The grave was comfortable. That was the most disturbing realization of the third day.
Lying in the damp, cool earth of the trench, with a ceiling of dirt and dead grass shielding them from the nuclear fire in the sky, Ji Han felt a perverse sense of peace. It was quiet. The air smelled of wet soil and roots. If he didn't move, he didn't burn calories. If he didn't move, he didn't feel the thirst clawing at his throat.
But the silence was deceptive. It was the silence of a slow death.
Beside him, Lin Qinghe shifted. Her movement was sluggish, the friction of her silk robes against the dirt sounding like sandpaper.
"Water," she whispered. It wasn't a demand. It was a statement of fact. Her biological timer was ticking down faster than his.
Ji Han opened his eyes. The darkness in the trench was absolute, save for a few jagged beams of violet light piercing through the grass lid like laser tripwires.
"I have to go out," Ji Han said, his voice a rasp.
He pushed himself up. His muscles ached—a deep, bruised ache from the "Body Tempering" exertion of digging the trench. The Strength +0.1 came with a cost of Lactic Acid +100.
He pushed the grass lid aside just enough to squeeze through.
The heat hit him instantly. It wasn't just warm; it was aggressive. It felt like opening the door of a blast furnace. The air shimmered. The azure grass that hadn't been harvested was starting to curl and yellow at the tips. The "Long Day" was entering its brutal phase.
Ji Han squinted against the glare, shielding his eyes with a trembling hand. He looked toward the northern rocks.
The "Mud Basin."
Panic spiked in his chest. In the open air, water didn't just sit; it vanished.
He scrambled across the baked earth, ignoring the sharp stones cutting into his bare feet. He reached the basin and fell to his knees.
His heart stopped.
The basin was dry.
The mud at the bottom was cracked, forming a mosaic of parched earth. The slow seep from the water table couldn't keep up with the evaporation rate of the stationary sun.
"No," Ji Han choked out. He clawed at the dry mud. "No, no, no."
He dug frantically with his fingers. An inch down, the soil was dark. Damp. But not liquid. He couldn't drink damp dirt.
He sat back on his heels, the sun beating down on his neck. He was going to die. They were both going to die. Not from starvation in seven years, but from dehydration in seven hours.
Think. The Logistics Officer in his brain screamed over the panic. The resource exists. The method of extraction is flawed.
The water was there, underground. But as soon as it touched the air, the sun stole it.
"I have to trap it," he muttered.
He looked around. He needed a lid. But a grass lid would wither. A wood lid didn't exist.
He looked at the rocks. He grabbed the flat, slate-like stone he had used as a shovel. It was too small to cover the whole basin.
He needed to shrink the basin.
Ji Han grabbed handfuls of wet mud from the bottom of the hole. He began to build a rim, narrowing the opening of the seep. He packed it tight, creating a bottleneck. He was turning the wide bowl into a narrow-necked flask.
The heat was dizzying. His vision blurred at the edges. Heatstroke imminent.
He worked faster. He placed the flat stone over the narrowed opening, leaving only a tiny crack for air.
He pressed his ear to the stone.
Silence. Then... drip.
The condensation. By covering the cool mud with the hot stone, he had created a humidity trap. The water wouldn't evaporate into the sky; it would condense on the bottom of the stone and drip back down.
It wasn't a well anymore. It was a solar still working in reverse.
"Wait," he told the rocks. "Just wait."
He couldn't wait there. The sun was killing him. He scrambled back to the trench, diving into the cool darkness like a seal hitting the water.
He lay there, gasping, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against the dirt floor.
"Water?" Lin Qinghe asked. Her voice was barely audible.
"Evaporated," Ji Han said.
She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She just let out a long, slow exhale. The sound of acceptance.
"No," Ji Han said, turning his head to look at her in the dark. "I capped it. It needs time to accumulate. We drink tonight."
"Tonight..." She laughed weakly. "There is no night."
"We drink in six hours," he corrected.
Silence stretched between them again. But this time, the hunger was louder than the thirst. Ji Han's stomach cramped, a violent twisting knot. He had been eating grass cores for three days. His body was screaming for protein, for carbs, for anything real.
He looked at his inventory. The three loaves of bread.
He took one out. It was hard as a stone, preserved by the dry air.
"Three loaves," Ji Han whispered. "Two thousand, five hundred days."
The math was still impossible. But saving the bread for year seven didn't matter if they died in week one.
"Investment," Ji Han justified it to himself. "Capital injection."
He broke off a piece of the bread. It was the size of a walnut.
He put the rest of the loaf away. He held the dry crumb in his palm. It was precious. It was life.
"Lin Qinghe," he said.
"Mmm?"
"Dinner."
He crawled over to her. He couldn't give her the dry bread; she would choke. He needed to soften it. But he had no water.
He looked at the crumb. He put it in his own mouth.
He didn't chew. He let it sit on his tongue, letting his own meager saliva soften the hard crust. It tasted like wheat and dust, the most delicious thing he had ever experienced. The urge to swallow was overwhelming. His throat convulsed, begging for the food.
He fought it. Logistics. Distribution.
When the bread was a soft, mushy paste, he took it out of his mouth.
It was disgusting. It was survival.
"Open," he commanded.
Lin Qinghe opened her eyes. She saw the paste on his finger. She hesitated, her pride warring with her biological imperative.
"It's pre-chewed," Ji Han said flatly. "Like a bird. Do you want to live, Empress?"
Her eyes flashed with a brief spark of anger—good, anger was energy—and then she opened her mouth.
He placed the paste on her tongue.
She swallowed.
"Carbohydrates," Ji Han whispered, lying back down. "Burn them efficiently. Tomorrow, we check the trap."
He closed his eyes. His own stomach roared in protest at the phantom taste of food, but he ignored it. He grabbed a piece of raw azure grass root he had dragged into the hole, peeled it, and chewed on the bitter fiber.
The sun burned above. The earth cooled below. And in the dark, two worms digested their meager meal, waiting for the drops to fall.