The sky was just beginning to brighten, and the four of us, who had been sitting together all night, looked at each other, utterly exhausted.

I said, "If she comes again tonight, it'll be our turn."

Zheng Xinyue's voice trembled as she said, "As long as we don't open the door, we should be fine, right?"

"Is she really coming to check on us? What will happen if we lose points? Will we die?"

Zhang Lin let out a sigh, "I don't know."

The silence fell upon the dorm room once again.

There was no sound in the corridor.

It was past six o'clock, but the loudspeakers remained silent. They struggled and made a few feeble sounds before going quiet.

There were no other clues.

Opening the door to the dorm, there were fewer people coming out to wash up compared to yesterday.

The doors of the rooms that had been knocked on last night were all wide open.

As we passed by, the four of us instinctively looked inside.

It was clean, with nothing inside.

Not only were there no people, but there were also no belongings. The dorm room was empty as if no one had ever lived there.

It seemed that not opening the door was not a solution to the problem.

As we left the dormitory building, more people appeared.

But most of the students were wearing black masks.

I was startled. Yang Lu's incident made me vaguely guess that these people wearing black masks were likely to be assimilated.

But what exactly were they, I didn't know.

The four of us continued walking, not daring to look directly at them, keeping our heads down.

At noon, the cafeteria was not as crowded as yesterday. Without needing to save seats, I took my student card and went to the food stall to get my meal.

I didn't want to touch any meat dishes anymore and chose the simplest cold noodles.

There were also several food stalls with students wearing black masks lining up. I pretended not to see them.

"Classmate, you are so thin, yet you eat such plain food. Come here, Auntie will give you an extra spoonful of meat. It's just out of the pot, very fragrant."

The auntie at the adjacent food stall warmly greeted me.

It was braised pork again.

I looked up and glanced over. Almost all the big plates at the food stalls had turned into braised pork, with only a few scattered ones still selling regular dishes.

In just one night, did they suddenly have so much "meat"?

I pretended not to hear.

The auntie didn't insist on persuading me and instead went to greet a male student who was queuing behind me to buy cold noodles.

The exact same words.

"Classmate, you are so thin, yet you eat such plain food. Come here, Auntie will give you an extra spoonful of meat. It's just out of the pot, very fragrant."

The male student hesitated for a moment, looking extremely unnatural.

The auntie didn't give up and persuaded him once again, using the exact same words.

The same words were mechanically repeated by the auntie over and over again, and the plump cafeteria auntie seemed like a humanoid robot

at this moment, emitting an eerie aura.

I swiped my card for the meal and was about to leave with my cold noodles.

Suddenly, the male student behind me exploded. With red eyes, he couldn't bear it anymore and roared at the auntie:

"Don't think I don't know what you're selling! Where did you get the meat?!"

His emotions broke down, and my heart skipped a beat.

It's over.