Chapter 355: Chapter 353: Go Report Me to the Principal!
The hooded man suddenly stopped in his tracks: "We’re here."
Li Ying looked and realized they had arrived at the entrance of a large classroom while talking. She gave the hooded man a push: "You go in."
The hooded man didn’t move: "You go in first."
Li Ying shook her head repeatedly: "Aren’t you ashamed, letting a girl go in to get scolded first? I won’t."
The hooded man retorted: "Are you really not going in?"
"I’ll go in after you do."
"Alright then, as you wish."
The hooded man didn’t hesitate and immediately pushed the door open and went in. Li Ying followed closely behind, finding the classroom silent, with everyone watching her.
The entire classroom was one person per desk, clearly spaced out. The hooded man had already taken one of the only two empty seats in the back, leaving only one seat in the entire classroom.
Suddenly someone said, "She’s the last one who’s late, right?"
"With her here, everyone’s finally arrived."
"So it’s her, huh?"
"Teacher Qin, everyone’s here, why don’t you come out?"
The classroom was abuzz, and Li Ying suddenly felt a wave of panic—everyone, regardless of gender, was watching her with sidelong glances. And those looks were not just for someone who’s late, but carried hidden, inexplicably colder, more chilling emotions.
She slowly made her way to the last empty seat, but before she could sit down, a classmate beside her pointed to the front: "Look at the blackboard."
Li Ying looked over and saw a few lines written on the board:
"First official class"
"And yet everyone isn’t here, someone came late and is absent"
"I won’t appear until the last student has arrived"
"The last student who comes late clearly does not respect others’ time and has no sense of collective honor. If the last student doesn’t do 200 push-ups at the front, it implies a lack of shame."
"If everyone has a sense of collective honor, you can all do push-ups together to make the last student feel ashamed. The whole class only needs to do 50 push-ups, and Teacher Qin would feel your sense of honor."
"If the last student doesn’t do 200 push-ups, or if the whole class doesn’t do 50 push-ups, everyone’s regular score will be permanently reduced by 10 points (so everyone’s maximum regular score will be 90 points)."
There was even a diagram of push-ups drawn beside it as if afraid someone might not know how to do them.
After reading all this, Li Ying was already in a panic. In her over ten years of life, when had she ever encountered something like this for being late?
The classroom was quiet, everyone watching Li Ying, waiting for her to go to the front.
Everyone was already angry for having wasted half an hour without a lesson; they all showed up on time, naturally unwilling to be dragged down by the late student.
Two hundred push-ups weren’t much, only a bit difficult for a girl, but the punishment wasn’t about physical exercise, it was about humiliation—bringing a student to the front, making them lose face in front of everyone.
But to many students, this punishment seemed reasonable; after all, if you’re late, you should face punishment, what’s wrong with losing a bit of face? Does it cause any harm? Would you die?
If there’s no punishment for being late, how would punctuality be valued?
So, not many were willing to choose the second option of ’collective punishment’; such collective accountability seemed unreasonable. Why should those who weren’t late be punished?
"It’s already been half an hour since class started." Someone took out a pocket watch, intentionally or unintentionally urging a response.
Li Ying suddenly felt a bit of dryness in her throat. She looked around at all the seated students, forced a smile, scratched her head, and apologized: "Sorry, I overslept at noon and came too late—200 push-ups, that sounds easy enough—"
Ahem!
Suddenly, someone cleared their throat loudly, and everyone looked over to see the second-to-last student to be late, the hooded man, standing up.
"I wasn’t the last to be late, but I wasn’t much earlier, so I deserve punishment too." The hooded man said, "I’ll take the punishment with her, but I’ll only do 50."
Li Ying stared at him blankly and nodded slightly: "Thank you."
Then two more people stood up; it was Qian Yuya and Lin Xue.
"Next time, I’ll see if you dare to be late again." Lin Xue laughed.
Li Ying immediately felt as if she’d found her group and hugged her: "Sister Lin, I won’t dare anymore!"
Qian Yuya glanced around the room and said dismissively: "Are you really going to sit back and watch someone else being punished at the front? After the last trial lecture, don’t you know what Teacher Qin loves most is to reveal your darker sides?"
"Indeed!"
The first to respond was the tall boy, Dan Chixia: "I choose to accompany and take the punishment together, I won’t give Teacher Qin another chance to look down on me!"
Many were surprised at Dan Chixia’s stance; everyone thought after the last class’s ’manipulation’, he wouldn’t choose this course anymore.
"I also choose to be punished together." Ming Shuiyun stood up as well.
"Push-ups, such a strange move, I’ll do it too." Ming Shuangli also stood up with them.
The other students exchanged glances and stood up, then bent down to start doing push-ups. It wasn’t clear who started the counting, but soon the whole classroom was filled with counting voices.
"...Eleven, twelve, thirteen..."
"...Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty!"
When the students finished the last push-up, Dan Chixia jumped up immediately, shouting loudly, face flushed with pride: "Teacher Qin, we’re done! We didn’t do anything wrong this time, did we?"
"You were wrong from the start."
Everyone froze, looking at the hooded man slowly rising from the back. He removed the hood and mask, revealing a charming face with snow-white skin and flaming red hair.
Li Ying was stunned, staring blankly at Yue Yu as he walked past her, a breeze of his refreshing red hair brushing past her delicate nose, leaving a faint sweet scent.
Yue Yu casually took out a rope to tie his hair and stepped onto the podium, asking, "Why did you do push-ups?"
The group exchanged puzzled glances, someone replied: "Didn’t you write on the board, either let the last late student go to the front and do 200 push-ups, or have everyone do fifty together?"
"I wrote that." Yue Yu nodded: "So does that mean the teacher can’t be wrong?"
Everyone hesitated, some students looked unconvinced, thinking Yue Yu was being argumentative.
"Do you all still think my instructions were right?" Yue Yu patted the blackboard: "Didn’t you notice, apart from the two choices I gave, you actually had a better option?"
Some people showed thoughtful expressions, Ming Shuangli directly asked: "What better option?"
"Just report me to the Principal!"
Yue Yu spoke righteously: "I, as a lecturer, didn’t want to teach you while using the excuse of a student’s lateness, wasting half an hour of your lives; I was being negligent! Squandering teaching resources! Violating the Academy rules!"
"If you had reported me to the Principal just now, then after my class, you could have seen the Principal punish me to do push-ups till I’m dead! Do you regret it? Too late! I’m already teaching."
Some students couldn’t help but laugh, but Yue Yu didn’t laugh.
"Why should you be punished? Why can I skip class? Why should everyone’s regular score be deducted because of one late student? Why?" he asked: "Who can answer me?"
Immediately, a student answered: "Because you have the power, holding our scores."
"Yes, I am a teacher, I have power. But power doesn’t mean correctness; it can mislead you into thinking it’s correct—I gave two options, one ’very bad’, one ’not so bad’, and you all thought the ’not so bad’ was correct."
"But both choices were wrong." Yue Yu said: "Because the person at fault wasn’t you, it was me, unwilling to teach by exploiting an excuse. But due to the presence of a late student, I turned the conflict between you and me into a conflict among you students."
"And this is precisely Jing Qingfu’s most adept Ghostly Land trick: Qingfu persuades drinking, shifting the conflict."
"Welcome, everyone, to an intriguing realm of Jing Qingfu’s thinking."