Chapter 813: with translation of chapter title

Perspective shift.

Heimu sits sideways on the Magic Staff, the ash‑white long hair pulled straight by the airflow of high‑speed flight, the ends curling within the dark‑purple magical aura.

One hand grips the staff shaft to keep balance, the other hand pinches the Crystal Flower, fingertips gently stroking the newly appeared pink pattern along the petal edge.

The pink within the transparent petals slowly seeps toward the flower's core, like a drop of ink falling into clear water.

On the rear half of the Magic Staff, Ying sits astride, maintaining a courteous distance.

Her Foot‑long dagger lies across her knee, both hands holding the sheath, the gray‑purple eyes slightly narrowed amid the high‑speed rushing air.

The slender pink Fox Ears are pressed back by the wind, the white stand‑collar uniform's collar rustles, the deep‑blue pleated short skirt is lifted then pressed down by the airflow, and the legs clad in light‑gray stockings clamp the staff shaft to keep balance.

She occasionally lifts her gaze to glance at Heimu's silhouette ahead, then lowers her head to scan the passing environment below.

They are flying upward into an extremely massive cylindrical space.

The scale of this space is absurd; Heimu roughly estimates the diameter to be at least tens of thousands of meters, its opposite boundary invisible to the eye.

The surrounding walls are not smooth surfaces but layers upon layers of corridors, pipes, stairways and platforms interwoven in a manner that defies architectural logic.

Some corridors run horizontally through the air, both ends suspended with no support in the middle; some pipes are twisted like braids hanging from above; some staircases protrude from the walls, turn half a circle and abruptly end, the steps hanging in mid‑air as if the latter half had been sliced off.

All structures are shrouded in a cool‑toned shadow, the light source indistinct, as if the light itself were diluted, barely illuminating the outlines of each corridor and pipe, while deeper within lies a thick darkness.

Like an abandoned factory.

Yet it is not abandoned.

Quiet to an excessive degree.

Only the whistling of air broken by high‑speed flight can be heard.

Heimu withdraws her gaze from the Crystal Flower, turning her head toward the surrounding layered corridor remnants.

She tilts her head slightly and asks Ying behind her, "Did Letu originally have places like this?"

Ying's voice comes from behind, a little scattered by the airflow, but her tone is steady: "No. The environment of Past World Paradise can change at any time; the Ying Jie each have memory domains that overlap, and the data automatically adjusts the spatial structure according to the visitor's cognition. Whether there is a fixed, unified location, I am not sure."

She pauses, "Since I entered Letu, the shape of this space has changed many times."

Heimu nods, asking no further questions.

She redirects her gaze to the System Panel; Xi Lian's live feed still hangs in the upper right corner, the pink‑hued room's elf‑ear girl buried in a pile of Dolls remains bound, her head tilted to an even more uncomfortable angle, a strand of drool at the corner of her mouth.

On the monitor, the pink dot representing Xi Lian's position keeps drawing nearer; Heimu estimates that at the current speed, they still have to fly for a while.

Only the surroundings are too quiet.

The dim light in the cylindrical space stacks layer upon layer upward, the darkness above thickening as if sealed with a lid.

Occasional liquid flow sounds from the pipes drift nearer and farther, and the shadows on the corridor remnants stretch and shrink as the Magic Staff flies past.

Heimu's intuition taps lightly deep in her mind; the quiet is a bit excessive.

In Past World Paradise, there are still several Ying Jie yet to be encountered; Mei Bi Wu Si has not appeared since binding Xi Lian, and the earlier signals continue to gather without further action.

In this empty cylindrical space, only the two of them produce the sound of cutting through the air.

It feels like the stillness before a storm, as if something lurks in the darkness waiting for them to fly into a certain spot.

Sure enough.

From an indeterminate direction, a sparse sound suddenly emerges.

Heimu's finger lightly taps the shaft of the Magic Staff.

Her body makes no major movement, only a slight head turn, the violet‑black eyes tilting toward the direction of the sound.

The sound is extremely faint, like something viscous being slowly dragged across metal, but it is far away.

Ying clearly also heard it.

Heimu can feel that the girl behind, who had remained still, moves at this moment; the Foot‑long dagger on her knee silently rotates half an inch, the gray‑purple eyes sweep the direction of the sound in the darkness.

The finger holding the sheath quietly slides onto the hilt.

Heimu's gaze turns toward the depths of that direction.

To ordinary eyes, there is only a thick darkness there.

But her perception catches something in the darkness; about two thousand meters to her right, a massive pipe spans the entire space.

The pipe's diameter appears to exceed forty meters, its surface coated with dark‑gray metal, bearing an extremely long mark.

The mark forms an irregular wave, beginning at the pipe's middle, extending upward along the wall for over ten meters, then bending into the intersecting gap with another pipe and vanishing.

A phosphorescent residue, like the trail left by viscous liquid dragged across the pipe's surface.

It resembles the snake‑like slime Mei Bi Wu Si left in the corridor, but darker, nearer to dark green, extending intermittently into deeper shadows.

Heimu squints slightly.

Her consciousness instantly links to the System Panel, fingertips swiftly carving a search window in the air visible only to her.

Global search.

Her perception radiates outward from her as the center, penetrating layers of pipes and corridor remnants, performing a real‑time scan of all detectable environmental anomalies.

A series of faint anomaly fluctuation markers pop up on the System Panel, most clustered in a tangled pipe region to their upper side, about several hundred meters away, slowly moving.

The Magic Staff does not stop, still thrusting upward at full speed.

Heimu quickly reviews the perception results in her mind, then closes the search window.

"Something crawled over the pipe; the trace is still fresh. Remain vigilant moving forward."

The sparse sound does not fade.

On the contrary, it grows louder.

It starts from one direction, then two, then emanates from all sides.

Those sounds shift between near and far, sometimes seeming just above the head, other times deep hundreds of meters below the feet.

They intertwine, overlapping and dispersing, reflected layer upon layer within the vast cylindrical space.

At that moment, the surroundings suddenly brighten.

They emerged from the pipe gaps in various directions.

Green light spots, each about the size of a fist, with fuzzy, indefinite edges, the centers bright like the tip of a match that has burned to the end.

They floated in the space between the pipe and the corridor, gently bobbing up and down, casting a faint green light film over the surrounding dark‑gray metal surfaces.

Ying suddenly lifted her head.

Her Fox Ears brushed upright to the straightest, the tips slightly tilted backward.

The Foot-long dagger spun a small half‑circle in her hand, the blade held horizontally before her, the other hand already pressing the guard at the hilt's end, her upper body slightly arched.

Her eyes quickly scanned each light spot.

"These lights—"

Ying's voice was pressed down to a very low pitch, still calm, but the trailing tone added a layer of tension, "It wasn't there just now!"