Chapter 59 Survival in the Wilderness
Unlike ordinary universities, Fangzhou's final exams span a long period and are physically demanding, all crammed into a week. This is a huge drain on both physical and mental strength, leaving students feeling completely exhausted after finally completing them.
After all the exams were over, the campus was quiet for two whole days. Even the cafeteria at mealtimes was incredibly quiet with hardly anyone talking. Everyone was eating with blank stares, and some people were chewing their food with their mouths full, but their chewing became slower and slower. Suddenly, they would jolt awake, clearly on the verge of falling asleep.
After a weekend of rest, everyone was fully recharged.
Fangzhou's make-up exams are all scheduled after the holiday. Those who need to take the make-up exams must return to school a week in advance. So after the final exams, there is nothing to do on campus for the time being.
Some students were packing their luggage, some were starting to book extra training sessions on simulated zombies, and some out-of-town students were going to the mall together to buy local specialties of S City. They had clearly entered the festive atmosphere of the Chinese New Year ahead of time.
Amidst the bustling activity, everyone's bracelets suddenly vibrated simultaneously.
[Announcement to all: Please assemble on the playground one hour from now to participate in the school-wide unified assessment. Those who are late or absent will have their participation points deducted.]
Students: "?"
Students doing a big shopping spree in the city center: "???"
Was it really that sudden?!
The salespeople, who were still trying to sell their products, suddenly saw the little student who had just been standing in front of them vanish in an instant.
In the distance, all that could be seen was a figure carrying large and small bags, fleeing in panic.
Salesperson: "..."
She rubbed her eyes and muttered, "Is this... the city track and field team coming out to buy New Year's goods...?"
*
An hour later, everyone gathered on the playground.
Because there was no time to change clothes, everyone was wearing whatever they could find. When Fu Qing came over, she immediately saw several classmates wearing big floral Northeast-style jackets and mink coats, standing tall and proud in the line. Next to them were several girls in short skirts, trench coats, and long boots, rubbing their hands and trembling.
At first glance, it doesn't look like a season at all.
Hmm... the freshman's fashion sense is impeccable.
She turned her gaze away, passing by the students who, as soon as the holiday started, immediately let loose and danced wildly, and walked onto the platform in front of the playground.
Fu Qing adjusted the microphone and, in the complete silence, said out of the blue, "Do you see the Western Hills behind us?"
All the heads in the audience turned around at once, then turned back.
nod.
"Yes, the test content is that you must go to Xishan for 24 hours without any food or water, only carrying a tent and a simple tool bag. Teams are allowed, but the number of people in a team cannot exceed 4."
The entire audience erupted in uproar.
Fu Qing: "You have five minutes to go back to your dorm and change out of your fur coats."
The uproar vanished in less than half a minute, leaving the entire playground spotless except for a few lost shoes lying forlornly on the ground, left behind by some unlucky soul.
Fu Qing was quite satisfied with this.
After a semester, the people of Fangzhou seemed to have completely adapted to the militarized lifestyle.
She turned her gaze to the snow-covered mountain peaks in the distance.
During the week of final exams, Fu Qing made a special trip to Xishan, bringing a tent. He spent two days exploring almost the entire exam area, confirming that there were no dangerous wild animals before officially designating it as the exam location.
This time, the main focus is on testing the students' survival skills.
Winter is the most difficult season in the post-apocalyptic world. Edible plants and animals decrease, days shorten, and the weather is terrible, especially in northern cities. In the first year after the apocalypse, countless people die because they don't have enough fuel.
With only one winter left before the end of the world, she wanted to make the most of the time to help her students accumulate some experience in dealing with winter.
Five minutes later, everyone was ready to go.
They had to hike for about an hour to reach the foot of the mountain, where they would part ways.
Calculating the time, they arrived at around 5 p.m., giving them more than an hour to find a suitable location to set up their tent.
The timing was perfect.
"For this assessment, twenty additional zombies will be released into the mountains. These are all mid-level zombies, capable of climbing and possessing night vision. For each zombie killed, all participants in the hunt will receive a reward of 5 points."
"There are no further rules. Successfully completing 24 hours means the exam is over. Please note that this is not a full simulation; this is the real world."
Fu Qing briefly explained the rules, only emphasizing the last few words.
Everyone's expressions tightened, and they answered in unison, "Yes."
Fu Qing nodded, indicating that they could set off.
The students' wristbands have a map to ensure they can reach their destination smoothly even without a teacher leading the way. However, the map function will be temporarily offline after entering Xishan until the end of the assessment.
The large group left the school in a grand procession. After half a year of training, everyone had undergone a complete transformation, the most obvious change being in their eyes.
Along the way, passersby couldn't help but turn their heads to look.
Fu Qing wasn't worried about any problems arising from letting the students go to Xishan alone. The two thousand-plus people gathered together were comparable to a somewhat immature army. Before rushing to proctor the exam, she had other things to do.
She jumped off the platform, where six teachers who had been called in advance were standing in a corner of the playground.
“More than two thousand people are taking the exam off-campus. I can’t manage it all by myself; I need at least three invigilators to help,” Fu Qing said. “Each person who signs up will pay 5 yuan to the teaching point as an invigilator. Are there any volunteers?”
It's not a lie to say that there aren't enough proctors. Before, on campus, Fu Qing could use the system to monitor everyone's movements, but outside the school, the system could only help locate them, but could no longer find out what the students were doing.
In case of an emergency, she will need someone to help her.
As for why we don't use full simulation, firstly, using simulation props all the time can easily confuse people with the boundary between virtual and reality; secondly, the West Mountain is rich in resources and close to the school, so familiarizing ourselves with its terrain in advance can only benefit everyone.
The third point... is also to save points.
As soon as she finished speaking, Lu Yan was about to raise his hand.
Fu Qing pressed his palm down lightly, politely gesturing for him to put his hand down: "The school doctor must accompany the team; you don't have the opportunity to volunteer."
Lu Yan: "...?"
Having saved another 5 points, the thrifty and hardworking Fu Qing looked at the others with satisfaction.
Although teachers are not legally allowed to leave the school according to system regulations, Fu Qing could easily exploit a loophole by transferring each teacher to a different teaching location and allowing them to use the location's "one-hour leave from school" function to take them away from the school.
Grandma Liu definitely couldn't go; she was just there to join in the fun. Bai Tang didn't like going out and wasn't interested in the proctoring fee, which was equivalent to five months of her salary.
Zhao Yunxiao was the most indecisive. Although he coveted the five-hour opportunity to go out, he felt that with his fragile little body, let alone proctoring for a whole day and night, he might even be sent away after just one night in the mountains in winter. So he had to regretfully refuse.
In the end, only Hao Zhenye volunteered.
Xu Mingyue glanced at the remaining elderly, weak, sick, and disabled people and raised her hand indifferently.
With the three candidates finalized, Fu Qing told them to pack up and set off in half an hour.
*
The four proctors arrived in their car around the same time as the students.
For convenience, Fu Qing had the system upload the students' locations to the three teachers' wristbands. On the screen, countless blue dots were scattered into the vast mountains and forests, like grains of sand sinking into the sea, and in the blink of an eye, they were quite far apart.
Xishan is actually a mountain range stretching over 400 square kilometers. Only a portion of it has been developed into scenic areas and resorts. The part near Fangzhou is mostly undeveloped wild mountains, except for a few houses at the foot of the mountain.
Fortunately, Xishan is not very high and there are no large wild animals around. After the apocalypse, even many ordinary people who lacked mountain climbing experience dared to venture into the mountains, which provided livelihoods for countless desperate citizens.
The students' exam scope is defined by Fuqing and will not go too deep. Once they exceed the safe range, the wristband will sound an alarm to remind them to return.
With the system in place, things are undeniably easy.
Fu Qing parked the car in the courtyard of an abandoned house and led the three of them up the mountain on foot.
After walking for about an hour, Xu Mingyue found a suitable campsite and asked Lu Yan and Hao Zhenye to set up the tents together. With two men and two women, two tents were just enough.
“This location is close to the water source, and many people will probably set up camp along the upstream and downstream banks, which will also make it convenient to pick up students,” Xu Mingyue explained.
Unlike students, teachers are allowed to bring their own food and water. When Hao Zhenye returned after setting up his tent, he saw that Xu Mingyue had already set up a large pot on the campfire. After the water boiled, she threw in a packet of hot pot base, then skillfully pulled out a bunch of fancy beef and mutton rolls from her backpack and put them into the pot without blinking. Finally, she threw in three pieces of flatbread.
She filled the large pot to the brim, leaving no gaps, and before long, the enticing aroma of the hot pot spread with the night breeze.
If the students, who were hungry and catching wild rabbits all over the mountains, heard this, Hao Zhenye always felt that something unethical or disrespectful to their teacher would happen.
He looked at the compressed biscuits in his bag again and suddenly realized they didn't taste good at all.
"Would you like something to eat?" Xu Mingyue warmly greeted her colleague.
Hao Zhenye hesitated for a second, then looked at Fu Qing and Lu Yan.
Lu Yan seemed to have a backpack full of medical supplies, and he was sorting gauze and iodine into different categories for future use.
Hao Zhenye secretly peeked into his backpack and found that there was no space left to put food.
Looking at Fu Qing, she didn't have a backpack at all. She had just tried to steal some undercooked meatballs and was slapped on the hand by Xu Mingyue. Now she was sitting cross-legged by the campfire, looking bored, like a hungry child waiting to be fed.
It seems that Xu Mingyue took all the food for the three of them.
In this situation... having another mouth to feed seems like too much of a burden.
Xu Mingyue noticed Hao Zhenye's worry and smiled, "It's alright, we've always divided the work like this. I brought a lot of food, the three of us can't finish it all, you should come too."
Hao Zhenye hesitated for a moment, then thanked them and sat down with the three of them around the fire.
None of the survivors of the apocalypse ate slowly; the food in the pot was quickly devoured by the four of them as soon as it was cooked.
The meal was finished in five minutes, but Hao Zhenye still felt unsatisfied. After cleaning up his dishes, he looked at the three of them and felt awkward.
Invigilation work isn't actually that difficult. It's similar to being an invigilator in a regular school. Most of the time, you just sit there, waiting for your wristband to send out an alarm for a student to call for help.
Daydreaming is agonizing enough, but daydreaming with unfamiliar people is even more agonizing.
Hao Zhenye was restless. Considering that he had just eaten someone else's food, it seemed inappropriate to leave directly as usual. After much deliberation, he finally decided to find a topic to chat about.
He thought for a moment, then secretly took out the cell phone that Fu Qing had bought for the teachers and began searching for "100 topics to break the ice at a party".
When they finally found a suitable one and looked up to speak, there was no one there anymore.
He turned his head in confusion and found Xu Mingyue wearing a headband flashlight while knitting.
Hao Zhenye: "?"
He was amazed by Xu Mingyue's foresight.
Beside her, Fu Qing was already asleep, with a small blanket covering her stomach. Xu Mingyue would knit for a while and then turn around to tuck the blanket around her.
Hao Zhenye could clearly see a sense of compassion in that gesture.
Noticing Hao Zhenye's gaze, Xu Mingyue mistakenly thought he was looking for the missing Lu Yan, and explained in a low voice, "There was an emergency notification just now. A student sprained his ankle, and he went to carry him."
"Okay, okay." Hao Zhenye sat back down numbly, deciding to kill the rest of the evening with a match-3 game.
*
If the other three proctors were there to deal with emergencies like wild animal sightings, and most of the time they could just sit and wait, and even take a nap in between, then Lu Yan was simply too busy to even have time to breathe.
Throughout the entire night, he spent less than five minutes in total sitting down to rest.
The first time Fu Qing helped a student who had sprained his ankle after falling into a ditch while chasing a wild rabbit back to school, Fu Qing was already asleep.
He gave the boy some basic treatment, telling him to wait in the teachers' tent until the assessment was over, and then they would all go back together.
After rescuing four students who had been poisoned by their teammates' terrible cooking, Fu Qing turned over and was still asleep.
He prescribed medicine for the four people and asked them to reflect on their cooking skills while still savoring the aftertaste of the hot pot.
The third time, when he dragged a dazed student back with a rope, Fu Qing finally woke up and was leisurely playing cards with Xu Mingyue, Hao Zhenye, and the student who had sprained his ankle, wrapped in a small blanket.
Lu Yan: "..."
He was completely baffled: "Why does it seem like everyone here is here for camping, while I'm the only one here for training in the wilderness?"
Fu Qing played her last card, finishing the game perfectly. She looked up and saw Lu Yan leading a boy who was tied up. She was stunned for a moment: "Why did you go out... and bring someone back with you?"
The boy's eyes were unfocused, and he didn't react even when they reached the campsite. He kept staring at a certain point with his mouth wide open, clearly indicating that he was in a somewhat abnormal mental state.
Fu Qing observed him, his expression unconsciously becoming serious. He quickly stood up to check on the situation: "What's wrong with him?"
“Oh, him.” Lu Yan gripped the end of the rope and said nonchalantly, “I don’t know what he ate, but he insisted that he saw his great-grandmother and Patrick Star holding hands and dancing around the campfire, and he wanted to join in, so I had no choice but to tie him up.”
Fu Qing: "..."
"Pfft!" Xu Mingyue spat out a mouthful of coffee.
Lu Yan complained, "I just don't understand, where did he find these poisonous mushrooms in this season?"
Xu Mingyue laughed until she coughed. After finally stopping, she asked Guan Fuqing for the car keys: "I'd better take him to the hospital. He can't stay with us on the mountain in this condition."
“You are all more useful, unlike me, I have nothing to do after setting up the tent. You stay here and I will come back when his condition stabilizes.”
Fu Qing had no objections. After Xu Mingyue led the boy away, she noticed Lu Yan standing there, lost in thought.
"What’s wrong with you?"
Lu Yan frowned slightly as he looked at the dark mountains: "I just feel like something's not quite right."
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