Xia Chuan was already extremely familiar with that recurring dream. As he followed Shen Lan to the end of that sea and plunged into that thick black curtain, he had already anticipated that he would dream of those pale faces again.

Only this time, in the dream, he no longer had the anxious feeling of wanting to get to the bottom of things. Once his state of mind was at peace, those details he had overlooked became clear one by one.

For the first time in that dream, he noticed other things - for example, he was not standing in midair above the sea surface and bending down, but was standing on a solid ground, only that the ground would sway with the waves of the sea, which should be a boat.

In front of him was a railing, crisscrossed, with a smooth and cold silver-gray surface. The railing was very high, taller than him, but he soon discovered that it was not that the railing was too high, but that he himself was too short -

The hands holding the railing were clearly those of a child, with thin and short fingers, slightly fleshy on the back of the hand, clenched into a soft white ball.

He was soaking wet, as if he had just been fished out of the water, and someone had wrapped him in a thick, heavy towel, roughly wiping the water off his body, the movements not gentle, and saying something, with more noise around, but Xia Chuan couldn't hear clearly, or perhaps at that time he couldn't understand at all.

He just stared through the railing and looked down - several people were floating in the dark sea, but only three entered his eyes. They floated slightly up and down in the sea with the waves, their pale faces sometimes covered by water and sometimes floating on the surface, lifeless, looking extremely cold.

This time, he saw the appearance of those three people clearly without effort, just as he had guessed before - Xia Liang, Xia Anyao, Gardner.

Even though he was mentally prepared, at that moment, he still felt like falling into an ice cellar in the dream, shivering uncontrollably from the cold all over his body. He felt a similarly short figure next to him lean over, also grabbing the railing, staring blankly at the sea for a while, and muttered, "Why did we come up while Dad and the others are still staying below? Isn't it cold?"

Xia Chuan felt that he seemed to have said something too, but amidst the noise, he couldn't even hear his own words clearly.

He vaguely felt someone patting his head, and a low voice of an adult man sounded behind him: "Since I was allowed to keep my life, I have to make sure you grow up alive..."

His voice was like a whisper, so low that it was almost just a breath, and even trembling slightly, as if in fear or anger... or maybe because he had also been in the sea for a long time, soaked to the extreme cold all over.

The moment Xia Chuan woke up from this rare complete dream, he remembered whose voice this adult man was - if it was slowed down a bit more, the volume a little louder, with some trembling from lack of confidence in some words, then it would be Professor Linton's usual speaking voice.

As his consciousness gradually awakened, the same noisy sounds as in the dream poured into his ears, among which the loudest voice was simply too familiar to him. Most of the time in the past, that voice had been buzzing around his ears, rarely shutting up, and only gave them a moment of peace before leaving Xia Liang and the others.

"Dennis," Xia Chuan narrowed his eyes and said in a hoarse voice, "Don't scream in my ear..."

"Ahhh - you're awake! You're finally awake!" Dennis was frantically gesticulating beside him, jumping around like crazy and unable to stop.

Xia Chuan endured the headache and helplessly turned his head to the side, only to see Shen Lan on the next bed. The night before, he had carried Xia Chuan and swam in the sea for too long, so long that he was still in a deep sleep now, waking up even later than Xia Chuan. The somewhat dazzling sunlight shone in from the window, falling on his short hair, making the dark brown glow with a golden hue.

"Where is this?" Xia Chuan felt his throat was so dry that it was about to crack with every word he said.

Dennis, immersed in inexplicable excitement, didn't forget to help him sit up, propped two soft pillows behind his waist, and handed him the warm water that had been left on the bedside table for a while, saying, "The hospital of course, the one next to our company. Almost everyone on the ship was rescued, but they woke up earlier than us. A batch of them were discharged one after another in the past few days, and we are already the stragglers."

Xia Chuan took a sip of water and frowned slightly, always feeling that his words sounded a bit... strange.

"The people on the ship?" Xia Chuan thought, could people from more than 20 years ago be salvaged? Or... did they enter the next illusion and didn't really return to reality at all?

"You forgot?" Dennis looked at him in disbelief, and couldn't help reaching out to touch Xia Chuan's forehead, but before he could touch it, Xia Chuan blocked it with his hand in annoyance.

"Weren't we on a cruise ship before? Later, we encountered waterspouts near Bermuda, four of them! Then the ship sank, right? You really... don't remember anything at all? You couldn't have lost your memory, right? No, I have to call the doctor to take a look, doc-"

He had only called out half of his long-winded "doctor" when Xia Chuan quickly covered his mouth and forcibly muffled it.

After hearing his words just now, for the first time, Xia Chuan felt a sense of "damn it" in his heart.

"Wait a moment before calling, let me ask you a few things first." Xia Chuan finished the remaining half glass of water in the glass, held the glass and lowered his head to think quickly for a while, then directly raised his hand and pointed to Shen Lan on the next bed, saying, "Do you know this person?"

"Huh?" Dennis turned his head to look in Shen Lan's direction and shook his head, "I don't know him. There were at least a hundred people on the ship. I'm not familiar with many of them. I've never seen this one at all. I guess we haven't met."

Xia Chuan's fingers holding the glass twitched, and he thought, alright, he doesn't even know Shen Lan, so there's no need to ask. He could roughly guess what was going on.

If Shen Lan wasn't present, Xia Chuan might have suspected that he had a long dream while in a coma, absurd yet real, making him almost unable to distinguish whether he was in a dream or experiencing it in person. But now Shen Lan, a part of the absurdity, was lying beside him, so the one dreaming was not himself -

Obviously, with that company's usual habit of digging holes everywhere in a roundabout way, they probably did something to Dennis and "formatted" all his memories of being in the sea. Xia Chuan suspected that other people with the same experience, such as Laura and her son Allen, and those who got separated from them at the end of the first world, might have received the same treatment.

It's easy to understand that with a place as strange and beyond ordinary people's imagination as the "Deep Sea Memory Area", they couldn't possibly let so many people remember it. If anyone casually mentioned it, it would cause heated discussion. Once it received too much attention, the things that Wes Company had been doing secretly for so many years would be dug out.

After all, Professor Linton and these researchers were a minority and could be controlled by the company through various abnormal means. But once the number of people exceeded a certain amount, it would be much more difficult for the company to control them so tightly.

At the same time, he dared to be sure that Professor Linton, including Gerald who was also involved, were not in the team to be "formatted". After all, the company's research was still closely related to them to a certain extent. Casually "formatting the disk" was not a beneficial move.

"But, Chuan, let me tell you, there was a very strange thing that scared me so much that I didn't dare to sleep last night. After all, this is a hospital, and it's creepy in the middle of the night. Luckily, the German guy took the wrong medicine and came to see if my fever had gone down. I pulled him to talk nonsense for a night." Dennis patted his chest with lingering fear.

Xia Chuan was still sorting out his thoughts in his mind. When he heard this, he was stunned for a moment and looked up, "What strange thing?"

"It's this..." Dennis picked up a leather-bound notebook from the bedside table. No, to be precise, he picked it up with the tips of two fingers as if the notebook was infected with a plague.

He threw the notebook in front of Xia Chuan nervously and rubbed his fingers, "According to the German guy, it was salvaged from the sea together, wrapped in a waterproof bag, so it's still in pretty good condition."

Xia Chuan was not afraid of those superstitious things. He picked up the notebook, glanced at the cover, and felt it looked a bit familiar, "Isn't this the one from your bag?"

"How do you know? I don't remember taking it out much!" Dennis said in surprise.

Xia Chuan thought to himself that he had already looked through everything in Dennis' bag on the first day in the cave, so it was normal to know. But he didn't mention it, nor did he open the notebook. He just picked it up and shook it, "It's just a notebook, and it's your own. What's so strange about it?"

"That's the problem!" Dennis said, somewhat excitedly lifting his hand to flip open the cover, revealing a certain page inside. That page was folded at the corner by him, "Take a look at the content."

Xia Chuan looked down and found that the page he opened seemed to be a diary based on the format. He hesitated and glanced at Dennis.

"Read it, read it, I beg you to read it!" Dennis raised his chin at him.

"..." Xia Chuan lowered his head again impatiently and skimmed through the entire diary entry at a glance.

He immediately understood why Dennis would find it strange. Because based on the content of this diary entry, it should have been written by Dennis when they were staying with the primitive tribe. He rambled on about his amazement at that world, described the scenes he saw in the tribe, and incidentally recalled what happened in the dinosaur world before.

At the end, he mentioned, "I've been running for my life and really didn't have time to write these things down before. Now that I finally have a moment to spare, I feel I should still record it, after all, this experience is really too wonderful."

"There's more after that, several pages in a row!" Dennis said with a look of horror, "What the hell is all this! Dinosaur world and primitive tribes, and a man who can turn into a mosasaur with a tattoo on his back called Shen Lan! You're in here too! It even says that you seem to have gotten together with that Shen Lan - hey hey! Don't look at me, don't look at me!

"I don't know anything, it's all written in this diary. Isn't it ridiculous? Someone with your personality would fall in love with a creature that's neither human nor beast? Oh my god... just thinking about it feels like a horror story. It's simply nonsense, right?"

The more Dennis talked, the more excited he became. Hearing this, the corner of Xia Chuan's mouth twitched. He couldn't help but throw the notebook in his hand into Dennis' arms, then leaned against the head of the bed and looked at Dennis catching the diary like catching a bomb with a blank expression.

"But, such a horrifying diary, judging from the handwriting, it was really written by me..." Dennis said with a whimper, almost crying, "When did I start sleepwalking and writing diaries? I haven't eaten anything dirty recently either."

Just as the emotionally collapsing Dennis was about to pounce on Xia Chuan's leg, Shen Lan in the next bed impatiently lifted the quilt and sat up. He frowned, scratched his hair, shook his head, and said with half-closed eyes, "Dennis, shut up for a while... My head is about to explode from hearing your whining as soon as I wake up."

Dennis looked at him in a daze, "..."

It was unknown whether it was because he had been sunbathed by the sun outside the window for too long, his body was too dry so he was in a bad mood, or something else. Shen Lan sat with his eyes narrowed and head lowered for a while before he recovered. After he fully opened his eyes, the fierceness on his face dissipated a bit. When he saw Xia Chuan, the clouds immediately cleared.

Dennis watched this man, who had just wanted to smash the bed, change his face faster than flipping a book, and happily lifted the quilt and got out of bed. He looked extremely tall when he stood up, at least over 1.9 meters, directly blocking the sunlight from the window.

It was unknown who was responsible for taking care of him before. He was seen wearing no hospital gown on his upper body, his shoulders and back bare, his muscles firm and full, looking strong and powerful. He took a long step and climbed onto Xia Chuan's bed, shamelessly lifting Xia Chuan's quilt and crawling in, leaning against the head of the bed shoulder to shoulder with Xia Chuan.

In a daze, Dennis seemed to see a row of dark tattoos on the back of his shoulders, but he didn't see clearly what was tattooed. He subconsciously felt that such a stranger climbing into Xia Chuan's bed would result in either a broken hand or a broken foot. In short, he would definitely be crippled. But then he felt that something seemed wrong.

The next second, he saw Xia Chuan calmly say to the man, "Awake? Do you want to go soak in some water? There's a shower room there."

"Is that so?" After saying that, Shen Lan first leaned in and kissed Xia Chuan on the lips, before turning around and getting out of bed.

Dennis: "What the...?!"

"You hurry up and go find the professor after washing up." Just as Xia Chuan finished saying this, he saw Gerald standing at the door. He cast a glance at Xia Chuan and Shen Lan, but didn't say anything, and then walked away without looking back.

Dennis was still standing there like a Roman pillar, his soul already shocked beyond the ninth heaven by what he had just witnessed with his own eyes. The same sentence kept swirling in his mind: "Holy f***, Xia Chuan actually got together with a tattooed man! Could it be that this man can really turn into a mosasaurus? Help―"

At this time, Xia Chuan had no time to explain anything to him. Gerald's eyes just now clearly said: "Come with me, hurry up."

So Shen Lan, enduring the discomfort all over his body, pulled Xia Chuan without a word and was about to go out the door.

"Stay in your room, don't go anywhere for now, and don't ask anything. I'll explain to you later." Xia Chuan instructed Dennis, and then quickly followed Gerald with Shen Lan.