But at this moment, Xia Chuan's attention was not on Dennis' face.

Scattered around him were a pile of things that had been dumped out of Dennis' backpack, and Xia Chuan's gaze was fixed on the blue and white striped square bag.

He was quite familiar with this bag. Having known Dennis for several years, he felt that the only habit of Dennis worth encouraging was to carry this small square bag with him wherever he went, which contained some commonly used medicines.

Xia Chuan unceremoniously scooped up the square bag, unzipped it, and rummaged around inside with his thin, pale index finger, occasionally picking up a box to read the instructions in the firelight.

After some picking and choosing, he finally found a small bottle of painkillers and a box of anti-inflammatory medicine.

"It's strange, in this godforsaken place, the cell phone signal is actually - huh? What medicine are you taking? What's wrong, Chuan?"

Dennis was holding his spare cell phone, wondering what to say to Xia Chuan, but before he could finish, he saw Xia Chuan unscrewing the lid of a bottle of medicine and pouring two soybean-sized white pills into his palm.

He stopped talking, turned his head and scanned around, found the soda he had taken out, and hurriedly unscrewed it, "Hey, the water is here - holy shit you -"

Before Dennis could hand over the soda, he saw Xia Chuan casually toss the two pills into his mouth and swallow them dry, just like that.

"Won't you really choke to death swallowing them dry like that?!" Dennis held the water and stared at Xia Chuan for a few seconds, then grabbed the medicine bottle from his hand and took a look, "Painkillers? You're really hurt? How did you get hurt? Where are you hurt? Is it serious?"

He asked questions like a machine gun, one after another, making people's ears buzz, not knowing which one to answer first, so Xia Chuan simply didn't answer any of them.

His throat was already burning and extremely dry. Having just eaten ammonite meat and dry-swallowed two large bitter pills, his throat felt even more uncomfortable. He was too lazy to open his mouth and find trouble for himself, so he took the small bottle of soda from Dennis' hand and drank a small mouthful to moisten his throat that was dry to the point of catching fire.

Then he took apart two more capsules with anti-inflammatory effects and swallowed them down with a small mouthful of water.

Dennis: "...What medicine are you taking now? Is it okay to take two kinds together? Don't you look at the side effects and instructions?"

In the three years they had known each other, Dennis had never seen Xia Chuan get sick, but he had seen him get injured. When it came to treating his own injuries and illnesses, he was so perfunctory that even a dog wouldn't be able to stand it.

Whether it was a gunshot wound or a cold weapon injury, he would just take out a couple of anti-inflammatory tablets and swallow them, then simply disinfect the wound, his movements so rough that just watching made one feel a searing pain, but he wouldn't even furrow his brow, as if he was treating someone else's injury.

Then he would wrap a bandage around the wound a couple of times to make a point.

Xia Chuan had an extremely low affinity for things like bandages, because once they were wrapped on, they always made his movements much more stiff. So he could only endure it for two days at most.

As long as the wound began to show signs of scabbing and scarring, he would tear off the cumbersome bandages and do whatever he needed to do.

Dennis had nagged him many times about his habit of treating anti-inflammatory drugs as a "panacea".

He himself felt that his tongue was going to develop calluses, but that moving iceberg just let it go in one ear and out the other, not taking it to heart at all, and the next time he was injured, it was the same - he was as particular about eating as he was perfunctory about taking medicine, never able to get on the same track.

Xia Chuan took the painkillers and anti-inflammatory capsules, drank a couple more small mouthfuls of soda to moisten his throat, and felt that his throat was more comfortable than before. Only then did he open his mouth and say to Dennis, as if words were gold, "What about the signal, continue."

Dennis: "..." Great, a whole string of questions asked, not a single answer.

However, he also knew that Xia Chuan never liked to mention his injuries, so he didn't continue to ask. Reminded by Xia Chuan, he finally remembered what he was going to say before -

Dennis held up the spare cell phone in his hand, waved it in front of Xia Chuan, turned the screen towards Xia Chuan, and said, "See the signal bars in the upper left corner, please take a good look, and then tell me loudly if this is fucking full bars or not? Let me confirm if I'm blind! In this godforsaken place, with nothing but prehistoric animals, primeval forests and the sea everywhere... there's actually a signal? And full bars? This is fucking ridiculous!"

But who knew that after staring at the phone screen for a few seconds, Xia Chuan suddenly said, "No signal."

"Huh?!" Dennis blinked, retracted his hand, lowered his head and took another hard look at the screen, almost gouging out his eyeballs and sticking them directly on the screen.

The upper left corner of the spare phone, where the signal was displayed, did indeed show three words - "No Service".

"Huh? How can that be - so before it was just because it had just been turned on and the phone status hadn't reacted yet?" As Dennis spoke, his eyes remained glued to the screen, puzzled, when he saw the three words "No Service" flash twice and disappear, and then the signal bars became full again.

Dennis: "...What's going on?" As soon as he finished speaking, the signal bars started going crazy again - one bar for a while, three bars for a while, then full bars again.

In less than a minute, the entire signal bar flashed crazily as if it had lost its mind.

Seeing him staring at the phone in a daze for a long time without moving, Xia Chuan frowned and asked hoarsely, "What's wrong?"

Dennis gave a dry laugh and said in an almost monotonous tone, "Hehe, I think it's probably really haunted... If I get a call at this time, I won't be surprised -"

Before he could finish his sentence, the spare phone in his hand suddenly started vibrating, "Buzz - buzz -".

"Surprised... indeed..." Dennis squeezed out the last two words from his throat, then his hand trembled and the phone dropped to the ground with a "plop", the glowing screen facing up, continuing to vibrate "buzz buzz" against the uneven stone cave floor.

Xia Chuan glanced at Dennis, then let his gaze fall on the phone screen, which displayed the caller's name - Gerald Weimer.

This person was not a stranger to Xia Chuan. Rather than his name, he was more accustomed to another way of referring to this man - that German guy who always had a stern face. This was how Dennis described him every time he mentioned him, and Dennis had just talked about him less than ten minutes ago.

This person, just a day ago, or roughly a day, had been on the same cruise ship as them. Later, like them, he had broken out of the cabin and fallen into the sea.

The only difference was - Xia Chuan and Dennis were still alive, while Gerald... was probably sleeping in the deep sea by now.

In this seemingly prehistoric hellhole, the cell phone actually still had a signal and could receive incoming calls, and this call came from a dead man...

The color drained from Dennis's face almost instantly as he stared at the phone, but he didn't dare to reach out and touch it.

Xia Chuan, whose courage knew no bounds, glanced at him, then simply picked up the phone, hit the answer button, and put it to his ear.