Xia Chuan's face changed. As Xia Liang dodged the bullets, Xia Chuan leaned against the window and took a glance. Then he grabbed Shen Lan's arm with one hand for leverage, and with his other long arm, he reached out towards the lower side of the porthole window and swiftly hauled up a heavy object.

Although his strength was not as great as Shen Lan's, it was much greater than an ordinary person's. Thinking carefully, his reaction speed, physical strength, and even eyesight were all somewhat extraordinary compared to normal people.

Because this uniqueness was not as prominent as Shen Lan's, Xia Chuan had not paid attention to it before, thinking that he was probably just born with a stronger physique than others. Now it seemed that it was likely inseparable from this experiment. Either he had also been tampered with by the Wes Company when he was a child, or he was affected by Xia Liang's genes.

Of course, he was more inclined to the latter.

The heavy object he hauled up in one hand was a person who had been ambushing under the porthole window, wearing gray-black clothes that matched the color of the ship's hull outside. In such a deep night, it did not appear conspicuous, indicating it was a planned and organized action.

That person probably didn't expect someone to be able to single-handedly lift a living adult like him. In a panic, his marksmanship lost accuracy and he fired wildly at Xia Chuan, but because of Xia Chuan's hand movements, all the shots missed.

He gritted his teeth and struggled, trying to grab Xia Chuan's neck and pull him out of the porthole window as well. Unfortunately, Xia Chuan's other hand was holding onto Shen Lan, so he couldn't be budged.

During his struggle, he fired the last bullet, which by chance aimed at Xia Chuan's heart.

Xia Chuan's pupils suddenly contracted, but before that person's finger could exert force on the trigger, he felt a flicker in front of his eyes. Immediately after, he heard a crisp "crack" sound from his wrist, and an excruciating pain shot from his wrist to his heart, so painful that he opened his mouth wanting to cry out in agony.

"Who gave you the guts to touch my son..." Xia Liang let go of his wrist, kicked away the gun that had fallen into the window, and said coldly.

The gun that fell to the ground was scooped up by Shen Lan. In a few quick motions, he unloaded the last bullet, pinched it between his fingertips with a gloomy face, crushed it forcefully, then stuffed it straight into that person's mouth. He then forcefully closed the person's lower jaw, trapping the bullet casing and the person's cry of pain inside, and then squeezed his neck with force.

That person then swallowed what was in his mouth with a "gulp".

"Seeking death," Shen Lan snorted coldly, taking the person from Xia Chuan's hand and pulling Xia Chuan in front of himself, still shaken.

Since swallowing what was in his mouth, that person's eyes rolled back. His speech suddenly became slurred as he hummed incoherently, then his head tilted and he quickly fell still.

"Dead?" Shen Lan glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

"No." Xia Liang walked to the edge of the dripping mucus, sniffed the smell, then lifted his hand to rub a drop between his fingertips and said, "A kind of anesthetic."

Shen Lan laughed disdainfully and let go with a look of disgust, dropping the unconscious person down. "What were they thinking, actually using anesthetics against you?"

Xia Chuan also felt those people were a bit reckless. He recalled that when they were in the dinosaur world, Shen Lan had said he often ate poisonous things, but they had no effect on him. After all, not only was his body size huge, his physique was also abnormal. A little bit of poison to him was no different than a mosquito bite.

"A special anesthetic," Xia Liang said with a cold laugh. "I made it. The drug can knock out people like you and me without issue. It's just that when I made this kind of anesthetic, I never thought that one day it would be used on myself."

"What did you make this stuff for?" Shen Lan said, looking speechless.

"To reduce suffering," Xia Liang said. "It was originally for those people who were also used as experimental subjects."

As he spoke, he rubbed the mucus on his hand dry, then turned his head, his brown eyes staring unblinkingly at the two people who had barged in.

"Professor? German guy?" Dennis called out, his heart still pounding from the fright. He took advantage of the moonlight to see the appearance of the two clearly.

Xia Liang also quickly saw their faces. His gaze settled on Professor Linton who was in the lead. After looking at him for a moment, his eyes narrowed and he frowned hesitantly, calling out, "Buddy?"

Hearing this name, Gardner's eyes widened. He walked up to Professor Linton in a few steps, looked him up and down, then said in surprise, "Buddy, is it really you? You also came from the future like them? But... how did you end up like this?"

Seeing the reactions of the two and hearing these words, Xia Chuan and Shen Lan also became a bit puzzled.

When Professor Linton and Gerald entered, they didn't forget to lock the door behind them, clearly not here to cause trouble. He looked deeply at Xia Liang, then at Gardner, his expression appearing a bit weathered. "Wondering how I aged so quickly?" he said.

Dennis slapped his thigh. "I said the timeline seemed a bit off. No matter how I calculated the professor's age, it seemed problematic. I remember the three-person photo I saw, although the professor's face was blocked, his body didn't look like someone in his forties. He seemed not much older than you two, Mr. Xia. Of course, I could be blind..."

Linton waved his hand. "My actual age is younger than what you saw in the information. In fact, I'm indeed not much older than them."

Xia Chuan and Shen Lan were a bit shocked and exchanged a glance. With the personalities of these two who didn't mince words, they almost blurted out "Now you look simply like someone in your seventies."

Fortunately, Professor Linton could be considered an acquaintance, so they held back those words and swallowed them.

If according to what he said, he was not much older than Xia Liang and Gardner, then he should be in his early fifties at most now. With today's living standards, if he maintained himself properly, he should look similar to a robust man in his forties. He shouldn't have this aged appearance at all.

"It's also due to the influence of the experiments..." Professor Linton began. "But those things aren't important. At least I'm still alive. I originally planned to find you all when the five-minute gap arrived."

He looked at Xia Chuan and the others and said, "But as soon as the power went out, I knew we couldn't wait any longer. Gerald and I rushed over, only to find you weren't in the room. We searched a few more places and just happened to see what looked like Shen Lan's figure flash by from the stairs, so we followed. Luckily..."

Before he could finish his sentence, a few more dark shots came in, grazing Gardner's arm and embedding into the wall.

"Persistent ghosts," Shen Lan said without hesitation, grabbing the window edge with one hand and flipping his entire body out. A few miserable cries of pain were heard, followed by the dull thuds of heavy objects being thrown onto the deck, and then Shen Lan somersaulted back in.

His coming and going took an extremely short time, so short that Professor Linton didn't even have time to say a few more words.

"Luckily what?" Xia Liang asked.

"You mustn't jump into the sea at this time. Someone has injected anesthetics into Amos and me, and at the same time implanted two very deadly things," Professor Linton said.

"Do you remember the physical examinations each time? During the physicals, the company has already implanted an information device in every examinee's body. Every one of us here has it in our bodies, and the two devices implanted in Amos and me are precisely targeted at each person's internal information device.

"Once the secretion of various information elements in the body changes, such as if you attempt to transform into a sea beast, or if Gardner and the others experience a wide range of emotional fluctuations, the information device will automatically activate and connect to the two on Amos and me. Once those two are triggered and activated, you will instantly fall into immediate freezing."

"Immediate what?" Shen Lan couldn't help but interject.

"This is a description of a special bodily state. A person who enters immediate freezing still has their senses, but their torso cannot move. In other words, once you enter the sea, before you have time to transform into a sea beast, you will already be frozen. I've had that experience once. I saw your eyes at that time, and I also saw Anyao and Gardner's immobile and helpless state in the sea. I don't want to see it again."

Listening to his description, Xia Chuan suddenly had a sense of déjà vu, as if he empathized with such a scene, and the next second, he abruptly thought of the dream that had been haunting him...

Those pale faces slowly floating up from the depths of the seawater - whenever he was about to see the appearances of those faces clearly, he would startle awake from the dream.

Now that he thought about it, perhaps it wasn't a dream at all, but a deep memory.

The thought that the faces in the sea might be Xia Liang, Xia Anyao, Gardner and the others made him feel a chill throughout his body.

Xia Liang's face also instantly darkened. "Is this another thing the company did behind our backs?"

"The information device you mentioned, is there any way to take it out?" Xia Chuan asked.

"No," Xia Liang answered grimly before Professor Linton could respond. "Although I haven't directly dealt with this kind of information device, I've encountered similar things. And judging from the company's consistent practices, they won't leave such a way out."

"That's right, it can't be taken out," Professor Linton said. "Removing it will cause dysfunction in the body's coagulation, leading to unstoppable bleeding. By then, even blood transfusions won't be in time to save you."

Professor Linton gave a bitter smile. "The ones in your bodies are just the most rudimentary. The ones in Gerald's and my bodies have already reached the current highest level and also have monitoring functions."

Xia Liang frowned. "What do you mean? So your every move is still under surveillance? Then what you're saying here..."

"Has also been transmitted back in its entirety," Professor Linton nodded.

"This is why we originally wanted to find you during the five-minute gap," Gerald added stiffly from the side.

"But," Dennis suddenly thought of a question, "Professor, you've returned to this point in time and prevented this from happening, so won't all subsequent events change? Everything will be affected. Each of our experiences will also change accordingly.

"Chuan may not be sent to the orphanage or do this kind of work. Shen Lan may still have a father and may not end up in the previous dinosaur world. Xia Chuan and I may not have the chance to know each other at all, and we may not have the experience of taking a cruise together, which means we won't encounter the shipwreck again, won't inexplicably enter the dinosaur world, won't meet the people of that tribe, and won't come here...

"Then you also won't have the opportunity to come and stop this. This has become a dead knot that doesn't make sense at all."

Professor Linton suddenly raised his eyes and exchanged a quick glance with Xia Liang, then quickly withdrew his gaze and said to Dennis, "That's why I never said we returned to the real past."

"What do you mean?" Xia Chuan's heart tightened upon hearing this.

"I heard from Dennis that you once went to a nameless small island near Panama?" Professor Linton said. "I heard you encountered a very special tribe there. If I'm not mistaken, I've also been to the same place as you and met the chief of that tribe. The people of that tribe regard the sea as a deity."

"It seems to be the same one indeed," Xia Chuan replied.

At first, Shen Lan listened in complete confusion, unable to react at all. It wasn't until Professor Linton mentioned this tribe that regarded the sea as a deity that he suddenly recalled a fragment.

Back when they were still staying with that primitive tribe, while holding a sea burial for Aegon's son and two other tribesmen by the sea, Xia Chuan had mentioned something to him. He said that he had once heard the chief of a similar desolate island tribe talk about some customs and legends.

Legend had it that some tribes believed water and soil to be the sources of life, the most inclusive and sacred things in this world. When they reached the end of their lives, these tribes who believed in water and soil would bring soil and return to the deep sea, slumbering within it, praying for the most vast, most all-encompassing, and most mysterious place in the world to carve out a small space for their souls to rest.

Legend said that many, many years later, when all who knew them had left this world, when all things on earth had gone through numerous cycles, the eternal sea would still remember these souls slumbering within it.

Of course, at that time he purely thought this kind of talk was nonsense, and it was just a beautiful legend and nothing more.

But who can say for sure about things in this world, just like no normal person could imagine that he could freely switch between human and mosasaurus forms, and not many people would believe that he had lived for many years in a dinosaur world that should have long disappeared.

Xia Chuan was pondering the same thing in his heart at this time. When he heard Professor Linton mention that island tribe and their belief in the ocean, he vaguely anticipated what he would say next.

Sure enough, Professor Linton swept his eyes over them and said, "About eight years ago, the company detected a very special area under the Bermuda Sea. The gravitational and magnetic fields in this area were very chaotic. According to the detection results, the area of this strange region was not large, and there existed a very peculiar... let's call it energy for now.

"The various changing characteristics of that energy were recorded and found to be similar to brain waves. The company was extremely interested and wanted to conduct long-term monitoring and research on this area. But when the detection personnel arrived at Bermuda for the second time, they couldn't find that special area in the same location. It was as if it could move by itself.

"In the next two years, attempts were made continuously, and it was finally detected intermittently a few times. Then, based on the statistical data, some patterns of this area were grasped. Shen Lan was released into that sea area at that time..."

The faces of the few people present all sank. After all, it was uncomfortable for anyone to hear that a good person, especially one related to those present, was released into the sea like a test subject.

"Of course, your memory has been processed, so you only remember some things you should remember. An information device was also implanted in your body, but the information devices at that time were incomparable to the current ones. At least the one on you malfunctioned.

"As a result, after you were released into that sea area, your whereabouts were quickly lost. When the company detected your existence for the second time, you had already arrived in that dinosaur world."

Professor Linton said to Shen Lan, "In the next six years, the company only intermittently received some information about that world through you, and more often it was in a state of disconnection, let alone bringing you back through the information device. So in the present day with more mature technology, they had me and Gerald send Xia Chuan in, because the information devices between you two are also connected. When necessary, you can be controlled by controlling him, hoping to bring you back.

"However, although the information obtained from you was limited, in conjunction with several other ongoing monitoring projects, we believe that the sea area where you stayed should be the brain of the sea, storing the memories of the sea, just like those legends. It records the creatures buried in the sea, like human brain memories, divided into different segments, existing in blocks."

"Nonsense. According to this, what it stores should be the real events that existed." Shen Lan pointed to himself and Xia Chuan, "But obviously the place we are in has changed because of us."

"As I said before, the huge energy existing in this sea area is similar to brain waves, which means that the memories of the sea, like human memories, will deviate from reality due to some factors. Moreover, when you come here, it is equivalent to entering the interior of the brain area and becoming a part of it. Your brain waves will affect the brain waves of this area, which is why the things that people in it think about will become real to a certain extent."

"So we didn't really go back to the past, but are actually staying in a certain area at the bottom of the Bermuda Sea?" Dennis asked.

Professor Linton nodded.

Dennis was stunned, "So you mean, what we have changed is just a memory, not reality at all?"

Professor Linton: "Mm."

"What do you mean?" Xia Chuan only felt his heart suddenly shrink with Dennis's words.

"It means this is not reality. Reality is still what it should be." Professor Linton closed his eyes and said, "The only difference is probably that you and Shen Lan met them, but I don't know if this brings you more satisfaction or more regret."

Xia Chuan only felt his mind go "buzzing" and become a blank. He looked at Xia Liang and Xia Anyao with a somewhat dazed expression, thinking: So they still didn't survive in reality?

The heavens had played an unprecedented joke on him, first giving him great hope, and then smashing that hope to pieces with unchangeable facts.

"No wonder you talked to us for so long and all the content was received by the company, but nothing has happened yet..." Dennis looked dejected, "So reality can't be changed after all?"

"There will still be consequences, so we... probably need to leave here as soon as possible." Professor Linton glanced at Xia Liang again swiftly and inconspicuously, then shifted his gaze to Dennis without any sign. He said, "I think it's better for you to leave with us. As for Xia Chuan, Shen Lan and the others, I believe they should want to stay together for a while longer."

"What about the attacking people?" Dennis kept shaking his head. He was holding a gun in his hand after all, and his marksmanship was not bad. When necessary, he could still block some people for them. Although this actually had no impact on reality, even in such a memory, Xia Chuan and Shen Lan would not want to see Xia Liang and the others get hurt.

Professor Linton patted his shoulder, exerting some force with his hand: "Don't worry, because of the existence of the information device, the company is not worried that they will escape, so those attacking people are just coming to put on a show. If the obstruction succeeds, that's good, but if it doesn't, there's no impact. There won't be any more attacks.

"After the three of us leave, you can have a good talk and say goodbye. After all, I don't think you want to be monitored even when saying farewell." After saying that, he led the reluctant Dennis away without allowing any argument.

Sure enough, just as Professor Linton said, the attackers were not many. After Shen Lan, Xia Chuan, and Xia Liang easily dealt with two waves of them, no new people appeared.

Xia Chuan's mind was still a bit chaotic. For the first time, he found it so difficult to calm down. Gardner and Xia Anyao were also obviously frightened by the professor's words, their expressions remaining somewhat dazed. Thus, Shen Lan, whose way of thinking was different from ordinary people, became the first among them to take action.

It was as if he had forgotten the professor's words that "what they do now cannot affect reality." He stood by the round window, glanced at the sea surface below, and then said, "What did that old man mean just now? If I understood correctly... Amos, tsk, what a strange name," he muttered, and then continued, "Also, the device in Buddy's body is targeting the information devices in your bodies, not ours, right?" He raised his hand and pointed at himself and Xia Chuan.

Xia Liang nodded, "Indeed."

"Then it's easy," Shen Lan perked up, pointing out the window, "Don't hesitate, jump. You don't need to transform into a sea beast. And you guys, don't panic and cry. I promise I'll catch you. We'll go down first, you follow."

With that, without a word of notice, he flipped out of the round window, one hand gripping the window edge and the other grasping Xia Chuan's wrist. His whole body hung outside the window as he winked at Xia Chuan and said, "Come on."

Xia Chuan hesitated for a moment and looked back at Xia Liang and the others. Unexpectedly, Xia Liang did not raise any objections. He nodded at Xia Chuan and said, "Jump, let's talk somewhere else."

Xia Chuan wasn't sure if it was an illusion, but he felt that Xia Liang's appearance and expression seemed to indicate he knew more but couldn't say it for the time being, remaining extremely calm.

Xia Chuan responded with an "hmm," also propped himself on the window edge and flipped out, landing right in Shen Lan's embrace. The two then plunged into the dark deep sea, splashing up a spray of white foam.

The moment he entered the sea, Shen Lan, wrapped in white foam, transformed into the form of a mosasaurus. After a couple of turns underwater, he caught the falling Xia Chuan and surfaced. Before long, Xia Anyao, Gardner, and Xia Liang jumped down one after another.

Just as he had promised, before Xia Anyao and Gardner even had time to be afraid, they were already carried to the surface on Shen Lan's back.

They looked at their drenched selves in a daze, then at the huge sea beast beneath them, and Xia Chuan and Xia Liang lying beside them. They felt as if they were dreaming.

"Liang... What is this thing... Am I seeing things?" Gardner asked in a daze, patting the spine of the mosasaurus beneath him.

Xia Liang wiped the water from his face and wrung out Anyao's hair, answering very calmly, "Oh, it's your son."

Gardner: "..."