Ji Han watched the water disappear.
It was a small amount—perhaps fifty milliliters—trickling between Lin Qinghe's cracked lips. To a normal person, it was a sip. To Ji Han, looking down the barrel of a seven-year sentence in this arid wasteland, it was a day of life expectancy poured into a stranger.
She swallowed convulsively, then fell back into the unconscious dark. Her chest rose and fell with a hitching, rattling rhythm.
"Investment," Ji Han muttered to the silence, capping the waterskin tight. "You are an asset. Don't become a liability."
He stood up. The heat was already rising, shimmering off the baked clay of the domain. According to the internal sun—which seemed to be tracking a normal twenty-four-hour cycle despite the time dilation—it was nearly noon.
He checked his vitals. His throat was dry, a sandpaper roughness that made swallowing difficult. He had 1.95 liters of water left.
He needed a plan.
He walked the perimeter of the barrier. It was a perfect circle, the translucent wall humming with a low-frequency vibration. Beyond it, the grey fog swirled, timeless and frozen. Inside, the ground was flat, save for a few jagged rocks and patches of withered, yellow grass.
"Think," he commanded himself. "Geology. Physics."
He crouched low, placing his cheek near the ground to look for subtle depressions. Water sought the lowest point. Even in a desert, gravity didn't lie.
Near the center of the domain, about twenty meters from where Lin Qinghe lay, the earth dipped slightly. A cluster of dead thistles grew there, their stalks slightly thicker than the rest.
"There."
Ji Han grabbed the iron pickaxe. It was crude, the metal pitted and the wood handle unfinished. He hefted it. It felt heavy, awkward in hands that had spent a lifetime typing on keyboards and holding stylus pens.
He struck the earth.
Clang.
The sound was jarring. The pickaxe bounced off the hardpan, sending a shockwave up his forearms. He hadn't even scratched the surface.
"Okay," he breathed, adjusting his grip. "Again."
He swung again. This time, the tip bit in, cracking the clay crust.
He fell into a rhythm. Swing. Impact. Jolt. Pull.
For the first hour, his mind raced with calculations. If he dug one cubic meter of earth, how likely was he to hit the water table? What was the evaporation rate of this soil?
By the second hour, the math vanished. There was only the physical reality of the labor.
Blisters formed on his palms—soft, fluid-filled bubbles that popped and tore, leaving raw, stinging skin against the rough wood. His shoulders began to burn with a lactic acid fire. The sun beat down on the back of his neck, relentless and cruel.
He stopped to breathe, leaning on the handle. He looked at the hole. It was barely shin-deep.
He looked at the barrier.
Time Remaining: 6 Days, 23 Hours, 50 Minutes (External).
Ten minutes had passed outside.
He had been digging for days in here? No. Wait.
He checked the math again, panic flaring.
One day outside = 365 days inside. 24 hours = 8,760 hours. 1 hour outside = 365 hours inside (15 days). 4 minutes outside = 1 day inside.
Ji Han dropped the pickaxe.
He had been digging for two hours internal time. That was... seconds outside.
The scale of it crushed him. He wasn't racing against the clock; he was racing against the sheer, suffocating volume of time itself. He had to survive 2,555 days. He had barely survived the first morning.
A sound broke his spiral. A cough.
Ji Han turned. Lin Qinghe was awake.
She had propped herself up on one elbow, her other hand clutching her midsection. Her eyes, dark and sharp as obsidian, were fixed on him. She didn't look grateful. She looked like a tiger analyzing a particularly clumsy gazelle.
"You," she rasped. Her voice was like grinding stones. "Where... is this?"
"My domain," Ji Han said, walking over. He kept a safe distance. Even broken, she was an SSS-Rank entity. "I am the Lord here. I summoned you."
She looked at the barrier, then at the meager hole he had dug, and finally at his bleeding hands. A flicker of disdain crossed her face.
"A mortal," she whispered. "I was pulled from the Void by a mortal with no cultivation base." She closed her eyes, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "This is the final humiliation."
"You were dying," Ji Han said flatly. "I saved you. That makes us partners."
"Partners?" She opened her eyes. The pressure in the air suddenly increased, making it hard for Ji Han to breathe. "I am Lin Qinghe. I have slaughtered sects that spanned mountains. I do not partner with ants."
The pressure vanished as she doubled over, coughing up a fresh spray of blood. The exertion had been too much.
Ji Han didn't flinch. He watched her struggle.
"You're leaking," he observed coldly. "Your Qi. It's dissipating into the air. I can feel the static."
Lin Qinghe wiped her mouth, her hand trembling. "My meridians are shattered. My Dantian is a ruin. I am... leaking life."
"Can you sense water?"
She blinked, thrown off by the abrupt shift in topic. "What?"
"Water," Ji Han pointed to the hole. "I need to know if I'm digging in the right spot. If I don't find water, we both die of dehydration long before your injuries kill you."
She stared at him. The absurdity of the situation seemed to baffle her. A mortal commanding an Empress to dowse for water.
"I cannot use my spirit sense," she said, her voice tight with pain. "It requires Qi. I have none to spare."
"Then guess," Ji Han said. "Use your experience. You've walked the world. Where is the water?"
Lin Qinghe looked at the ground. She stared at the patch of thistles he had chosen. She reached out, placing her palm flat against the dry earth. She closed her eyes, her brow furrowing in concentration.
Seconds ticked by.
"There is a vein," she said softly. "Faint. Deep. But... the earth energy flows there." She pointed to a spot two feet to the left of where he had been digging.
"Two feet left. Good."
Ji Han picked up the pickaxe.
"Wait," she said. "You have water in that skin. Give me more."
Ji Han paused. He looked at her, then at the skin.
"No."
Lin Qinghe's eyes narrowed. "I am wounded."
"And I am the one doing the labor," Ji Han said, his voice steady despite his racing heart. "I will ration the water. You get a sip at sundown. If I hit the vein, you can drink as much as you want."
He didn't wait for her response. He turned his back on the Sword Empress and swung the pickaxe.
Clang.
He dug.
He dug until the sun began to dip toward the horizon, painting the sky in shades of bruise-purple and blood-orange. His hands were raw meat. His back screamed. He had stripped off his shirt, his pale skin burning in the sun, but he didn't stop.
The hole was now waist-deep.
Clang.Squelch.
Ji Han froze. The sound had changed.
He dropped to his knees, ignoring the agony in his joints. He clawed at the bottom of the pit with his bare hands. The soil here was dark, cool, and sticky.
He dug frantically, scooping out handfuls of mud.
Water.
It wasn't a geyser. It was a slow, weeping seep, filling the muddy depression at the bottom of the hole. It was brown and silty, but it was water.
Ji Han sat back, his chest heaving. He laughed, a dry, broken sound.
[System: Resource Discovered.][Simple Groundwater Well (Quality: Poor)][Production: 5 Liters / Day]
Five liters. It was enough. It was survival.
He filled the waterskin, waiting patiently for the silt to settle, then took a long, desperate drink. The water tasted of dirt and iron, but it was the best thing he had ever tasted.
He climbed out of the pit, legs shaking, and walked over to Lin Qinghe. She was watching him, her expression unreadable.
He knelt and held the skin to her lips.
"Drink," he said.
She drank, her eyes never leaving his face. When she finished, she leaned back, a hint of color returning to her pale cheeks.
"You found it," she said.
"It's just the first step," Ji Han said, looking out at the barren, darkening domain. The temperature was dropping rapidly. The "Long Winter" of the night was coming.
He looked at the pouch of Spirit Rice seeds in his pocket.
"We have water," he said. "Now we have to survive the hunger."
He checked the barrier timer again.
Time Remaining: 6 Days, 23 Hours, 46 Minutes.
Four minutes had passed outside. One day inside.
Ji Han closed his eyes.
"2,554 days to go."