Chapter 46: Chapter 46: The Foreign Teacher Team at No. 1 High School
Ye Fan stared at the crystal-like object in Xu Haoran’s hand, dumbfounded.
The thing was crystal clear, like a carefully polished gemstone, emitting a faint glow.
Taking it from Xu Haoran’s hand, it wasn’t particularly hard, somewhat like rubber.
There seemed to be a faint fragrance emanating from it, making Ye Fan feel it might be edible.
"What is this?"
Ye Fan examined it closely, considering it might be an even more valuable item than Mutant Beast Meat.
Based on the post-apocalyptic movies and books he had seen, this could very well be the legendary Crystal Core.
However, movies are movies, and reality is reality. Since it was scavenged from a Mutant Beast, Ye Fan couldn’t bring himself to try eating it.
But he had a feeling, this was definitely something valuable.
"Keep searching, see if there are any of these in the brains of other Mutant Beasts or zombies."
The soldiers immediately sprang into action, knives glinting and gunstocks smashing down, cracking open skulls one by one.
Unfortunately, no such item was found in the brains of other Mutant Beasts.
The zombie brains were even more of a messy mush, yielding no discoveries.
"Could it be that only larger Mutant Beasts have the chance to generate such Crystals?"
Ye Fan looked around, carefully storing away the Crystal, along with the Mutant Beast Meat the soldiers had gathered.
From so many Mutant Beasts, he had collected nearly three thousand kilograms of Mutant Beast Meat. It should have been more, but much was incinerated or scavenged.
After collecting the Mutant Beast Meat, Ye Fan saw the distant Armored Zombie.
It was the Iron Armor taken down by Su Mo’s rocket launcher.
"Check this out!"
The head of the Armored Zombie was tough, but the Engineer came over and successfully opened it with some tools from his toolbox.
Inside, there was no Crystal either, just some faintly blue substance.
"The Armored Zombie didn’t generate a Crystal, but there were signs of Crystal formation. Other Mutated Zombies exhibited none, indicating not all Mutated Zombies can form Crystals."
With so many Mutant Beasts and zombies, only one Crystal was found, making Ye Fan increasingly aware of its value.
Regardless of its purpose, he decided to keep it for later research after resolving the current situation.
Once everything was settled here, he opened the radar. Within the radar’s scope, only some peripheral zones still contained Mutant Beasts and zombies; almost everything within a three-kilometer radius had been drawn here.
After all, the zoo wasn’t the city; no matter how many tourists there were, it couldn’t match city density.
Heading left led to the giant beast area, home to elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, pythons, and crocodiles.
Heading right was the West Tiger area, where the world’s largest cats roamed.
Ye Fan concluded these places would likely contain more Crystals, but for now, he didn’t want to venture there.
Firstly, his priority was rescuing his sister. Secondly, these places were too dangerous.
Even a single Mutant Gorilla was tough to deal with; who knew if these mutated giant beasts would become akin to Godzilla.
It’s better not to provoke unnecessary trouble; if Ye Fan couldn’t handle these beasts, other survivors had even slimmer chances. He could return when his strength grew.
He proceeded through the central area, crossing the primate section, gradually reaching the zoo’s outskirts.
Using the radar for navigation, progress was smooth, and with the team’s current strength, encountering some zombies and small Mutant Beasts posed no problem—merely opportunities for soldiers to gain Star Promotion experience.
Approaching the direction near Lingshui Middle School from the zoo, Ye Fan’s gold had accumulated to a count of 1000, all trophies from the journey.
"We’re about to exit the zoo; past the barbed wire and across a road lies the eastern grove of the Middle School."
The Engineer snipped the barbed wire, and Ye Fan crawled out through it.
The soldiers followed suit, traversing an abandoned flow of vehicles, finally reaching the school’s grove.
Ye Fan was all too familiar with this place; after all, he was once a student there, having lived in Coal City’s Lingshui Middle School for three years.
The teaching standard at Lingshui Middle School was exceptionally high. Back then, to ensure advancement rates, this school, as a pilot project, became the first in Mei City and even the entire region to introduce foreign teachers.
Teachers of foreign languages, physics, chemistry, and physical education—many were foreigners.
Eventually, this trend of expansion showed no signs of abating until superiors halted it, with foreign teachers occupying half the teaching staff.
However, those who had come stayed, forming a substantial power even in the school abroad.
During his school days, Ye Fan had even been disciplined by the head of discipline, Smith.
It was initially claimed to be for advanced management experience, but Ye Fan knew the white head of discipline, Smith, was a die-hard Western supremacist.
Upon hearing he was coming, Ye Fan even cursed, hoping Smith had turned into a zombie; he wondered if that had come true.
After making his way through the grove, once a dating spot for the school’s couples, he first checked the radar for any survivors in the area.
If there were survivors, he would go in; if not, frankly, there would be no reason to go.
Turning on the radar, the entire campus came into view.
Teaching buildings, playgrounds, cafeterias, libraries, dormitories—all had numerous zombies.
Everything was a sea of red dots, with a few scattered blue dots in the male dormitory, but Ye Fan knew there were no survivor-blue dots in the female dormitory area.
However, there was one place with numerous blue dots.
That was the school’s swimming pool!
Thanks to Qin Han’s large population, the supporting facilities for various public venues were quite comprehensive; this high school even had a swimming pool.
Inside the swimming pool, there were hundreds of blue dots clustered together.
Of course, in such a large school with over twenty thousand students, hundreds of survivors weren’t many.
Ye Fan figured this was thanks to the apocalypse breaking out at noon; if it had been morning or afternoon, when students congregated in the teaching buildings, only a handful surviving would have been fortunate.
With so many people, there was hope his sister had survived.
Ye Fan inspected the area around the swimming pool and discovered that within a few hundred meters around it, there wasn’t a single zombie; it seemed someone had cleared them out.
Ye Fan began advancing cautiously with his troop.
Actually, there wasn’t much need for caution. With forty to sixty people and eight dogs, as long as they didn’t venture into dense zombie zones like the cafeteria and dormitory, there shouldn’t be major issues.
The soldiers cleared the way with bayonets, skirting around to the base of the teaching building.
There weren’t many zombies inside the teaching building, given it was noon during the incident, so there weren’t many people inside.
Ye Fan didn’t immediately head to the swimming pool; it appeared safe for now. He wanted to observe the situation first.
Without reaching Three-Star, the military dogs and soldiers took the lead. Unless surrounded by zombies, he instructed the soldiers not to fire. Instead, with the dogs, they systematically moved up floor by floor, easily eliminating the scattered zombies they encountered.
In Ye Fan’s view, with a limited number of soldiers, it was best to upgrade them all to Three-Star to ensure maximum strength.
The only regret was that student zombies yielded little; the school’s strict management prohibited wearing jewelry, so over five floors of the teaching building, Ye Fan hadn’t gained anything.
However, he wasn’t there for gold or silver; he wanted the vantage point to carefully view the swimming pool.
Reaching the fifth-floor balcony, Ye Fan had Xu Haoran hand him the binoculars.
From there, he could easily overlook the entire swimming pool.
Though nearly three kilometers away, through Xu Haoran’s binoculars, the situation there was clearly visible.
The first thing Ye Fan saw was that there were actually people patrolling the second floor of the swimming pool.
Foreigners carrying firearms!
Ye Fan could vaguely recognize that those firearms were likely police-issue, probably sourced from the local police station by these individuals.
And the patrolling persons seemed familiar to Ye Fan; they were likely once foreign teachers of the school.
Inspecting the windows, Ye Fan could faintly see many people inside the swimming pool.
But with heads densely packed, Ye Fan couldn’t make it out clearly.
Scanning inch by inch through the binoculars, Ye Fan suddenly spotted the tall head of discipline, Smith, conversing in a room on the second floor.
"Why is that old geezer I cursed still alive?"