MTL - Rise From the Humble - Chapter 1697 What does singing before dinner mean?

The chief female forensic investigator, Ran Yan was secretly killed by her assistant. Unexpectedly, she was reborn in the years of the Tang dynasty. After experiencing a narrow escape, she fled from Jiangnan to Chang’an. Although, Chang’an was at the beginning of its flourishing period under the Li family’s Tang dynasty, various princes were vying for the throne by using all kinds of strategies. This was the dark days of the imperial court, where one needed to walk on a tightrope as one’s life was as powerless as an ant. The Xiao family controlled a large amount of wealth so inevitably they also became involved in the conflicts.

After arriving in Chang’an, she discovered many suspicious incidents: the original owner had unexplainable amnesia but his family was indifferent. She once again saw the orchid shaped clay inkstone, a valuable object that her mother has given her in modern times. Hence, could it be that she can time travel back? In order to survive in the Tang dynasty, she displayed her strong spirit and willpower by learning medicine from a doctor, pretended that she benefited from being sick on how to cure diseases, suffered hardship in earning money, manufactured penicillin, cured syphilis, and used her autopsy skill and experience to solve each and every murder mysteries.

- Description from Novelupdates

Having a rough life growing up, Wang Tong had numerous dreams of living a better life. However, his alcoholic foster father sells him off as a space settler of the distant planet Norton for some pocket change. Soon after his arrival, the Zergs overran the planet and obliterated its defenses in a matter of minutes. What awaited Tong on Norton was more than just an unbearable environment – its gravity alone was five-times stronger than earth – there were also swarms of bugs, constant hunger, thirst, and desolation.

While he lives a year of total carnage and survival, humanity’s Confederation eventually overcomes the Zergs on Norton and the powerful survivor Wang Tong is given a recommendation to a once famous, but now dying military academy where he begins his life anew.

Mathew survived the entire two weeks of the apocalypse. A great score for someone blessed with brains over the brawn. Yet, even he fell after just fourteen days, giving his all to save the one person he cared for.

But why does a death looks like watching himself from the third person perspective? Is this the purgatory to watch over his own shoulders at the mistakes he made? A punishment for Mathew's sins to repeat those mistakes over and over again?

But wait, what are the three clocks in the corner of his vision, one of which only five minutes away from ticking out?