Chapter 931: Pa Duo Appears!

Heimu walked along the silver‑gray filament beneath her feet for about three minutes, rounded two right‑angle bends, and confirmed one thing: the scale of this maze far exceeds her initial estimate.

At the entrance she had judged the wall to be about twenty meters tall; after walking this stretch, the wall height had silently doubled, and looking up, the black wall's top almost merged into the pale‑green mist above her head, making the boundary impossible to discern.

What Wei Er Wei assembled in a few seconds, calling it a "maze" does it a disservice; it is clearly a mobile fortress built with geometry as syntax and mechanical engineering as its skeleton.

Heimu stopped at a T‑shaped junction, the passages on both sides looking identical, with the same black high walls and the same pale‑green light strips.

She tried scanning the entire maze's structure with system permissions; light‑blue scan ripples spread from her feet, bounced back as soon as they hit the first wall, and the panel displayed a prompt: "High‑level spatial interference detected; global scan function temporarily unavailable; walking exploration recommended."

In the lower‑right corner of the prompt box was a pink little heart, its tail trailing a line of handwritten text: "Don't even think about cheating, okay?"

Heimu stared at the heart for two seconds, and her mouth twitched.

Ailixiya.

Even after becoming a Herrscher, that guy still didn't forget to leave a Backdoor in her system.

She lifted her hand and tapped the heart; it shattered into pink pixel particles that dissolved into the air.

"I never said you have to open it."

Heimu muttered to the empty passage, then stepped left.

In truth she knew that, if she really wanted to force it, in her current Complete Form she could crush all the maze's walls into powder with a flick of her fingers.

Ailixiya's message was essentially a coquettish request: "Play with me, don't be so serious."

Heimu could indeed refuse the request, but she glanced down at Xi Lian's monitoring feed on the System Panel; the little creature had rolled from a rabbit Doll onto a bear Doll, its saliva drawing a crooked map on the bear's ears, and she abandoned the idea of force‑cracking it.

Xi Lian's peaceful sleep indicates that the deeper layers of Past World Paradise have not yet suffered irreversible decay.

Time is temporarily on her side, so she'll play a round with Wei Er Wei.

Moreover, the others are also inside the maze.

Heimu used basic life‑sense to confirm her teammates' positions: Sakura's aura is steady and focused, likely sprinting through a passage; her Fox Ears give her a sense of direction far beyond ordinary people, so locating the exit is only a matter of time.

Ge Lei Xiu's signal is as quiet as a still pond, indicating she found a dead end and sat down to draw, completely unhurried.

Hua's signal moves slowly; her sense of direction is stable, but she's sluggish, likely having to sidle through each bend, cramped by the narrow passages.

When Heimu sensed Kaluoer's signal, she nearly lost her composure; Kaluoer is darting wildly through the maze, her trajectory a chaotic zigzag, moving fast but with completely random direction, crashing into a wall every three meters.

Kesi Mo's signal, however, is stationary at the end of a passage.

Heimu sensed over and found the counterpart calm and alert, using an armored scanning system to analyze the wall structure.

That fits Kesi Mo's style; the first reaction to a maze is "just tear down the walls," but she'll soon discover Wei Er Wei's walls self‑repair, leading to a dead‑end loop of "then I'll tear them down again."

After confirming everyone's status, Heimu continued forward.

At the third fork, the silver‑gray filament beneath her split into two—one left, one forward; she chose forward, and the filament instantly merged back into a single line, as if an invisible navigator were adjusting the route in real time.

Upon reaching the sixth fork, she suddenly heard a sound.

"Wuwaaaaa—Is anyone there—I'm so miserable, why am I this unlucky—Canned food, where are you—no, I think I am the canned food—then who am I—"

Heimu halted, tilted her ear for two seconds, and confirmed the voice came from the second right‑hand fork ahead, about forty meters away.

Her mouth twitched.

That pleading tone, that trademark "we" self‑reference—only one person in Past World Paradise speaks that way: Pa Duo!

Sigh……

Pa Duo appearing here… makes sense, after all, given Letu's progression she's already met Sakura, Ge Lei Xiu, Kesi Mo, Hua, so Pa Duo showing up was only a matter of time.

Yet Pa Duo's entrance truly matches Heimu's impression of her: showing up in the most disheveled manner in every situation.

Heimu quickened her pace, turned into the right‑hand fork, and after about twenty meters the passage opened into a circular cavity about thirty meters in diameter.

In the center of the cavity stood a huge tree.

Calling it a "tree" isn't quite right, since the structure is clearly a mechanical construct built by Wei Er Wei: its trunk is woven from countless silver‑gray metal tubes, and its canopy is a dome of layered metal leaves whose edges emit a pale‑green glow, lighting the circular cavity as bright as day.

The mechanical tree's scale is exaggerated; its trunk is so thick that even with arms outstretched Heimu couldn't encircle it, and its canopy's height extends beyond the cavity's ceiling, merging into the opaque green mist above.

Hanging from the thickest horizontal branch of the canopy is a silver‑gray rope.

At the rope's end is a brown object twisting desperately.

Heimu stepped closer, squinting to examine the object.

It was a cat.

A plump short‑haired calico cat.

Its base coat of light brown and white patches shows a subtle hue shift under the green light; the light‑gray tabby markings on its back and ears constantly reshape as it twists, because its whole body is shaking, its front paws claw wildly in the air, its hind paws kick trying to find purchase, its thick, long flower‑like tail is looped by the rope and cannot swing freely, forced to stick rigidly behind its rear, with the tip's small tuft of darker stiff hair puffed up like a furry chestnut.

Its round head's two huge eyes stare out, occupying almost half its face, the cheek flesh bulging together so much that even its whiskers are pushed crooked.

Heimu and the upside‑down plump cat locked eyes for a full three seconds.

The chubby cat stopped twisting.

Those amber‑colored round eyes suddenly widened fully, pupils shrinking from circles to vertical slits before snapping back, and the cat's entire face displayed an extremely complex expression—if forced to name it, it would be a blend of "shock," "ecstatic joy," "aggrievement," and a hint of "am I hallucinating?"

"He… Heimu Lady?!"