Short-range interaction among the spins can not only results in the rich phase diagram but also brings about fascinating phenomenon both in the contexts of quantum computing and information. In this paper, we investigate the quantum correlation of the system coupled to a surrounding environment with short-range anisotropic interaction. It is shown that the decay of quantum correlation of the central spins measured by pairwise entanglement and quantum discord can serve as a signature of quantum phase transition. In addition, we study the decoherence factor of the system when the environment is in the vicinity of the phase transition point. In the strong coupling regime, the decay of the decoherence factor exhibits Gaussian envelop in the time domain. However, in weak coupling limit, the quantum correlation of the system is robust against the disturbance of the magnetic field through optimal control of the anisotropic short-range interaction strength. Based on this, the effects of the short-range anisotropic interaction on the sudden transition from classical to quantum decoherence are also presented.The quantum aspects of correlations in composite systems are a key issue in quantum information theory 1 . Quantum entanglement, which determines the given state is separable or not, has been regarded as a valuable resource for quantum information processing 2 . Even many people take it granted that quantum entanglement is quantum correlation. However, some separate states also contains quantum correlation and there exist quantum tasks that display the quantum advantage without entanglement 3 , so entanglement is not the only type of quantum correlation. Quantum discord (QD) defined as the difference between quantum mutual information and classical correlation 4 , is supposed to characterize all of nonclassical correlations including entanglement. Such states with non-zero QD but not entanglement may be responsible for the efficiency of a quantum computer 5,6 . Consequently, QD is believed a new resource for quantum computation.Meanwhile, study of quantum phase transition (QPT) 7 purely driven by quantum fluctuations can help us understand the physical properties of various matters from the perspective of quantum mechanics. During the past decade, the central spin model served as a paradimatic model characterizing the interaction between the quantum system and surrounding environment has received a lot of attentions [8][9][10] . On the one hand, it can provide a platform to investigate the underlying mechanism of the decoherence 11,12 due to the exact solvability of the model, which can pave the way to develop new methods that enhance the coherence time in the context of quantum computation and information 1,13 . On the other hand, one can identify the quantum phase transition through the quantum-classical transition of the system described by a reduction from a pure state to a mixture 14 . This stimulates a series of works regarding the disentanglement of central spins subjected to critical surrounding environment 10...