"Are we really going to help these students dig? Given their mental state, they should be sent to the hospital immediately. They need a doctor." One of the female teachers could not help but speak up.
Looking at the wounds on the children and the finger injuries deep enough to expose bone, she felt her heart tremble.
But after hearing this, the bespectacled dean of discipline adjusted his glasses. "In that case, Teacher, take the student with the most severely injured hand to the hospital first. You handle that. The rest of you, keep digging with me. Since it's the principal's order, we have to do it properly!"
"We can't make the old man worry too much. The principal will be back soon!"
"If he comes back and sees that we've all left, it'll be very hard for us to explain ourselves." In order to show how conscientious and obedient to the principal he was, the dean of discipline immediately became the first to run down and start digging, signaling for the other teachers to hurry over and join him.
This utterly unreasonable decision, born from his desperate desire to curry favor with the principal, forcefully compelled everyone to dig together.
As time passed, the place somehow fell completely silent. There was not a single voice, only low, heavy breathing.
Whether teachers or students, everyone wore an enigmatic, entranced expression. Their hands were cut open by the gravel in the soil, just like those people before them.
A huge pile of black oval stones had already been dug up nearby.
At some point, the vehicles on the overpass had stopped as well. Their occupants rolled down the windows and leaned over the railings to look below, where they could vaguely see black stones piled near the edge exposed beyond the