Chapter 62 Join Us

Ding ding ding!

Ding ding ding!

Almost every few minutes, a system notification would urgently sound.

System: [Student [Fan Xingye] has sent a distress signal from the southeast, 482 meters away from you in a straight line. Click to view specific coordinates and notes.]

System: [Student [Xu Chi] has sent a distress signal from due west. You are 237 meters away as the crow flies. Click to view specific coordinates and notes.]

System: [Student [Ke Xinyi] sent a distress signal from the due west direction... The other party did not leave a note...]

Fu Qing's chat panel was filled with SOS messages from students.

Many of them probably encountered the same mutant, but the fact that they were all calling for help at the same time is enough to show how urgent the situation was.

Fu Qing organized the information and marked the locations on the map with the most eye-catching gold dots.

Preliminary estimates suggest that at least six or seven mutants were rampaging through the Western Hills at this time.

With the school's information network shared, she quickly saw the nearby blue dots gradually closing in on the golden dots, vaguely forming an encirclement.

The students, either fearless like newborn calves or genuinely worried about their classmates' safety, took advantage of their numbers and rushed towards the mutant one after another.

Fu Qing ordered the outer teams to remain in place to prevent any gaps in the encirclement, and also mobilized the simulated zombies to rush to areas where the teachers could not provide timely support.

A real-time battle was transformed into a strategy game.

Just a few minutes later.

System: [Student [Sun Wei] has ended the distress signal. Teacher [Lu Yan] has arrived at the scene. The infected person committed suicide after being subdued. Twenty tubes of blood samples were collected before the death. No students were injured.]

System: [Student [Wang Huai] has stopped sending distress signals. Teacher [Hao Zhenye] has arrived at the scene. The infected person struggled fiercely and died during the fight. Two students were injured and need to be taken to the hospital.]

System: [Student [Fan Xingye] has deactivated the distress signal. Three realistic zombies arrived at the scene. During the struggle, the infected person's vital organs were torn apart, resulting in fatal injuries. The student was injured but does not require medical attention.]

System: [Students [Ke Xinyi] and [Xu Chi] have stopped sending distress signals. Nearby students are rushing to their aid. The infected person is exhausted and has escaped. The chase is ongoing...]

As reinforcements arrived one after another, news of the crisis being averted gradually came in.

The system reported smoothly, emitting a joyful buzzing sound.

The battles in various places were so intense that its information tentacles were divided into thousands and spread throughout the wristbands of students and teachers, busily manipulating and transmitting information, so much so that it did not even notice that the host had been wandering in a fixed area since the very beginning.

Having memorized the surrounding terrain, Fu Qing stopped decisively, found a tree, and leaned against it with his arms crossed.

The system paused for a moment, then hesitated: "[...Host?]"

At first, Fu Qing couldn't quite accept the presence of an extra voice in her head that could hear her thoughts.

However, after discovering that the system was not inherently bad and had even done its best to help her, Fu Qing's resistance to it lessened somewhat. Occasionally, when she was bored, she would chat with it to pass the time.

"Don't you think things are going too smoothly?" Fu Qing thought to herself. "I feel like they're going too smoothly."

The system wondered: "Isn't this a sign of the students' progress?"

It detailed: "These infected are even more powerful than the previously evolved special zombies. Not only do they possess intelligence, but their evolved forms and attack methods are also far more unpredictable. In a post-apocalyptic world, countless people would die at their hands. The fact that the students have survived them without serious injury or death must be a testament to the effectiveness of their six months of training."

[Moreover, there were timely reinforcements from teachers and realistic zombies.]

The system is very optimistic.

But then it suddenly realized that Fu Qing had not yet gone to support any team.

She simply kept mobilizing the simulated zombies and students, and had Lu Yan and Hao Zhenye deal with most of the mutants.

"Haven't you realized it yet?" Fu Qing said helplessly.

The system suddenly woke up, opened the map, and found that a vast empty area had formed around Fu Qing.

There was no light at all—students, teachers, simulated zombies, or mutants alike had all, for various reasons, actively or passively, stayed away from this place.

"What's going on?" it asked in astonishment.

Fu Qing straightened up and patted the dust off his clothes.

"I've been wondering why the person hiding in the tree didn't attack Lu Yan and the poisoned student."

“One of them was tied up and disoriented, while the other was mostly focused on caring for the patient. Choosing this moment to launch a sneak attack would make it easy for them to succeed. If they were fast enough, they could even escape unscathed before we arrived.”

"But that person didn't make a move, and didn't even move the whole time. Even someone as alert as Lu Yan only vaguely sensed something was wrong. Compared to those people who are jumping around in the woods now, they are obviously overly cautious."

"So I guess the person hiding in the tree wasn't really targeting the passing teachers and students, but rather the people in the nearby camp."

The mutants were not attacking the students indiscriminately; on the contrary, Fu Qing was trying to trap them in an encirclement, and they were also deliberately diverting all support away from Fu Qing.

Behind both sides is a commander, but Fu Qing is in the open, while the other side is in the shadows.

So she chose to go along with their plan and lure out the person hiding in the shadows.

The cold night was long, and although the system had no senses, it felt the atmosphere was chilly.

The rustling sound of fabric rubbing came from the dark jungle. Fu Qing, as if waiting for a long time, calmly turned his head.

The forest was so dense that the snow reflected the moonlight, and the newcomer, wearing a bright red hood, was the only bright spot in the deep black and snow-white landscape.

Fu Qing raised an eyebrow in slight surprise at the flamboyant and ostentatious attire, just as the other person abruptly looked up.

Upon meeting eye contact, even the system's noisy electrical hum momentarily went haywire.

From her cheeks to her neck, all the exposed skin was covered with jagged, gruesome burn scars. Her entire face was wrinkled and bare, like the bark of an old tree, devoid of any hair, and her nose was practically just two holes. Only her lips were painted with bright red lipstick, which stretched exaggeratedly from the corners of her mouth to the sides.

Anyone could see that she had survived a fire that could kill. To Fu Qing, the marks were less like scars and more like lost flesh and blood growing back from her withered body, forming rugged ravines resembling those created by tectonic plate collisions.

The last time she appeared, the woman almost covered her entire body. The elderly woman who witnessed the incident only remembered the scar on the back of her left hand. Fu Qing has been using this clue to have Fang Zhou and his group search for her.

But now it seems that it was only a small part of the scars covering her body.

Only the smooth, delicate skin on her right hand revealed that she was at most in her twenties or thirties.

The woman smiled, her clown-like split lips widening: "I've finally met you."

finally.

Fu Qing remained calm: "You really want to see me?"

"Hmm," the woman said, her tone gentle but her voice rough and unpleasant, whether from mutation like a skeleton or damage to her vocal cords caused by the fire.

However, judging from her appearance alone, she was different from the other mutants who appeared tonight, and there was not even any trace of her becoming a zombie.

"I've been looking for you ever since I retrieved the skeleton's body."

Fu Qing blurted out a sarcastic remark in his mind: "That guy wearing the skull mask is actually called Skull."

Fu Qing asked, "Why are you looking for me?"

The Western Hills are not peaceful tonight. Three mutants have died, and many more are chasing and fighting in the forest. The one who started all this is as peaceful as if he just wanted to have a chat with Fu Qing.

“Someone has asked me to come see you, and I am happy to have the opportunity to fulfill His request. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a suitable opportunity for the past few months.”

"Fortunately, you finally showed up tonight, and I finally have the chance to ask you on His behalf."

The woman looked at her, then reached out her hand to Fu Qing with anticipation: "A new era is coming. Haven't you ever thought about joining us?"

Fu Qing looked down, and the woman extended her good hand.

She ignored the woman's question, turning her head towards the forest on one side. The chaotic beams of light from the powerful flashlights intertwined, piercing the night sky like a late-night light show.

"Another one died." Fu Qing tilted his head, listened for a moment, then smiled and looked away. "Did you hear its scream?"

In fact, Fu Qing didn't hear anything because he was too far away; it was the system that sent the student's message.

But she believed that with the mutants' keen hearing, they wouldn't miss the dying screams of their kind.

The woman's breathing suddenly quickened, and after a pause, she seemed to have controlled her emotions: "All these sacrifices are worth it to get you."

“Join us! If you’re willing, you’ll have a place in the new world that’s about to arrive.” Her eyes were fervent.

Fu Qing's expression finally changed. She lowered her eyes, seemingly thinking of something, and when she looked up again, her aura was completely different.

She asked softly, "Someone once said that I lived three months longer than the last of my kind on Earth. Do you know what I was thinking during those three months?"

The feigned calm and indifference faded, leaving only coldness and cruelty in Fu Qing's expression. She remained motionless: "I was thinking, if time could turn back, and I could meet that woman who believed in zombies again, even if I only had a little strength left, I would kill her and drag her down to hell with me."

"..." The woman couldn't believe it. "You're going to reject me?"

She suddenly laughed strangely: "You still want to kill me, but you can't."

Fu Qing made a move.

Sensing something was wrong, the woman quickly retreated, her body, which had been indistinguishable from a normal human, bursting with astonishing speed, blurring into a blur in the blink of an eye.

But Fu Qing's knife was faster than hers.

The woman felt a chill on her hand, and something flew into the air.

That was her only intact hand.

The woman's wrist was marked with a clean cut, bones, tendons, and flesh all severed, blood gushing out, blurring her vision with crimson, and her expression instantly twisted into one of shock and rage.

She wanted to distance herself, but Fu Qing didn't give her that opportunity.

The scenery before her eyes reversed, and in a dizzying moment, she heard a loud thud on her back as Fu Qing pressed her to the ground.

"you……"

The dagger pierced her eye socket, shattering her brain, and the woman's voice came to an abrupt halt.

Her expression was blank, and she lay on her back in a starfish position on the ground, where countless wriggling buds suddenly sprouted from her severed wrist.

They squeezed and fought to grow, repairing the missing limbs almost instantly; however, the skin of that hand was no longer as smooth as before.

"See, I told you so, didn't I?" The woman, with a dagger still stuck in her face, lay on the ground, looking up at Fu Qing. A strange tenderness appeared on her hideous face. "You can't kill me. This is a miracle sent by the Lord."