Chapter 2687: Countermeasures and Ruien's Opportunity

At this moment, it would be impossible to say that Xia Duo felt no regret, but regret could not make the Demon Descendants suddenly disappear; moreover, given the concealment abilities of the Demon Descendants, even if he had prepared in advance, he likely would have encountered this situation regardless.

It was nothing more than parrying blows as they came.

Quickly adjusting his emotions, Xia Duo simultaneously began emergency maintenance on the Spirit Thought Network; he first partitioned those entrants displaying malice into a separate local area network, then cast mental spells to soothe those entrants who had been impacted.

Afterward, he further refined the network architecture, splitting off the brain-computer and integrating it as a relay for exchanging conscious information between the various local area networks.

Of course, its primary use was to perform initial filtering on the information exchange between the various local area networks; those clearly abnormal information flows could be directly blocked, preventing them from infiltrating other local area networks.

……

Not only that, but Xia Duo also notified Dumu to take people and, based on the location information he provided, deliver some offline reality to those troublemaking Demon Descendant elements.

Normally, the Spirit Thought Network did not possess positioning functions, but who told Xia Duo to increase his Perception depth!

Not to mention that those Demon Descendants were able to erupt with such intense, such massive amounts of conscious information within the Spirit Thought Network in a short time; their own states were also abnormal.

If nothing unexpected happened, those guys should be in a state of extremely low perception of the outside world right now, and Dumu going over would be just right to catch them in the act!

By this time, even if all these local Mages withdrew from the Dumu Wangluo, it would not have any impact on my plan.

Those local Mages were rooted locally and had intricate relationships with the ordinary populace; Mages were not supermen and would be swayed by mass ideology, not to mention the incitement from the Demon Descendants within.

When Xia Shao received the news, Zhuguang Square was already packed with incited ordinary people; they were shouting slogans of defending Meteier and defending Yierlan, demanding that the invaders release the Envoy and withdraw from Yierlan territory.

Furthermore, a large number of people gathering in Zhuguang Square and making such a big commotion had already effectively impacted the Dumu Wangluo; now, almost every moment, local Mages were repeatedly confirming the Envoy's identity to Xia Shao.

These outsiders must not be allowed to ruin the City Lord's plan!

In fact, Xia Shao's overthinking was correct; not long after the Dumu Wangluo resumed operation, a change occurred within the city: several local family Elders, together with the City Guard Commander, began gathering soldiers and the public at the Zhuguang Square in front of the Silver Spire.

"It can't be seen; unless we can catch them and inspect them in public, there is no way to prove they are not Demon Descendants. But if we really did that, in the eyes of the ordinary people, we would look even more like invaders. Even if we checked and found Demon Descendants, they could still say we were the ones who tampered with it."

And Demon Descendants were not conjured out of thin air; the local Demon Descendants were mostly converted from local Elves. They understood the local situation better and knew better how to incite people's hearts.

If it were just ordinary Mages, it wouldn't matter if there were fewer, but if the Elite or veteran Mages acting as collaborative computing nodes withdrew, the local computing network centered on them would immediately collapse.

Receiving such news, Xia Shao was almost stunned; the Demon Descendants would actually do something like this. He immediately asked the Spirit Thought near Zhuguang Square:

"Appear and soothe the public. In that process, you might encounter an attack by Demon Descendants, but this is also an opportunity for you, Excellency. What better opportunity is there to build your reputation than this?"

That way, even if the ritual of Pawaisi was eventually stopped, this matter would inevitably become a stain on him. Although this matter actually had nothing to do with him directly, bystanders would always find reasons.

The slogan they were shouting was actually "The Northland Alliance has invaded, controlled the capital Envoy, and is attempting to open a Portal from Meteier to summon more Army forces to launch a full-scale war."

Xia Shao really wanted to ignore those incited people in Zhuguang Square; after all, no matter how many ordinary people gathered there, they could not interfere with his subsequent actions. But what if the Demon Descendants, failing in one scheme, became angry from embarrassment and carried out a massacre in Zhuguang Square?

Now, Elite Mages had already begun to withdraw from the network, and all Xia Shao could do was re-plan the computing process at the first opportunity. If he didn't do that, the entire collaborative computing network would rapidly fall apart.

However, Xia Duo also believed that the Demon Descendants exposed now were definitely not all the Demon Descendants within Metelier; not to mention those outside the Dumu Wangluo, even among those who had already connected to the Dumu Wangluo, there might still be Demon Descendants continuing to hide.

According to Xia Shao's suggestion, this time, as long as he did not die, once he returned to Taiweimansa, he would definitely be able to be reused, and perhaps he could use this achievement to open a brand-new political career.

"This is really a headache!"

"These damned Demon Descendants!"

Regarding Xia Shao's suggestion, Ruien agreed almost without much hesitation. As Xia Shao said, this was indeed an opportunity for him. As a close minister beside Crown King Helien, he was also under great performance pressure.

Doing this was, of course, only treating the symptoms and not the root cause, falling into the discourse system constructed by the Demon Descendants, but Xia Shao only wanted to delay time now. As long as he could finish analyzing the Mythallar blueprint and combine it with the Ritual Spell to create a targeted blocking plan.

The reason they gathered at Zhuguang Square was because their beloved City Lord was attempting to break through the blockade inside the Silver Spire. As long as they could contact the Crown King and the Council, summon reinforcements, or even just cause an alarm above, the Northland Alliance's conspiracy would be self-defeating.

"Are those leaders Demon Descendants?"

What Xia Shao thought was that if the ritual could not be stopped, letting the people in Metelier pass away in a relatively peaceful state would be better than being in a state of panic.

……

At a time when he could not spare a single bit of his mind, Xia Shao still had to divert a bit of consciousness to send a message to Iolum via his main body, asking him to help request more tokens that could prove the Envoy's identity from Feilifa.

Although the more than eight thousand entrants in the Dumu Wangluo had not yet appeared to withdraw in batches, the fact that the number of entrants was constantly decreasing was also a fact.

Of course, from another perspective, this was also to prevent the Demon Descendants from inciting riots as much as possible. Just for the moment, the ritual Pawaisi was undergoing did not have a large emotional requirement like fear, but one could not guarantee that the Demon Descendants were not psychologically twisted and just wanted to do so.

As for the ordinary people gathered at Zhuguang Square, although Xia Shao was willing to respect individual destiny, he was also unwilling to be stained with a blot for no reason. So he contacted Envoy Ruien, stated the pros and cons to the other party, and then made a suggestion:

Therefore, Xia Shao required all local Mages connected to the Dumu Wangluo to try their best not to expose their identities. At the same time, if they had subordinates or vassals in the city that could be commanded, they must utilize them to protect themselves first, and then soothe the public as much as possible.