities.

The fire had caused massive public attention and government scrutiny. Secretly removing the hooded woman from the hospital exceeded the System’s and Zombie King’s “attention blind spot” capabilities. The Zombie King would certainly have needed to arrange careful cover-up measures afterward.

Seeing Tian Xuejun and the others looking puzzled, Fu Qing explained, “This woman’s codename is Phoenix. It probably means rising from the ashes. She was one of the Zombie King’s earliest recruits, holds a high position among the Believers, and worships the Zombie King with near-fanatical devotion.”

“If we find her, we might be able to follow the trail and locate the Zombie King and the Believers’ hideout.”

Wasn’t that far more efficient than activating nationwide surveillance and searching for a needle in the ocean?

Back then, the Zombie King had begun laying its plans from the final exam assessment, sending Phoenix and several Believers to ambush the students, then using the bodies to lock onto their location, even personally slipping its consciousness into Fangzhou and hiding inside the simulation pods to strike at Fu Qing. That entire chain of schemes had finally reached the moment where repayment could be demanded.

It had even delivered leverage straight into Fu Qing’s hands.

Tian Xuejun’s eyes lit up at once. “Go check it. Now.”

Someone beside her answered briskly and hurried out of the conference room, returning moments later with news.

“I pulled the Fire Department’s dispatch records and the ambulance deployment logs. In the 5/17 major urban-village fire incident, the first receiving hospital was First Hospital, the closest one. Later, some patients were transferred to Ruian Burn Specialty Hospital. Among them, there’s a twenty-eight-year-old female patient who matches the description. She was recorded as dying late at night one week after admission. That same night, a patient’s family member suddenly stormed into the ICU with a knife and stabbed two on-duty doctors and nurses to death. Three more were severely injured.”

He glanced down at the record in his hand and continued rapidly. “The hospital fell into chaos trying to treat the injured staff, and the death record for that female patient was added later.”

In other words, the record and the handling of the body afterward were very likely falsified.

And anyone who could testify was either dead or badly injured. If the night was mentioned again, what people would remember would be the terror of the attack. The dead patient would barely register.

“As for the family member who carried out the stabbing,” the investigator added, “according to the person in charge, they had already reached a settlement with the hospital earlier that day. No one knows why, just a few hours later, he suddenly snapped.”

The students traded a look. Su Huaijin said, “That was probably the Zombie King. It’s very good at stirring up people’s emotions.”

Tian Xuejun nodded, but the technical specialist suddenly frowned. “You said she had extensive burns. What about her face?”

Before Fu Qing could respond, the investigator said, “According to the materials we received, her face was also severely burned. These are photos taken by the hospital at the time.”

He opened a file on his laptop. The moment it appeared on screen, people who caught a glimpse nearby gasped, some unable to look directly.

They simply could not imagine how someone burned that badly could have survived.

The technician frowned deeply. “That makes things tricky. In the past, once we had her identity, if she used public transport or shopped, we could locate her immediately. But now, with most social activity halted, finding people through surveillance depends mainly on facial recognition. With extensive facial burns, recognition success rates will drop sharply.”

“And in these photos, her original features are destroyed, and the wounds haven’t healed yet. With scarring and contracture likely after healing, it’s hard to use treatment-period images to simulate what she looks like now.”

He looked at Fu Qing again. “And you said she usually wears a hat. That makes it even harder.”

Fu Qing had anticipated the complications. She recalled some explanations she’d read online. “As far as I know, besides facial recognition, there are alternative identification methods. Gait analysis, ear-shape recognition, things like that.”

“Yes, ear recognition can reach over sixty percent accuracy,” the technician said hesitantly. “But in that photo, her ear is burned too…”

“If the burned part later regrew, wouldn’t that still be usable as an identifying feature?” Fu Qing asked.

“But if it regrew, then her old ID photo in our database wouldn’t be a useful reference,” the technician replied quickly. “We’d need a new photo taken after healing. And if she never shows her face or her ears, we still won’t be able to find her.”

“That’s fine. One more layer of hope is still hope.” Fu Qing waved it off. “As for the reference you need… I don’t have recent photos, but I do have a piece of her ear. Can you analyze using that?”

Everyone, including the technician, fell silent.

For a moment, they suspected they’d misheard.

Tian Xuejun stared blankly and asked it outright.

Fu Qing repeated patiently, “I have a piece of her ear. Last time we fought, I shaved it off.”

This was when Lu Yan and Hao Zhenye’s sharp eyes really deserved praise. A thin sliver like that, and they still managed to find it in a pitch-black forest and bring it back.

Fu Qing had already observed that the Zombie King’s ability could regenerate Phoenix’s flesh, but regrown parts would look drastically different from the original. It still functioned, but it would not look quite normal.

So Phoenix’s fingerprints and ear structure were likely very different now compared to before the injury.

However, if newly regrown flesh was injured again, then after it healed, it would not change all over again.

The proof was the hands Lu Yan had picked up. They all looked exactly the same.

The technician’s jaw nearly hit the table. “But if her ear was cut off, then we… we…”

Then what are we even analyzing?

Fu Qing thought for a couple seconds and realized she’d skipped a key detail. “Sorry, I forgot to mention: she was granted flesh-regeneration. Even if it’s cut off, it’ll grow back, so don’t worry.”

Seeing how intense their reactions were, she swallowed what she was about to add, namely that she also had several right hands that could be used for fingerprint analysis.

For now, fingerprints weren’t especially useful. Better not to shock them further.

As for gait analysis, it required walking footage. Translated on Hololo novels. Phoenix had been elusive ever since being recruited, and even if they found older surveillance clips, infection might have altered her gait, making the footage unreliable. So it was set aside.

Fu Qing did know a place where surveillance might once have captured Phoenix: the foot of the mountain where she had dumped a body. But that was nearly a year ago, and scenic-area surveillance typically kept footage only ninety days. The retention window had long passed.

So ear recognition became their only viable route.

On the spot, the technician made a call to summon people to Fangzhou to retrieve the ear. While waiting, he spoke with open excitement. “If we combine ear recognition with her pre-injury facial data, plus height and body-type parameters, we can push accuracy above eighty percent. The remaining cases can be handled through manual review. At that stage, the number of technicians required becomes very small.”

“Don’t worry. Unless she never goes outside or never takes off her hat, we’ll find her sooner or later.” He patted his chest, confident.

His training demanded constant calm, which was why he’d poured cold water on everyone’s ideas earlier. But now that a workable method existed, he was more excited than anyone, and even Tian Xuejun couldn’t help showing a faint smile.

When someone arrived with an insulated container, the technician, despite his fear of human remains, happily followed along to Fangzhou.

With the meeting over, the Fangzhou group and Bai Xianglei prepared to get in their vehicles and return to the school, but Tian Xuejun suddenly called out to stop them.

“Principal Fu Qing, you should have received the notice, right? After six p.m., natural gas will be fully shut off.”

She worried Fu Qing had been too busy these past two days to check announcements.

Natural gas was flammable and explosive and relied heavily on routine maintenance. With everyone sheltering at home, it could become a major safety risk.

So after six p.m., supply would be cut as an emergency measure. Only certain critical facilities would retain independent gas systems.

Fu Qing responded briefly, “I’ve already received the notice. Fangzhou has relied on underground biogas tanks and solar power for a long time, so there’s no need to worry.”

Tian Xuejun nodded. “Good. Besides gas, civilian networks will probably be cut within half a month. Make sure you’re prepared.”

She felt Fu Qing and the others likely didn’t need the reminder.

A network collapse was unavoidable. Even if they wanted to prevent it, without enough maintenance personnel, urban networks would degrade step by step until only military networks remained.

In addition, starting at noon today, the country had begun implementing electricity and water rationing. And it wasn’t a minor reduction. Daily power was cut to one hour, water flow reduced to the minimum, all to extend supply for as long as possible.

Hearing this, Song Rushuang and the others felt their hearts sink.

Living in Fangzhou, with wristbands enabling communication, losing internet and power would not affect them much. But for everyone outside Fangzhou, life was about to change completely.

This was only the second day after the apocalypse began.

₊˚.🎧📓✩

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