Despite Shen Lan's face being several meters large when he transformed back into a mosasaur, both literally and figuratively, he still felt a bit guilty at this moment. After all, if luck wasn't on his side, a single tail swipe could have ended someone's life.

He originally sat on the black rock in a very carefree and arrogant posture, with his chin slightly raised, giving off a sense of looking down from above. Now, due to his guilty conscience, he subconsciously changed his posture.

He sat upright and looked at Xia Chuan with a serious face, saying, "I told you, I actually only wanted to lightly pat you."

His brow ridge was very high and his eye sockets were a bit deep. His eye color was also a deep and pure blue, which made him look particularly sincere when he looked at someone with a slightly gentle expression.

Xia Chuan was fooled by this look the first time he saw Shen Lan, but now he was no longer falling for it.

He glanced at Shen Lan and repeated what Dennis had said before, "A fifteen or sixteen ton thing, and you're telling me it's a light pat?"

Shen Lan scratched his cheek, thought for a moment, and said, "...Before this, I never thought about how heavy I was."

Xia Chuan: "..."

He looked quite speechless, as if he couldn't find the right words to respond for a moment.

Shen Lan looked him up and down carefully again, feeling quite amazed - these two in front of him were clearly the same species, but their reactions were so vastly different.

One had already come to his senses and was asking for compensation, while the other was still in a daze with a look of "either I'm crazy or the world is crazy". In comparison, Xia Chuan seemed even more special.

Thinking of this, Shen Lan couldn't help but add, "At that time, I saw you were about to run, so I wanted to stop you."

Xia Chuan glanced at him with a look reserved for lunatics and said, "...Anyone who's not sick would want to run in that situation, it's human instinct."

After saying that, he paused for a moment, then added indifferently, "Those who aren't human wouldn't understand."

Shen Lan: "..."

He looked down at his hands and feet that weren't much different from Xia Chuan's, and was about to retort. He hadn't spoken for many years, so he had to think a little before opening his mouth each time. Just this one pause allowed Xia Chuan to block him.

"I've never seen a thirty-ton person," Xia Chuan said.

Shen Lan twitched the corner of his mouth and honestly said, "I haven't either."

Xia Chuan: "..."

These two were not talkative people to begin with. On weekdays, they rarely spoke a word and cherished each word like gold, too lazy to open their mouths unless necessary. One had a speaking style that was a bit cold, while the other was unconventional. They unintentionally reached a state of mutual choking, and unusually became more talkative.

"...At that time, I had food in my mouth and couldn't free up space, so I could only use my tail," Shen Lan thought about it and continued to explain.

After hearing this, Xia Chuan was silent for two seconds with a blank expression, then said in an even colder tone, "So, if you didn't have that pterosaur in your mouth, instead of slapping me with your tail, you would have directly bitten me to death?"

Shen Lan: "...Of course not!"

"No? You think your teeth are made of plastic?" Xia Chuan weighed the military knife in his hand, snorted coldly, and glanced at him. "Why don't you transform back into a fatty and let me use this knife to cut out your tongue, then I'll tell you I'm just testing how fast the blade is, lightly cutting it, how about that?"

Shen Lan had a head full of question marks: "Fatty?"

Xia Chuan reminded him, "Thirty tons in weight."

"..." Shen Lan silently lowered his head, unzipped his vest, glanced at his chest and abdominal muscles without any excess fat, then raised his head and seriously thought about the scenario Xia Chuan described.

Then, with a pained expression, he moved his tongue that hadn't been cut yet, licked his upper lip and said, "Okay, I was wrong, I apologize."

Joking aside, he knew that after transforming back into a mosasaur, he was practically highly nearsighted. Hunting, predation, and perceiving his surroundings all relied on that forked tongue. If it was cut off, he'd be done for.

Xia Chuan didn't really intend to settle the score with him. Let alone the fact that his current state limited his skills, even if he was uninjured, he was no match for Shen Lan. Moreover, he could actually see that Shen Lan meant no harm, but if he didn't make Shen Lan realize his uniqueness as a mosasaur, the next time something happened, Shen Lan might have another brain fart and come to "lightly pat" again, and then the joke would be on them.

So when Shen Lan admitted his mistake, Xia Chuan no longer dwelled on that topic. Instead, he asked about another thing he didn't quite understand, "Why did you come to save us time and time again?"

Especially after already saying "suit yourselves".

Shen Lan looked at him with a pained expression, "I wanted to say it's because you can be considered half of my kind. In a place like this, humans are a very rare concept, but..." But he had just been expelled from the human race due to his thirty-ton weight.

Xia Chuan glanced at him impatiently, "...Besides that."

"Besides that, it's..." Shen Lan's gaze swept over Xia Chuan's face and landed on his neck, pausing for a few seconds. "That day when I surfaced, it was because I detected a very...scent."

Xia Chuan: "Very what? What's with the missing words when you speak?"

Shen Lan: "...Strange yet familiar, and most importantly, it made me feel quite comfortable, making me want to go over and take a look."

Xia Chuan thought of the situation that day and Shen Lan's reason for slapping him. He frowned, "So, you think that scent was emanating from Dennis and me? What do you mean by scent? Smell?"

"It's not smell, but you can temporarily understand it that way. I can't describe it, don't make things difficult for someone who hasn't spoken for years," Shen Lan retorted, but his tone wasn't hard at all. He glanced at Xia Chuan and added, "And I believe that scent was emanating from you, and has nothing to do with that idiot."

Dennis, who was inexplicably attacked, looked at Shen Lan in a daze, obviously still in a trance and not keeping up with the rhythm.

Hearing this, Xia Chuan couldn't help but frown and lower his head to sniff himself a couple of times. Apart from the smell of seawater on his clothes, he really couldn't smell anything else. If what Shen Lan said is true, regardless of what that scent is, it at least to some extent constitutes a reason for Shen Lan's special attitude towards Xia Chuan, which is understandable.

However... what could this scent be? Xia Chuan lowered his head and thought for a long time, but couldn't come up with any possible explanation.

"...You said you haven't spoken for several years, so originally—" Xia Chuan wanted to ask about Shen Lan's background to see if there was any overlap with his own, which would help guess the origin of that scent. However, he suddenly heard a "zz zz" sound.