Quill squinted, and instinctively felt that there was something off about this news report, so he checked the print date and found that the paper was quite old, at least half a year old.
"Self-harm!" Rocket Raccoon exclaimed: "That's the key!"
Quill was taken aback, but Rocket Raccoon was already staring him down: "Do you know how traumatic it was for me when you cut off your own arm? Maybe these people are just like you!"
Quill froze, then slapped his thigh with his remaining hand: "That's a possibility! Which means, the terror attacks I experienced at night could have happened to someone else half a year ago."
"They might have experienced these attacks while travelling at night, lost control and mutilated themselves. As science cannot explain this, the court deemed it as an impulsive act, ignoring the arrangements made by the resort, and deemed the resort not liable."
Then, as if Quill remembered something, he said, "So, being attacked at night is a portent of disaster. It's not that the attacks and the disaster happened simultaneously. In fact, they might have been quite far apart in time."
"Are both events causally linked? Did the attack lead to this disaster?" Quill had a shocked expression, unbelievingly asking, "Did the night attacks trigger the monsters to hatch from within human bodies? Is this some form of seeding process?"
Rocket Raccoon had a chill run down his spine, and pushed Quill away: "Stop talking; this is disgusting."
"No, there's another point. If the attacks did not occur at the same time, it might be the same for the hatching. The time difference would be sufficient for the Federal Bureau of Investigation or similar organizations to respond."
Quill immediately stood up. Rocket Raccoon, unsure of where he was going, hastily followed behind him.
Quill strode out of the archive room and into an office downstairs. As soon as he descended the stairs, Quill noticed a trail of slime near the water dispenser.
Suppressing his disgust, he went over to inspect the machine. It was an old water dispenser that dispensed water when a button was pressed. It didn't need electricity, so it could still work.
The trail of slime stretched from the water dispenser into the nearest office. Quill spoke in a mocking tone, "Don't tell me that the newly born monster babies also love drinking water like good children?"
With that, he stepped into the office where the trail of slime led right to the desk, which had an old computer commonly used in newsrooms. Beside the keyboard was a mug, which held water and more importantly, also had slime on it.
Facing the mug, Quill suddenly froze as a frightening thought crossed his mind—
The monsters didn't need to drink water.
But this monster wanted to drink water.
Was it unaware that it didn't need to drink water, or was it unaware that it was a monster?
Quill felt a tremor run through his body. He suddenly realized that he has found the key, the key to the door under all these strange, abnormal, and calm appearances.
No one realized that the monsters had appeared.
They were going about their normal working lives, satisfying basic physiological needs, following their carefully planned life paths, and even leisurely writing travel columns.
All of this was because they didn't realize that they had turned into a mass of sticky tentacles, and they didn't realize that everyone else had turned into that as well.
Quill felt dizzy as horrifying images constantly appeared in his mind.
A writer, his head half disappeared and only numerous tentacles of varying lengths left, was serious looking at a screen and revising. A reporter whose abdomen extended a dozen hairy tentacles ran hurriedly and took a sip of water from a mug, while another employee behind him, with his lower body completely gone and his organs hanging on the tentacles, came in with a cup of water from the dispenser.
This was more terrifying than hell, Quill thought.
Because hell is abnormal and everyone knows that a fiery hellish scene is not normal. But who would question the normality of having five fingers on one's hand?
Are five fingers normal? Or could it be that this is also a terrifying, repulsive mass of dense tentacles, just that everyone is like this and nobody realizes it?
Quill took a deep breath, trying hard to banish these horrifying illusions from his mind. He finally understood why no one was prepared for the disaster before it erupted, and why no one panicked or caused chaos after the disaster erupted.
Because in the eyes of these New York City residents, there was no disaster. Everyone simply went to work as usual, and went home to their families.
Thinking about this, Quill suddenly thought of something else. If there was no disaster here and everyone was like this, wasn't he the abnormal one?
Was it possible that in the eyes of these monsters, he was also a monster?
Following this, he thought of another question. Where did these monsters, or rather, these transformed humans go?
Quill turned his head and saw the rays of the setting sun entering the room. The slime-filled office suddenly seemed a little cosy, and he felt a wave of sadness.
If humans were only existing in another form, then the relief that all monsters had been eradicated would become a complex feeling—should humans existing in another form be eradicated?
Quill glanced at the travel newspaper he was holding. The beautifully worded description was filled with anticipation. It was not hard to imagine that maybe the journalist who wrote this report would choose to go on vacation with his family to these scenic spots that he praised.
Perhaps it was a journey filled with tentacles and slime, but wouldn't they be pleased with it? Wouldn't they have pleasant memories?
Maybe they had already changed their way of thinking and no longer perceive the world with thinking and emotions that humans could understand, but they also had clear feelings of being alive, and emotions of happiness, anger, sorrow, and joy on another level.
But someone ruined everything.
As Quill stood by the floor-to-ceiling window and looked at the beautiful scenery of Central Park, New York under the sunset, he really didn't want to make a homologous comparison with a possible existing slime monster.
But if this monster could no longer appreciate the beautiful scenery and could only appreciate absurdity, then perhaps, absurdity could also be beautiful.
Watching the endlessly grand sunset shine, in the already vanished giant temple, the sound of "boom, boom" evening drum echoes, and within it also was an inaudible sigh filled with remorse.