Chapter 1366: The Call of the Stars (Part 9)

"If one were to write about a catastrophe, there is no need to describe the wreckage of the entire world from a grand perspective, nor is there a need to count the tragedies that happened to every individual in a fragmented tone.

Because what I alone have heard, seen, and imagined is enough to outline the bizarre and terrifying appearance of every deep-sea undercurrent in this dark vortex. This is the truth I learned after being rushed into that dark hole and traveling through the dim and narrow tunnels of the world.

After we embraced the light trap like ignorant prey, when we woke up, what appeared in my field of vision was the mottled rust under a piece of iron sheet with a corner curled up on the ceiling of the subway carriage..."

"Good God, where am I?" Quill clutched his head, wanting to sit up from the ground, but found that his forearm seemed to be stuck to something. He tilted his head to the left and saw the thin threads formed by the stretching mucus connecting his left hand, which had just left the ground a little, to the ground.

"What the hell is this?" Quill cursed with a grimace. He placed his arm back on the ground, shifted his body's center of gravity, and wanted to lift his arm from the ground.

But when he used his right hand to support the ground and exert force, he found that his right forearm was also stuck to the mucus on the ground. Quill smiled bitterly and helplessly, saying, "I finally know what it feels like to be a cockroach stuck on a sticky board. Good God, Rocket, Rocket, are you there?"

"Pfft, pfft, pfft..."

A series of subtle sounds came from afar. Quill's movements froze. He instinctively turned his head to look in the direction the sound came from.

There was endless darkness.

With the help of a little cold micro-light from somewhere, Quill saw the condition of the ceiling above his head. It wasn't an ordinary ceiling, but iron sheets, one of which had a corner curled up, revealing mottled rust underneath.

It seemed he was in a subway carriage. Quill sighed. He even had time to comfort himself in his heart that although he was an old antique, he had at least seen a subway.

"Pfft, pfft, pfft..." The sound continued.

Quill listened intently and found that the sound came from very far away, and there was no sign of it getting closer. He simply ignored the sound and focused on finding a way to get rid of the mucus that fixed him to the ground.

Shifting his center of gravity from left to right, from abdominal muscle force to back muscle force, Quill struggled on the ground in a somewhat ridiculous posture for a long time, finally freeing half of his body from the entanglement of the mucus.

Quill clenched his fists to cheer himself on: "Alright, Peter, you've already done half of it. Just put in a little more effort, and you'll be a free cockroach!"

Suddenly, a cold sensation came from his forehead. Quill used the hand he had freed to touch the left side of his forehead and found some dark marks. Because the light was too dim, Quill couldn't see what it was.

He wiped his hand on the ground. The relatively dry mucus he had freed became the best cleaning agent. The marks were wiped off, but soon, two more drops of unknown liquid dripped onto Quill's forehead.

Quill shook his hand with some disgust, and then found that the state of these two drops of liquid was a bit wrong. The way they flew out didn't look like water.

Suddenly, he heard some "pitter-patter" sounds of mucus rubbing from above his head.

Quill slowly raised his head and saw that under the curled-up iron plate, what he had originally thought was rust was actually a dense mass of dark eggs surging.

More and more eggs fell, flowing down Quill's forehead and high bridge of his nose to his chin. Quill let out a cracked scream, frantically using his hands to wipe the stuff off his face.

He struggled like a deer with a broken leg, trying hard to move his position with half his body, avoiding the terrifying nest above his head, helplessly rubbing the dark marks on his face with his arms. He could even feel the regular heartbeat within the fine, gravel-like eggs.

They were about to hatch.

The moment this thought appeared in Quill's heart, he couldn't care about much else. He grabbed the clump of somewhat dried mucus from before and rubbed it on his face and body, wiped the marks off his face as fast as he could, and then threw it with all his might. The mucus clump happened to roll under the faint cold light.

Quill saw the source of the light clearly; it was actually the indicator light of the subway carriage door. And at this time, under the light, the dense eggs wrapped in the mucus ball began to hatch.

Countless black insects with carapaces and three pairs of hooked feet crawled out from the translucent embryos, but what awaited them wasn't a new life, but a closed, constantly squeezing mucus clump.

The blood-red mucus had clearly lost its vitality, but it still twisted around the dense mass of insects, crushing their carapaces, breaking their hooked feet, and even directly grinding them into fine, fragmented corpse foam.

The black insects struggled to escape, but suffocated before the last barrier. Quill could even see the desperate expressions of the insects as they suffocated, but more hooked feet pierced the mucous membrane, turning the red mucus into corpse chunks full of holes.

Quill felt a terrifying suffocation. He used all his strength to try to get rid of the mucus stuck to his body, because more and more insects were hatching and growing larger.

But the mucus on the other side showed no signs of drying out. It was as if it still had life, biting Quill's skin tightly and refusing to fall off.

A terrifying ruthlessness under the honest appearance of this boy who had been lonely since childhood was triggered. Quill reached for the dagger at his waist, held it with a straight grip, and slashed a large opening above the skin stuck by the mucus.

Then Quill reached his hand into the wound, and with a "shhh," the entire piece of skin was peeled off and left on the mucus. Then, Quill stood up, swaying.

This decisive action saved his life.

Because the next second, the iron plate above his head couldn't support the dense mass of insect eggs that were hatching, and it fell down with a "bang," followed by the sound of mucus pouring down with a "whoosh."

Quill panted heavily, not even having time to look at his bleeding arm. He stepped on his toes on the spot, turned, and ran toward the indicator light.

And just as he passed the indicator light and looked into the deeper darkness, he heard a familiar voice cursing in a language he didn't understand.

"Rocket, Rocket! I'm here!" Quill shouted.

Quill rushed over and saw the small figure beside the seat near the door. Apparently, he had also been stuck by the mucus.

Rocket Raccoon was grabbing his tail and cursing in a low voice. The moment he saw Quill, he didn't even have time to explain his situation, but said to him with trembling whiskers: "That damn doctor is crazy! He threw us into hell. I shouldn't have listened to him!"

"Don't worry about that for now." Quill took out his dagger, and with a "swish," shaved off the hair on Rocket Raccoon's tail. Fortunately, the raccoon's skin wasn't stuck by the mucus, so he successfully escaped after losing only a wisp of hair.

He jumped onto Quill's shoulder in two or three steps, then shouted in his ear: "Peter, I must apologize to you! I listened to the damn conspiracy of an evil doctor. He made me use drugs to lure you into the spire!"

Rocket Raccoon's voice was as sharp as a malfunctioning tape, but Quill made a shushing gesture to him and then pricked up his ears to listen carefully.

"Pfft, pfft, pfft..."

The sound was still far away, but it was approaching here at a slow speed. Quill's eyeballs turned rapidly, and then he said: "The mucus that stuck us is very sticky; it's definitely not saliva or anything."

Suddenly his pupils contracted sharply, and he spat out a word: "Venus flytrap... Run!"

Just as Quill took a rapid step, a giant wave emitting a strong, sour stench surged from the rear carriage. The splashing water droplets carried countless insect carapaces, hooked feet, and eyes with uniform whiskers.

Quill suddenly stopped his steps because the cockpit was already in front of him. He looked left and right and shouted: "Hold on!"

"Bang!"

Quill rushed out directly through the glass of the side window. With a "crash," along with the broken glass, he fell to the ground, but didn't stay long, instead crawling and rolling to the corner of the wall.

Then, he leaned against the corner, panting heavily, watching the giant maggots like sarcomas layered on the train, spraying their gastric juice into the train, sweeping up all the creatures inside, swallowing them into their bellies, and then leaving behind new mucus, waiting for a new wave of prey.

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Quill leaned against the wall, panting weakly. He turned to look at Rocket Raccoon and said: "What's this about the 'doctor' you mentioned?"

"I, I..." Rocket Raccoon seemed to find it hard to speak, but he still pursed his lips and said: "The hallucinations you saw before, those tree roots and such, were actually caused by drugs."

Rocket Raccoon stretched out one of his claws. Quill saw a small nozzle between his claw gaps. Rocket Raccoon retracted his claw tremblingly and then said: "That doctor called it 'Fear Toxin.' Just a tiny bit is enough to make people be swallowed by fear."

"So, you were the one who tricked us here?"

"Damn it, I didn't know he was going to do that! I thought the test he mentioned was just putting some monsters in that spire-shaped building, or walking through a maze or something. He played too big!"

Rocket Raccoon hung his head, seemingly very self-reproachful. He had expected Quill's scolding, but at this moment Quill pressed his head again and said to him: "Shh... do you hear that?"

"What?"

"Pfft, pfft, pfft..."

The sound was getting closer and closer. Quill felt his hair stand on end, but he didn't see anything in the darkness. He looked left and right and didn't find his travel bag; even his hiking bag was gone, so he didn't have any lighting equipment now.

But at this time, Rocket Raccoon stretched out his other claw, and a beam of light appeared. He looked up at Quill and said: "If we get out alive, you can do whatever you want to me, but we have to leave this place first."

"That's what I'm thinking too."

Quill listened carefully to the source of the sound and then pointed behind Rocket Raccoon and said: "There, there's something there..."

Rocket Raccoon turned his head abruptly, pointing the lighting equipment on his claw at the place Quill pointed, but there was nothing there except the damp tunnel wall.

"No, no, no." Quill closed his eyes tightly in pain. A pain of perception not matching reality troubled him. He grabbed Rocket Raccoon into his arms and staggered away in the opposite direction of the sound.

"What exactly did you see?"

"I didn't see anything!"

"Then why are you running?"

"Because I can't see!"

Quill ran all the way with Rocket Raccoon, running up along the subway station, crossing the turnstiles, and quickly running up the escalator that had stopped operating.

The moment he saw the light again, what appeared before Quill was a grand sunset in a world swallowed by monsters.

The golden light shone on the tip of the quill pen stained with ink, and the nib landed lightly on the paper. Even the text was illuminated into gold, but the content written on it was falling into deeper and deeper darkness.

"Twilight is always called the hour of demons, but I have never seen such an evil and terrifying scene in any twilight. The canvas of the sky and the earth was filled with monsters, and twisted freaks shuttled between them, as if they were the masters of this world.

That is not Dante's Divine Comedy, I am sure of that, because I actually saw a unique, vibrant ecological order in this terrifying, twisted, and chaotic scene.

But I know that these are all appearances. Certain thoughts have been troubling me. Those things that I can occasionally feel but cannot see, which keep me peeking through a tube without knowing the full picture, are still hidden in the shadows at twilight.

They are calling me, reaching out their arms from the darkness, wanting to embrace me, just like the stars I saw on the day I was born." ===== CHAPTER 1367 =====

"Dusk is always called the hour of the demon, but I have never seen such an evil and terrifying scene in any dusk; the canvas of the sky and earth was occupied by monsters, and twisted freaks shuttled between them, as if they were the masters of this world.

That was not Dante's Divine Comedy, I am sure of that, because I could actually discern their unique, vibrant ecological order within this terrifying, twisted, and chaotic scene.

But I know that these are all just appearances; certain thoughts have been troubling me, things I can occasionally feel but cannot see, things that keep me peeking through a tube at a leopard without ever knowing the full picture, still hidden in the shadows of dusk.

They are calling to me, reaching out their arms from the darkness, wanting to embrace me, just like the stars I saw on the day I was born."