The moment the bell rang, a female teacher in her forties walked in through the door.

She was dressed very modestly.

Just a few seconds ago, the whole floor was empty except for the four of us in the hallway, and she seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

"Alright, students, it's time for class. Let me take attendance first."

She smiled kindly at us.

But it was eerie, as her mouth curved slightly upwards, her eyes staring straight at us without moving.

"Yang Sisi."

"Here."

"Wu Cheng."

"Here."

...

"Zheng Xinyue."

Zheng Xinyue was sitting next to me, too scared to speak due to the strange expression of the teacher.

"Is Zheng Xinyue here? If not..."

The teacher's mouth spread into a larger smile, as if finding a student absent was something that made her extremely happy.

I quickly raised my hand to interrupt her.

"Excuse me, teacher, Zheng Xinyue is here. The girl on my left. She caught a cold last night and her throat is swollen, she can't speak."

"Oh, I see. That's too bad."

The teacher's eyebrows drooped slightly.

We all knew that her 'too bad' probably wasn't about Zheng Xinyue catching a cold.

After all four of us in the dormitory were called, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Jiang Xin."

The classroom fell silent.

"Is Jiang Xin here?"

The teacher asked patiently again.

Still, no response.

We knew her, she was in the same major as us, and we usually took classes together.

But it was strange, I vaguely remembered that she and her roommate were in the front of the line at the elevator, and they shouldn't have been late.

Did they encounter the same situation? Couldn't find the classroom?

The teacher made a few marks on the attendance sheet.

Then she called out the names of her three roommates, again with no response.

After calling out all the names once, the teacher was satisfied and closed the attendance sheet to begin the lesson.

Her speech was slow, like AI reading a script, with no emotional tone.

For us, who had hardly slept all night, it was like a lullaby.

But sitting in the front row, too close to the teacher, and under her unwavering gaze, even if we were nodding off from sleepiness, we had to pinch our arms hard underneath to stay awake.

About forty minutes passed.

Suddenly, the front door was knocked, and Jiang Xin and her roommates rushed into the classroom.

They were pale, out of breath, they must have run over.

The teacher stopped writing on the blackboard and turned to look at them.

"Why are you late? Good students shouldn't be late."

Jiang Xin's roommate hurriedly explained, "Sorry, teacher, we didn't mean to be late!"

"Being late means accepting punishment, that's the school rules."

"Then... what's the punishment?"

As soon as one girl asked, the next second, her eyes glazed over, staring blankly ahead.

Her steps were slow, there was even a hint of resistance on her face for a moment, but it seemed like I was mistaken.

"Yingying, what's wrong with you... where are you going..."

She walked as if she was drunk, staggeringly all the way to the front.

She reached the window, pushed it open.

Then without hesitation, she jumped out of the window.

There was a loud thud—the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground.

So this was the punishment for being late.

Everyone was pale and scared by this scene, a few students sitting by the window even saw something below, covering their mouths and retching.

"No... I don't want to die, don't punish me."

Jiang Xin sat fearfully on the ground, with a look of fear and helplessness on her face.

"It's not our fault, the elevator was broken, it took us to the seventh floor, why are we being punished?!"

Another girl defended herself bluntly.

When the teacher heard this, her neck didn't move, but her eyes shifted in an extremely eerie angle towards her.

"You're saying the elevator took you to the seventh floor, so that's why you were late?"

I felt a jolt in my heart.

【The Experimental Teaching Building doesn't have a seventh floor.】

I believed that the girl was telling the truth, this must be the reason why the whole dormitory was late.

The teacher chuckled twice, crushing the chalk in her hand into powder.

"Lies!"

"There is no seventh floor in the building!"

"Students who lie will have to swallow a thousand needles."

【Don't anger the teacher, the consequences will be severe if she is angry.】

The teacher seemed... angry.

Then, the girl's face twisted in extreme pain, her eyes widened, looking like a dead fish, making gasping sounds in her throat.

Her stomach swelled more and more, as if it wasn't air being sucked in by her throat, but something else.

She rolled on the ground a few times, lifeless.

Several small silver needles flashing with a cold light pierced out of her throat, making people's scalps tingle.

"Ring ring ring—"

The bell for the end of class rang.

The teacher's face returned to its original state as if nothing had happened, casually walked to the podium and knocked on the table twice.

"Students, class is over. The last one to leave the classroom, remember to lock the door."

With that, she took her lesson plan and attendance sheet and left the classroom.

I felt puzzled.

The class was over, so Jiang Xin and her other roommate were saved.

The teacher didn't seem so easy-going.

Did she also need to follow the rule of being on time for class?

Jiang Xin on the floor watched her roommate's cold body and couldn't help but cry uncontrollably, another surviving girl hugged her shoulder to comfort her.

Yu Shuang patted my shoulder, "Let's go, time to go to the next class."

The students in the classroom witnessed the consequences of being late and couldn't wait to rush out for the next class.

We also ran out of the classroom.

Before leaving, I kindly reminded Jiang Xin.

"If you're the last one to leave, remember to lock the classroom door."

That was the only way to help her survive.