Cold, silence, a shudder.
Ren Ye slowly opened his eyes again. A clean, spotless window came into view. Outside, the moon shone brightly, and rolling mountain silhouettes flashed past.
He froze briefly, then abruptly sat up and looked down at his hands and lower body... no injuries. Everything was intact.
The carriage swayed slightly. A man's voice came from the seats ahead. "Is that my darling girl? Hehe, go on... okay, okay, Daddy knows... but my train is about to enter a tunnel. There won't be any signal, so I can't video-call you. Okay, Daddy will be in Binhai soon. You and Mommy can wait for me at the station. Mm, that's it."
Clang-clang-clang...!
While Ren Ye was still momentarily dazed, the train plunged into the tunnel. Tremendous wind resistance struck, and a roar filled his ears.
"Ding~ This train will arrive in approximately fifteen minutes...!"
A female attendant's reminder came over the speakers.
The familiar phone call, the familiar sitting posture, the familiar voice-actress-quality attendant...
Everything had returned to the way it began. Reborn in the Migration Land, stuck in an endless loop on a high-speed train?
Ren Ye's back thumped against his seat. His mind raced, and a tentative conclusion took shape.
Before he entered, Susu had explicitly said this Star Gate had no death mechanic, but its difficulty was S-Rank. After he entered, the Star Gate had likewise given no death warning. All of that indicated that when the train ran him over earlier, he hadn't actually died. He had been "reset," and everything had started over.
Even so, it was pretty demoralizing. The elite agent "Prince Huai," who claimed to be only slightly inferior to Pangolin, had survived less than twenty minutes before his first "reset." Fifteen of those minutes had been spent in the tunnel,