The train attendant gave Chi Mu a chilling, enigmatic smile—then turned and left without a word.
Only after she disappeared did Chi Mu finally exhale, feeling the tension in his body ease like a spring uncoiling.
"Good thing I held on and didn't respond... Otherwise, I'd have broken the rule for sure."He muttered inwardly.This ghost tale is really a test of psychological endurance... I almost cracked.
Chi Mu knew that if his mental strength had been even slightly weaker, he might've instinctively answered the attendant out of sheer fear.
Of course, he hadn't forgotten who nearly got him killed—Zhang Dada.
Climbing down from his bed, Chi Mu shot Zhang Dada a deadly glare.
Zhang Dada blinked innocently. "Chi Mu, why're you looking at me like that? The attendant kept calling your name—I was just trying to help..."
"If the attendant calls next time and I don't respond, you'd better not say a damn word."
Chi Mu was tempted to slap him, but seeing Zhang's confused, pitiful expression, he just gave him a stern warning and let it go.
Though Chi Mu had survived the encounter, not everyone was as lucky.
Across the globe, other Chosen Ones lacked his nerves of steel. Under the intense pressure of the attendant's screaming, some instinctively replied—and their necks were snapped on the spot.
—— "Thank God! Chi Mu's been through worse. He didn't fall for it!"—— "S-Class haunted tales are no joke. Stay strong, Chi Mu!"
The attendant's inspection had already claimed several international contestants.
Those who survived quickly sobered up, turning their attention to a new problem: how to keep track of time.
Chi Mu, meanwhile, hadn't forgotten the four remaining water bottles he had to finish.
From boarding the train to waking up, eight hours had passed—leaving just 16 hours to consume twelve liters of water.
Carrying the bottles into the restroom, Chi Mu forced down one after another, gagging and vomiting repeatedly just to get them through. After a torturous effort, he'd somehow emptied three bottles.
By the fourth, his body simply refused. He couldn't drink another drop.
"Damn it… if this keeps up, I'll drown by day seven…"
Wiping his mouth and groaning, Chi Mu glanced at the empty bottles littering the floor—then suddenly had a revelation.
That's it. A timer.
He grabbed one of the bottles and sprinted back to his compartment.
"Zhang Dada, do you have a marker or a knife?"
He shook the drowsy Zhang Dada awake.
"Mmm... marker, yes... no knife… check my bag..." Zhang muttered half-asleep.
Chi Mu found the marker in Zhang's backpack—and a compass, which could serve as a decent blade substitute.
First, he marked the empty bottle with lines using the marker. Then, using the compass, he pierced a small hole in the cap, and sliced the bottle in half.
He flipped the top half upside down and inserted it into the bottom half. Pouring water into the top, he created a crude but functional hourglass.
Water began dripping, steadily and rhythmically, from the pinhole in the cap into the lower chamber.
Chi Mu began counting—one second, two seconds...
Back in the Dragon Nation's livestream, viewers were baffled.
—— "???"—— "What's Chi Mu doing now? What even is that?"—— "He's crafting in the middle of a death game?! Has he lost it?"
But some viewers quickly caught on.
"You dimwits! He just built a DIY hourglass! The hole size is constant, which means the water drips at a consistent rate!"
"See the ten lines he drew on the bottle? That's one liter split into ten 100ml segments. Now all he has to do is time how long it takes to reach each line."
"For example, if it takes 10 minutes to hit 100ml, then two lines is 200ml—meaning 30 minutes passed. Even if he falls asleep again, he can just check the water level and estimate how long he's been out."
The logic was quickly verified by the Dragon Nation's think tank.
Chi Mu ran a test and calculated: 15 minutes per 100ml.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he smiled. "Might not be perfectly accurate, but it's good enough. Better to be off by ten minutes than lose track of hours."
He slid the makeshift hourglass under his bed.
Qin Jianghe, observing from the command room, gave a big thumbs-up.
"Chi Mu's a genius. Staying calm under pressure, and solving problems like this? Incredible."
Foreign spectators lurking in the stream rushed to report Chi Mu's invention to their own national strategy teams.
The Korean think tank didn't hesitate—they used their second hint to inform their Chosen One of the method.
—— "Chi Mu is insane! Now other countries are using their lifelines just to copy him!"—— "This is Dragon Nation ingenuity at work! Hahaha, Chi Mu for the win!"—— "Okay okay, I admit it, Chi Mu—I was wrong to doubt you earlier..."
Chi Mu made another calculation: since the bottle was halved, only 2 liters of capacity remained.
He divided those two liters into twenty 100ml lines. Each took 15 minutes to fill, meaning the entire device could track 300 minutes, or five hours.
In other words, if he slept longer than five hours, the hourglass would overflow and become useless.
Time passed.
Chi Mu had already emptied the hourglass twice—meaning 10 hours had passed.
Only six hours remained until the end of Day One.
During that time, Chi Mu finally finished his last water bottle for the day.
Suddenly—on the window of his compartment—a red dog's head appeared.
"Holy sh*t!"
Chi Mu nearly jumped out of his bed in fright.
[Rule 5: If a red dog's head appears in your compartment window, do NOT make eye contact. Otherwise, it will board the train.]
Chi Mu quickly averted his gaze, avoiding eye contact.
But just then, a familiar drowsiness surged over him like a wave—Before he could think further—he blacked out.
As Chi Mu fell asleep, the man on the bottom bunk across from him—An Changlin—silently climbed down.
Expressionless, An Changlin walked over, located Chi Mu's hourglass under the bed, opened the window—
—and threw it out without hesitation.