Zhou Haimei’s voice was so loud that Xu An could hear it from afar, and she frowned.
“Are you sure you saw correctly? In this cold weather, if someone actually died in the sea, wouldn’t they have been eaten by fish long ago? How could they still be washed ashore here?”
As she spoke, Xu An walked towards the edge of the tidal flat.
As soon as she got close, Xu An’s frown deepened. It really was a person.
Half of his body was submerged in the sea, rising and falling with the ebb and flow of the water, while the other half was washed onto the tidal flat.
His entire back was exposed, with large patches of burn scars laid bare to the air.
“An’an, do you think this person is alive or dead?”
After asking this, she noticed Xu An’s conflicted expression.
Zhou Haimei was puzzled. She had only asked if the person was still alive, and Xu An was acting so conflicted, her entire face scrunched up.
After a long while, Xu An finally spoke slowly, “We… we should know this person.”
“Ah!”
Hearing this, Zhou Haimei immediately asked, “Who is it?”
Xu An walked forward helplessly, and with a hint of disgust, nudged the almost waterlogged body with her toe, turning it over.
A sharp, angular face appeared before the two of them.
It was Qin Chuan, whom Xu An and her friends had been desperately searching for.
“Holy crap!” Zhou Haimei stumbled back half a step in shock at the familiar face. “An’an, is Qin Chuan dead?”
Xu An looked at Qin Chuan, observing his rising and falling chest and faint breath.
She really wanted to say he was dead.
For some reason, when you don’t see someone, you hope they are living well and not in trouble. But when you actually see them…
Suddenly, you wish they were better off dead.
Xu An shook her head resignedly, walked forward to examine Qin Chuan’s injuries, and called back to Zhou Haimei, “Come help me.”
Zhou Haimei remained frozen for a moment. “Help? Help collect a corpse?” she asked earnestly, as if she meant it.
Xu An: “……”
“Qin Chuan isn’t dead.”
Now it was Zhou Haimei’s turn to be speechless: “……”
My goodness, as expected of Captain Qin Chuan. This man was in the sea, almost bloated like a steamed bun,
And still not dead.
Zhou Haimei, while marveling at Qin Chuan’s tenacity for life, rolled up her sleeves and walked towards Xu An.
It took both of them considerable effort to carry Qin Chuan into their small wooden cabin.
But because Qin Chuan was covered in blood and water, Xu An was quite disgusted, so she merely wrapped him in a piece of oilcloth and unceremoniously dumped him on the ground.
“An’an, will Qin Chuan die like this?”
“Don’t worry, he’s not dead yet.”
Seeing Xu An taking things out of her backpack, Zhou Haimei was still confused. When Xu An finally pulled out the item, Zhou Haimei’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Why did you bring this with you?”
Xu An said lightly, “I brought it because I had a feeling I might need it.” She just hadn’t expected it to be truly necessary.
This was a secret reward for the top finishers of the Lighthouse Expedition, an all-purpose antidote.
No matter what injury or poison one had suffered, as long as life had not ended,
Injecting this potion would bring them back from the brink of death.
Because this potion was still in the experimental stage, it was not widely circulated on the Lighthouse.
Instead, it was given as a secret reward to the participants of this mission.
However, many had sold this item in the back alleys.
After all, something that had not undergone extensive trials was not cheap.
One dose was enough to live on the Lighthouse for three years; such temptation made many contestants eager for it.
Even Zhou Haimei couldn’t resist selling her potion.
“But isn’t this potion said to have no clinical trial certification? If you inject it into Qin Chuan and he dies, what happens then?”
As Xu An spoke, her hands did not stop. Amidst Zhou Haimei’s gasp, the potion was injected into Qin Chuan’s body.
“He’ll die anyway if I don’t inject this potion. Might as well try a desperate cure.”
“Are you saying Qin Chuan’s condition is due to poisoning?”
As Xu An spoke, a syringe full of the potion was injected into Qin Chuan’s vein.
After injecting it, she tossed the syringe aside and began to tear at Qin Chuan’s clothes.
Zhou Haimei watched Xu An’s rough movements, almost causing Qin Chuan to be flung away. She couldn’t bear to watch. “An’an, what are you doing? Why are you taking his clothes off?”
“His clothes are covered in corrosive slime. If we don’t remove them, he’ll be burned to death by this slime.”
“Ah—”
In Zhou Haimei’s cry of alarm, she finally saw clearly that the clothes Xu An was tearing off did indeed have a viscous green liquid on them.
It was just that because Qin Chuan’s combat uniform was also green, it was not immediately apparent.
However, from the edges of the combat uniform and the scorch marks, it was evident that this liquid was the cause of most of Qin Chuan’s burns.
After the upper garment was completely torn off, Qin Chuan’s lips, which had been tinged with blue and purple, gradually returned to a pale color due to the medication.
“An’an, do you think that medicine really works?” Zhou Haimei was a little worried. Although Qin Chuan was barely breathing when they found him,
If he were to die at their hands, they would undoubtedly face repercussions from the Lighthouse.
“It’s fine, he won’t die. Look, his complexion is much better than when we first pulled him out. It should be this unknown slime on him. Now that we’ve injected the antidote, he should recover.”
“You start the fire and warm him up. I’ll make some soup for him to eat when he wakes up.”
As she spoke, Xu An was about to continue undressing Qin Chuan. As she was unbuckling his belt, her fingertips accidentally brushed against his skin below, which felt icy cold.
The sensation made Xu An’s fingers jerk back.
Zhou Haimei next to her whispered in surprise, “An’an, why are you still taking off his pants? What are you doing!”
But Zhou Haimei’s words did not rekindle Xu An’s sense of propriety between men and women.
In her past life, during the final blizzard period, everyone ended up stripping clothes from the dead. Who cared if they were male or female?
Xu An couldn’t even bear to watch.
So, she naturally had no reservations about Qin Chuan.
But the crucial issue now was that Qin Chuan was not dead.
In a dim world of ice and snow, Qin Chuan suddenly felt a slight sting.
Immediately after, he felt a source of warmth approaching him.
He desperately wanted to move closer to this warmth to ward off the cold, but he found that he couldn’t move at all.
His limbs felt completely stiffened. Then, while his consciousness was still muddled, he felt a chill on his body.
His already scant clothing was torn apart by a pair of strong hands.
Although Qin Chuan was groggy and unsure of the current situation, his mind a mess, he still sensed that someone was undressing him.
But this person wasn’t finished after removing his upper body clothing; they actually reached for his lower body.
As his belt was about to be unbuckled, Qin Chuan, almost instinctively, struggled to lift his hand.
He tightly grasped a mischievous little hand with his own shriveled, water-soaked hand.
His voice hoarse and low, he asked, “What are you doing?”