Chapter 814: Looks Like a Doctor

Heimu said nothing.

Her complexion looked slightly stiff in the glow of the dark‑purple gemstone.

She was the one who set up this lighting.

Of course, that wasn't her original intention.

She just felt the surroundings were too dark, dark enough that even looking at the panel strained her eyes.

So she tweaked the illumination parameters with her permission, exactly the same as the last time in the corridor, only to make the environment a bit brighter.

Then the light came on, green.

Just like the wall lamp in the corridor had turned a dim green before.

She originally wanted to switch it back while Ying hadn't noticed, but the System Panel's permission prompt was still lazily looping a loading icon, the estimated recovery timer kept jumping erratically, and the button to adjust ambient lighting stayed grayed out, unpressable.

She thought changing to another area would automatically lift the restriction.

But the permission Lock of Past World Paradise was evidently far more stubborn than she imagined.

"Take your time exploring? A cute girl won't cheat, you know?" was still hanging in the system log.

She can now be 100 % sure that Aha directly bound her illumination‑modification permission to a green filter.

No matter what color she sets, the output is always that dim green.

Ying's breathing sounded a little lighter behind her.

Those gray‑purple eyes were still rapidly scanning the surrounding light points, and pink light threads on the Foot‑long dagger's blade had already spread from the tip to the hilt.

Heimu felt she should give an explanation.

After all, it had just been pitch black a moment ago, then several green glows erupted; for Ying, a heroic soul just recovered from a Corrosion state, that would indeed trigger an instinctive alert.

She opened her mouth, quickly formulating a line that could explain the situation without sounding too unreliable, such as "This illumination anomaly is caused by a permission restriction, a system‑level technical issue, and has no direct link to actual safety risk."

But halfway through, she decided to drop it.

If she were to state the truth—"I tried to turn on a light and it turned green"—Ying would probably fall silent for a moment, then, in that heartbreakingly Calm tone, say "I see, that's fine."

That hurts more than being scolded.

So Heimu simply kept perched sideways on the Magic Staff, remaining silent.

She watched the layers of pipes drifting below, occasionally adjusting her flight path to dodge the oncoming corridor cross‑beams.

The silence lingered a moment, feeling the person behind still in a taut state, the Foot‑long dagger's hilt nearly worn with finger marks.

Then Heimu spoke.

In a nonchalant tone.

"Ying."

A voice answered from behind. "Here."

"Do you know Bachongying?"

Ying was silent for two seconds.

A flicker of confusion flashed in the gray‑purple eyes.

"…Never heard that name."

"It looks a bit like you,"

Heimu continued, tapping the Magic Staff lightly with a finger, "A shrine maiden from a village. She has a younger sister named Lin. She's—"

Her words cut off.

Heimu's perception detonated in that instant, the global search spanning the entire area simultaneously triggering seventeen alert signals.

Seventeen unknown targets appeared from different directions at breakneck speed, all trajectories converging on their current positions. One was close enough to hear scales scraping metal pipes, the sound coming from directly below, like a massive serpent sliding fast along the pipe's surface.

"Below."

Ying's voice rang out at the same instant.

The Foot‑long dagger unsheathed.

The blade slashed upward from her waist in a smooth arc through the air.

Ying's movement had no preparatory pose; the transition from sitting with the dagger to swinging it at the target was compressed to a degree almost imperceptible to the naked eye.

It was a giant python.

It shot out from a slit in the pipe below, its body woven entirely from dark‑green data streams, thick enough to swallow a whole person in one bite.

The head was triangular, its eye sockets housing two clusters brighter and denser than the surrounding dim green specks, like two burning pupils.

It opened its mouth, the angle between upper and lower jaws exceeding 180 degrees; there were no teeth, only continuously rolling green code.

Ying's Foot‑long dagger struck the snake's head dead center.

The blade was as straight as a ruler, the edge flat, the strike's force concentrated on an extremely narrow contact point, cleaving the head cleanly in half, the split as tidy as if measured with a ruler.

The two halves flew off in opposite directions, disintegrating mid‑air, the solid serpentine form shattering into countless tiny green data fragments that vanished completely into the air.

Mei Bi Wu Si's style.

Ying sheathed the dagger and turned, the Foot‑long dagger held horizontally before her, a few strands of green light still fading from the blade.

Her expression didn't change, but her Fox Ears were now standing fully upright, the tips slightly pulled back taut.

"Looks like you're a doctor now."

Heimu gave no reply.

Her global search was refreshing at maximum frequency, the seventeen signals now doubled to thirty‑four.

The number was doubling, and all were moving.

She didn't even have time to finish the story about Bachongying in her mind, only silently folding it and tucking it back into some corner of her Memory.

The story can be told later.

Now she needs a flight path that isn't surrounded.

"Hold tight," she said.

The Magic Staff accelerated sharply.

Dark violet light at the staff's tip stretched into a straight Light Pillar, and the sound of breaking through the air changed from a low hum to a sharp howl.

Heimu pressed the brim of the hat with one hand, leaned her body slightly forward, and her ash‑white long hair was blown backward by the airflow at the moment of acceleration.

Ying squeezed the staff between her legs, held the staff with one hand, and gripped the Foot-long dagger with the other, the blade tip pointing outward; her gray‑violet eyes maintained a steady scanning rate even at high speed.

The surrounding pipes and corridors fell downward at extreme speed; it wasn't they moving, but they rushing upward.

But those green snakes were also in pursuit.

From above, below, left and right, in every direction giant pythons sprang out of the gaps in the pipes.

They did not emerge from a fixed nest, but simultaneously surged from every corner of this massive cylindrical space.

Seven or eight slithered out of the thick pipes, two or three from the narrow conduit bundles, and even snake heads emerged from the abandoned corridor wreckage hanging in mid‑air.

Each giant python's body was composed of dark‑green data streams, the surface code constantly flowing and reconfiguring, like countless lines of a program being compiled in real time.

Their movement was almost identical to real snakes, adhering to solid surfaces in an S‑shaped glide; when encountering a gap they launched out, unfurled in the air, and spewed green data debris from their open mouths.

Ying swiftly swung the Foot-long dagger.