After confirming that Luo Chen was fine aside from being a bit unsteady on his feet from the recent blood loss, Teacher Zhou personally cleaned his wound and wrapped it in gauze. The three of them then continued toward the academy's south gate.
After the incident with the leeches burrowing into their pant legs, they became much more cautious. Every few steps, they would glance down at the ground, worried that a moment of carelessness would result in their thighs being covered in the creepy crawlies.
The trio reached the large iron gate at the entrance and looked outside.
When they got a clear view of the scene outside, their mouths fell open in unison, their faces etched with astonishment.
Before them lay a vast swamp shrouded in a thin white mist.
About 200 meters away, a green-skinned train over 100 meters long lay silently across the muddy swamp.
The train was so conspicuous that they could still make out its general shape, even with their vision obscured by the mist.
"So... I wasn't hearing things. There really is a train," Han Ning muttered to himself, his eyes fixed on the distant train.
"Those people... Are they alive, or are they zombies?"
Just then, Luo Chen pointed to the small, black, humanoid dots swarming around the train.
The closest ones were only about thirty meters away. They walked with their necks crooked and their steps staggered, looking no different from the zombies on TV.
"They're probably humans infected by those little black bugs."
BANG!
A dull gunshot suddenly rang out in the distance as Teacher Zhou was speaking.
"There must be survivors in the train, and they have guns," Han Ning concluded, tilting his head to listen.
To confirm their suspicions, Teacher Zhou took a small drone from his backpack, unfolded it, and mounted his phone in the camera slot.
Even without a network, the drone could still be flown via the remote control in the operator's hands, but its range was limited to a few hundred meters.
After adjusting the camera angle, Teacher Zhou powered on the drone and used the remote to fly it several dozen meters into the air, sending it toward the train.
Without a network, it couldn't transmit a live feed. Teacher Zhou had to rely on his skilled piloting and naked-eye estimates of the drone's altitude and distance to film the scene below.
Fortunately, there seemed to be no avian Soul Beasts in this misty wasteland. After a few minutes of filming, the drone, flying at an altitude of several dozen meters, successfully returned to the clearing in front of Teacher Zhou.
Teacher Zhou removed the phone, quickly scrubbed through the video's progress bar to confirm he'd captured footage, then immediately packed up his gear. "Let's head back," he said to the two students. "It's still too dangerous here."
Having confirmed the situation outside the campus, they didn't linger.
A dozen or so minutes later, Han Ning and the others returned safely to the dormitory area.
They immediately went to Dean Wu's residence, and Teacher Zhou handed over the phone with the video.
"Good work. Sit, sit." Dean Wu personally poured each of them a glass of water before tapping open the phone to view the footage.
Because they had left in a hurry, Han Ning and Luo Chen hadn't had a chance to watch the video yet. They squeezed in next to Dean Wu to watch with him.
Teacher Zhou's drone piloting skills were impressive. A dark green train appeared, steady and centered in the frame.
To the left and right of the train swarmed a dense crowd of at least a hundred zombies. They were relentlessly slamming their rigid bodies against the sealed metal doors of the train cars.
THUD, THUD, THUD. The sound of flesh hitting sheet metal was incessant.
Meanwhile, there were clearly many survivors inside the train. Horrified screams, urgent chatter, and the occasional crack of gunfire could be heard coming from within.
"They have guns... And look at the text painted on this green-skinned train. It's obviously not one of ours from the Xia Country. It must be from a country in Southeast Asia." Dean Wu examined the video feed closely, pointing to the unfamiliar script that flashed by as he spoke to the three beside him.
"We can basically deduce that this train and its survivors, just like us, are transmigrators from another world."
"Dean Wu, what's our strategy then?" Han Ning asked, his gaze fixed on the zombies wandering around the train.
Dean Wu thought for a moment before replying, "We'll ignore them for now. I'll have a few people take turns observing the situation from the upper floors. Our top priority right now is still ensuring everyone has basic survival capabilities."
"I plan to spend about a week helping the remaining 200-plus people mutate their Silver Lotus Wood. Once that's done, we'll have a much better chance of exploring other areas, gathering food, completely clearing out the nearby wandering Soul Beasts, and expanding our territory."
'A week... That's about when the rest of our food will run out. Dean Wu's one-week timeline makes sense.'
Han Ning did a quick mental calculation. He had more food than the other students and could last for two weeks without a problem, but the others were about to face food and water shortages.
The lack of food wasn't the scariest part; the most agonizing thing was the lack of a water source.
They couldn't yet be sure if the rain that fell on the wasteland was safe to drink. For now, anyone who was thirsty had to rely on the bottled or purified water stored in the convenience store and cafeteria.
"So... Han Ning, Luo Chen, starting tomorrow, the two of you are to stop worrying about the train. I'll assign other teachers and students to observe it. Your top priority is to continue helping the students with limited mobility mutate their Silver Lotus Wood."
"Understood, Dean Wu." The two of them nodded in unison to show they understood.
In truth, Han Ning had no desire to get involved in the messy situation with the train anyway. All he wanted right now was to make Yin Yi as strong as possible. The stronger Yin Yi became, the more secure their survival in this world would be.
...
After leaving Dean Wu's residence, Han Ning waved goodbye to the other two.
He returned to his dorm for a short rest and ate a combination of breakfast and lunch. Seeing that it was still early, he called over Lin Tianhe and Chen Linyu, who hadn't gone out yet, along with a classmate who still hadn't mutated their Silver Lotus Wood. He planned to explore further in the direction of the Bioengineering Department's academic building.
Teacher Fang's arm was severely injured, so it wouldn't be practical for him to go out on adventures for a while.
Han Ning still remembered what Teacher Fang had told him. The Bioengineering academic building housed a considerable number of high-quality crop seeds, nutrient soil, hydroponic containers, microscopes for biological research... and so on. All of these items would be incredibly useful for their future development.
The crop seeds were self-explanatory. As long as they chose crops with short maturation periods and planted them on a certain scale, they could solve their food problem in a short amount of time.
As for the various pieces of lab equipment, they might be able to rely on the bio-major students to uncover some of the Soul Beasts' characteristics.