Chapter 793: You won

The perspective shifts.

The corridor of Past World Paradise is very long.

Heimu stood at one end of the corridor, gray-white long hair hanging at the shoulders, the tips almost blending into the darkness behind them in the dim light.

She lifted a hand to push up the brim of the Witch Hat, her purple-black eyes scanning the endless passage ahead.

The walls on both sides were Western-style stone masonry, with a wall lamp set into the stone roughly every ten steps; the lamp brackets were copper with a scrolling vine pattern, and all the lamps were off.

Dark wood paneling lined the walls, the surface of the panels bearing extremely fine carved patterns, but in this light it was impossible to tell what was carved.

Underfoot lay a dark red carpet, its pile pressed to one side, the edge trimmed with gold fringe.

Silent.

Too silent.

So quiet that the rhythm of the heartbeat seemed amplified several times over.

Somewhere deep in the corridor, in a spot hard to make out, a breeze seemed to flow, brushing the copper vine pattern on the wall lamps and producing a hum too low to hear.

Heimu frowned slightly.

Her purple-black eyes automatically switched to a perception mode in the darkness, a ring of dark purple light flaring in the depths of her pupils to trace the surroundings' outlines—yet still nothing could be seen.

The darkness itself wasn't special, but being limited in vision on her own turf felt ultimately uncomfortable.

A pink figure stood beside her.

The pink hair, in the gloom, lost its original bright hue, turning into a dull grayish-pink shade.

Xi Lian tilted her head back to look around, her blue diamond-shaped pupils wide and round, the faint blue arc pattern at the edges of the pupils faintly glowing in the dark, like a small animal straining to discern direction in the darkness.

At some point her fingers had gripped Heimu's cuff, the knuckles whitening slightly.

"The… the lights are too dim, Black Curtain Lady."

Xi Lian's voice was kept low, tinged with nervousness, as if afraid to disturb something that shouldn't be disturbed in the silence.

Heimu did not speak.

She raised her right hand, fingertips lightly tracing a line in the air before her.

A purple light trace extended from beneath her fingertip, outlining the shape of a panel in the air.

The panel unfolded before her, a translucent screen flashing lines of data—the backend interface of Past Pleasant Land's system.

The screen showed a loading icon.

The icon turned slowly, and after two rotations it snapped into a line of red text: 'Connection timeout, permission verification failed, some functions unavailable.'

Heimu's brows furrowed even tighter.

As for the permissions in Past Pleasant Land, the portion she had allotted to Ailixiya was not small.

Originally it was to make it easier for Ailixiya to manage the Ying Jie's data, and also to let them move freely within the System Space.

Now whether those permissions still exist and can be used, who might have blocked them and how, she had no idea.

Looking at this situation, it's not good.

It could be a conflict in permission allocation, or it could be Aha.

She placed the two possibilities side by side in her mind, feeling that either would be a headache.

If it were a permission conflict, she would need to manually restore backup data—slow but solvable.

If it were Aha, it wouldn't be strange for the Fun God behind the orange mask to stuff whatever he liked into her panel.

"Hah."

She exhaled lightly, temporarily shut the panel, and glanced at Xi Lian.

Xi Lian remained tense, her pink eyelashes fluttering in the darkness, lips pressed into a line, wishing she could sink into Heimu's clothing.

Heimu thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers.

Although the permissions were stuck, adjusting a lighting parameter should still be doable.

She bypassed the system backend, feeding a string of code from the underlying data layer upward, changing the corridor's lighting attribute from 'default' to a slightly brighter preset.

The moment the code took effect, the entire corridor lit up.

But it was a gloomy green.

Starting with the first wall lamp, the frosted glass inside the lampshade was ignited by a layer of gloomy green light, the hue like phosphorescent moss at the bottom of a deep pool.

Then the second, third, fourth— the wall lamps along the corridor lit up one after another, all glowing gloomy green.

The light fell on the dark wood paneling, giving the originally warm wood grain a damp, cold feel.

Those carved patterns on the side walls stood out against the gloomy green backlight, each a sharp, elongated motif extending forward, looking somewhat like a bird's beak.

Moreover, that light striking a face was especially striking—Heimu's already fair skin took on a cold jade-like sheen in the green light, and it looked quite lovely.

But Xi Lian's pink little face, hit by the green light, turned directly pallid.

The atmosphere changed.

Just a moment ago it was merely dark; now it felt like stepping into someplace one shouldn't enter.

Heimu lowered her eyes to see the strange hue cast on the back of her hand by the green light, and pressed down the corners of her mouth.

She opened the panel again and re-entered the modification command.

This time she directly punched a repair patch into the underlying layer of the permission system, trying to force the lighting parameters to lock at the most normal standard value.

The progress bar of the repair patch reached eighty percent, then a prompt box popped up—

Permissions can be modified, but it will take time; estimated remaining time: unknown.

After that came a line of small text in a frilly pink handwritten font, ending with a floating musical note symbol.

Take your time exploring?, cute girls don't cheat?

Heimu looked at that musical note symbol, and the corner of her mouth twitched.

Ailixiya? Or Aha?

Ailixiya's speaking style is just like that, and her pink handwriting also matches her aesthetic.

But Aha is also fully capable of imitating Ailixiya's tone to leave a message on her System Panel, and imitating the pink fairy girl's tone to leave a message is practically effortless.

She decided not to dwell on this issue.

Whether Ailixiya felt that exploration was more interesting and thus locked the permissions, or Aha slipped a prank program into the System Panel, the result is the same—now she cannot directly modify the lighting here.

"Black Curtain Lady?"

Xi Lian looked up at her, their voice clearly tense.

Heimu shook their head, their gray-white hair swaying twice in the green light.

Her expression returned to its original Calm state, just a bit tighter than usual.

"Nothing."

She tried to keep her tone light and breezy, but even she could hear how fake that sounded.

She opened the System Panel again, this time calling up the full map of Past World Paradise.

The System Panel unfolded, but where detailed terrain should have been shown, there was only a patch of darkness.

The entire map was covered with a layer of black mist; occasionally a few spots would flash a faint point of light, but they died out before she could zoom in to examine them.

For now, her permissions here probably can't be used to much effect.

She needs to regain local permissions, or find the source that's blocking them.

For now, all she can do is move forward slowly.