Chapter 174: Dead Siege Practice (XI)
…
Even though they knew that the student union was blatantly cheating, 606 was unable to refute it.
The fact that they were able to successfully circumvent the rules proved that their "trauma" was genuine. It even made one suspect that they wouldn't hesitate to scatter their teammates' ashes if they could just refuse Tang Xinjue's call.
"I'm sorry to hear this news." Tang Xinjue quickly caught up with the situation and said sincerely, "If Xiao Ming's injuries are too serious, you can temporarily send him to our dormitory for care."
Lily was stunned: "Your dormitory has... first aid facilities?"
Tang Xin Jue looked at the toilet plunger and said, "It may not be first aid, but it may be possible to handle the aftermath with one click."
A student council-level ghost, I haven’t even tasted the toilet plunger yet.
Lily: “…No, thank you!”
The radio station hung up hastily, announcing the end of today's regular source of information.
"It's a bit of a pity, but it also means that they really can't reveal any more." Tang Xinjue didn't feel much regret.
After all, fleecing the sheep does not mean killing them all, so it is not advisable to just pull out all the sheep.
Perhaps to silence the crowd, the Student Union issued three messages in one breath today for the first time:
The second round of mutations has concluded, affecting all infected individuals, including those who haven't fully mutated. The mutations are suspected to have increased the strength and speed of those infected.
Second, the number of people who are fully infected has reached 40% of the total population on campus, while the number of people who are uninfected is less than 15%.
3. Off-campus support will arrive at noon on the third day, and some supplies will be randomly distributed by airdrop.
"Support is finally here!" Yu Wei cheered up and said eagerly, "I wonder if we can apply to be rescued?"
"You're overthinking it." Zhang You ruthlessly extinguished the girl's fantasy: "Even this material, whether we can get it is still unknown."
The airdrop only happens once a day, on a first-come, first-served basis. It happens when all students are eagerly awaiting it, and anyone who tries to pick it up will naturally be exposed to countless eyes.
There are too many people and too little food, so a fight is inevitable.
"Fortunately, we are not short of supplies." Guo Guo breathed a sigh of relief and stuffed another biscuit into his mouth.
It was lunchtime. After yesterday's busy schedule, everyone was so hungry they could eat a whole cow. Even Tang Xinjue, who had the least appetite, quickly devoured three bags of bread and a bottle of water.
There was no doubt that the students who had been running around all day yesterday would be even more tired and hungry, not to mention that they did not have the food reserves of 606. How these people would find food to fill their stomachs was an urgent problem.
Thinking of this, Guo Guo realized: "No wonder so many people rushed to the student base yesterday afternoon."
If the dormitory is out of food, the supermarket outside has been cleared out, and there is no way to risk wandering around the campus looking for food, the only way to avoid starvation is to go to the stronghold and try your luck.
According to what she and Yu Wei recorded yesterday, there are at least three groups of student strongholds in the dormitory area, located in three different directions.
A stronghold that can accommodate many people cannot be set up in an ordinary dormitory or a remote high-rise building. It must be a location that is sparsely populated and easy to defend and difficult to attack at the beginning.
After checking the map, they found that they were most likely located in the East Gate Canteen, the Infirmary, and the Student Affairs Management Center, respectively.
Zhang You once raised a question: "According to common sense, the infirmary is likely to be a zombie-infested area. How can we establish a stronghold?"
When the virus first leaked and the news had not yet been passed on, infected students who found any abnormalities in their bodies would definitely go to the infirmary for consultation or treatment as soon as possible.
Tang Xin Jue: "The infirmary doesn't open until 9 a.m., but the virus has already spread throughout the school before 9 a.m."
She pulled up another group chat from a few days ago, where several students were complaining about the clinic's short hours. They hinted at several medication issues and that it was a frequent visitor to the campus wall. Aside from student assistants working part-time, few students went there these days.
"The same goes for the East Gate Canteen."
Tang Xin Jue identified several common features of the possible locations: late opening hours, usually deserted, and some students possessing the keys to open the door.
"If it's a cafeteria, there might be food ingredients in the kitchen, medicine for injuries in the infirmary...what does the Student Affairs Management Center have?" Guo Guo was very confused about the future of these strongholds.
"No, no, no." Yu Wei shook her head like a rattle. "I went into the kitchen of one of the cafeterias, and there was not a single bite of food in there. The food buckets and freezers looked like they had been emptied out. They were cleaner than my face."
"Eh?" Yu Wei was halfway through her rambling when she suddenly realized something: "Could it be that the people who established the base took away the food?"
Tang Xinjue's mind moved, and he looked up and said, "I remember that besides the cafeteria, you also went to the supermarket."
Yu Wei nodded vigorously. "Not just one, I found three stores I sneaked into: two chains, a milk tea shop, and a breakfast shop..."
"Do you remember the scenes inside these supermarkets? Are there any similarities?"
The girl thought for a moment and said, "The food shelves are all empty?"
"How about more details?"
Yu Wei frowned and pondered, then finally clapped her hands: "I figured it out! Some stores are so neatly empty!"
She tried to describe it: "You know what I mean? Some stores have extremely messy shelves. A lot of unused items have been taken away, and the shelves have fallen over. But in some stores, all the shelves are neatly clean and empty, as if everything was taken away in one go..."
Others quickly found the key point from Yu Wei's description:
If many groups of people rush into the supermarket to grab things, and each person can only take a limited amount, coupled with the hurried and nervous mood, the store will be in chaos and goods will fall all over the floor.
But if a group of people buy out all the goods in the supermarket at the beginning, the people behind them will have nothing to take and will not waste time, and the store will appear both neat and empty.
"These people are numerous, well-organized, and can get ahead of everyone else."
Once the details are laid out, the answer becomes obvious:
Tang Xin Jue: "They are most likely the same people who established the student base."
In other words, the student base was not hastily built yesterday at noon - some students who learned the news in advance did not evacuate, but stayed in the school to stockpile supplies in advance, which led to the current base.
"Could they be related to the lab?"
Guo Guo made a bold guess.
"But if that's the case, why didn't they merge into one stronghold? Instead, they split into three? Do these strongholds know each other?"
Zhang You found another logical puzzle.
When it was Zheng Wanqing's turn, she opened her mouth but couldn't think of anything to ask for a moment, so she simply said, "If all these people turned into zombies, could we defeat them?"
“…”
Tang Xinjue said calmly, "Obviously, we don't know the answers to these questions."
If they want to know everything, the method is very simple: either they go out, or the student base comes over.
After a while, Tang Xin Jue made the final decision:
"wait."
There were tens of thousands of students in the dormitory area, so even if the survival rate was less than 15%, there would still be more than a thousand people. As time went by, these people would continue to pour into the student base.
How much food is needed to feed more than a thousand people for five days?
"There should be movement in the dormitory area by tomorrow at the latest, or today at the earliest."
Tang Xin Jue looked at the closest "stronghold" to Building 33 on the map—the infirmary. It was less than 50 meters away, a three-story building hidden between two dormitory buildings. From the balcony of Room 606, all he could see was a small path leading to a side door, obscured by greenery.
A sparrow suddenly jumped out from the nearby grass, but before it could flap its wings and take off, it was grabbed by a bloody hand and dragged into the dense grass.
The sun was glaring and the campus was quiet.
Facts have proven that zombies are indeed inactive during the day.
Ever since the huge crowd banging on the door last night, the corridor has been quiet all day.
The corpses of zombies that were originally blocking the door seemed to have evaporated, leaving only blood on the ground and a few heads impaled on spikes.
The five of them cleaned up the area outside the door, and since no one was outside, they arrogantly threw garbage into the air. After throwing away the garbage, Yu Wei leaned over the balcony and vomited again.
In just 24 hours, he went from making egg tarts to making human head skewers. It was so stimulating that it almost exceeded his heart's capacity.
The people in 606 replaced the door with a new batch of spikes. This time they innovated and stretched two iron chains to the height of a person's head and nailed them through the walls on both sides, directly enclosing the area of several square meters around the door of 606.
There was still a row of iron spikes tied to the chain. A human could just bend over to get through, but a zombie could probably only step on the sacrificed heads of their companions to get through.
If there were enough materials and time, Tang Xinjue would even want to "decorate" the entire corridor.
Because they found that it was not only the "human smell" that attracted zombies, they would also follow each other's trails. So after nightfall, as long as one zombie climbed to the sixth floor, more zombies would follow.
"Oh, if only we could stop them from coming up." Guo Guo sighed, "But we can't cordon off the entire sixth floor..."
She sighed for a while, and when she turned around, she found that there was no sound around her.
"What's wrong with you? Why aren't you talking?"
After a few seconds of silence, Tang Xin Jue's eyes were blazing as he spoke:
"Who said we can't cordon off the sixth floor?"
Guo Guo: ? ?
Yu Wei, who had just returned from vomiting, responded: ???
Two hours later, Yu Wei drank half a bottle of water to calm herself down after seeing the new look of the corridor.
Using the limited materials at hand, Tang Xinjue forcibly created a corridor layout with a pit every five steps and a trap every ten steps. This corridor continued all the way to the lounge next to the stairwell. The glass balcony on all four sides was made into a large "zombie trap" - it was doused with toilet cleaner and water.
Inside was a zombie that had been bumped into during the transformation process. Then it began to repeatedly stand up—prostrate itself—stand up again—prostrate itself again…
Five minutes ago, Yu Wei would never have believed that she would feel sympathy for zombies.
She stumbled back to the dormitory and saw Guo Guo asking Tang Xin Jue worriedly:
"Speaking of which, this is our Nth time going out, will anything happen?"
After all, the copy had repeatedly warned them not to go out, but they had evolved from spreading their wings on the edge of danger to flying wildly on the road to letting themselves go, and even tried to kick the danger out two miles away.
Tang Xin Jue said seriously, "That depends on how the door is located."
"If the entire sixth floor belongs to 606, then at most we are just taking a walk around the house. How can we call it going out?"
