Chapter 2691: Controlling the Process

Very quickly, the ritual synchronization reached a critical Node.

From this moment on, the entire ritual would gradually slip out of Palisi's control, and Xia Duo was full of confidence in this. As one spellcasting command after another was issued, Palisi finally reacted.

The reason there was no reaction before was mainly because Palisi was unclear about Xia Duo's goal and was constrained by the ritual itself; now, seeing that Xia Duo wanted to make changes to the ritual, and even seize control of it.

Under such circumstances, how could Palisi continue to swallow his anger!

A counterattack followed, but after all, there had been no preparation beforehand; all Palisi could do was rely on the inertia of the ritual spellcasting to obstruct, and could not do more.

Of course, this was on the premise that Palisi still wanted the ritual to continue and had not reached the point of giving up entirely.

Palisi doing this was more to stall for time; as long as he could drag it out until the ritual ended, it would be fine, but all of this was within Xia Duo's expectations, and to a certain extent, he even went along with Palisi's stalling strategy.

Just like before they took action, when Ruien was at Zhuguang Square; Ruien seemed to want to persuade the public to do something, and perhaps he himself thought so too, but in Xia Duo's plan, Ruien's role was just to stall for time.

To prevent the Demon Descendants from taking extreme actions, such as a more direct massacre.

And the Demon Descendants, because they underestimated Xia Duo, did not anticipate the real reason behind Ruien going out to appease the public, and until now, they had not taken any extreme actions.

However, Xia Duo also knew that Palisi might not let him do that forever; once Palisi realized that the ritual was hopeless, Palisi's behavior would become unpredictable.

……

He had no choice but to adopt a strategy of stalling for time.

It was not that Palisi did not want to regain control of the ritual through a method similar to "capital increase and share expansion" like Xia Duo, but that he had not anticipated this situation at all and was completely unprepared for it.

The so-called "consider defeat before considering victory," is probably just like this.

Ten minutes later, Xia Duo suddenly beamed; it was smoother than expected, and he finally saw the dawn in this race against time!

As for now, on Palisi's side, Palisi should actually be able to realize that his opponent is extraordinary, but he was already riding a tiger and could not get off, leaving him with only two choices—

Of course, it is also possible that before that, Palisi would destroy the core process; this is a possibility that cannot be completely ruled out, but if he sensed that the situation was impossible, Xia Duo would not wait until the last minute to give up and then evacuate.

I do not know how much time passed; in such an intense struggle, time seemed to have slowed down a lot, and it was also at this time that Xia Duo received the information relayed back by Dumu in the Spirit Thought Network—

By that time, everything would be over.

Perhaps it would be destroying the ritual, or perhaps it would be notifying the Demon Descendants to carry out a massacre.

However, such good things did not last long; Palisi soon reacted, and when he realized that his actions were not only failing to achieve any of the results he wanted, but were instead fulfilling his enemy's goals.

Although he used the method of ritual synchronization to seize control, he certainly did not want the ritual to truly complete, so by this stage, he could gradually terminate the ritual process.

It was a pity that by this time Xia Duo had already mastered over eighty percent of the process, and Palisi's destructive actions did not pose much of a threat to the Ritual Core, while the destruction of other non-core processes was actually what Xia Duo wanted to do.

If it were the former, that was exactly what Xia Duo was painstakingly dealing with, and if it were the latter, then one could only pray that the power of the local Mages would be enough to quell it.

After the non-core processes of the ritual went out of control, he finally completed the termination of most of the non-core processes, and all the remaining processes were under his control.

The other was to try to stall for time.

The next moment, Xia Duo felt the degree of this anger even more from the relayed information—Palisi had begun to attack the core ritual process regardless of the cost.

Without a doubt, Xia Duo chose to terminate the non-core processes of the ritual gradually; at this moment, Palisi's destructive behavior actually helped him to some extent. Wherever Palisi started destroying, he started terminating.

The reason for gathering the investigation team members at the Silver Spire, besides borrowing the Secret Ritual Chamber there, was also to facilitate evacuation in an emergency.

Although his destruction was still continuing, it was only a minor irritation; separated from the ritual itself, Palisi, along with those leaders of his, were just meat on the chopping block.

As for Palisi's attack on the core process, it was just like Palisi had done before, relying on the inertia of the ritual to stall, as long as he could stall until all non-core processes were terminated, or at least all processes not under his control were terminated.

Very quickly, Xia Duo learned of Palisi's approach from the relayed information about the ritual process; this guy really was "if I can't have it, I'll destroy it," and after a brief silence, he began to actively destroy the ritual process.

……

One was to give up the ritual and launch a counterattack, but that would go against his original intention.

As for the Ruien Envoy who was still in Zhuguang Square, if there was still a chance when the time came, Xia Duo would not mind pulling him along; if there was no chance, then that was Ruien's fate.

While maintaining the Collaborative Computing network, he still had to deal with the Demon Descendants; the pressure was still there, and Xia Duo sincerely hoped that they could handle it.

It could be said that this moment was the most dangerous step in this operation.

Even as a transmigrator, he did not arrogantly think of himself as the savior of all living beings in this Magic world.

If he were to forcibly take Ruien away, would he also have to forcibly take away all the citizens of Meite'er? Xia Duo would not casually take on responsibilities that were not his own!

Under the perfect control of Xia Duo and the entire Spirit Thought Network, Palisi's destructive behavior was more like assisting him.

"Only reacting now, it's too late!"

Xia Duo naturally had expectations for this, but there was not much he could do; he still followed the pre-set plan, continuously terminating the ritual processes from the periphery to the core.

At this moment, even across a great distance, Xia Duo could feel the opponent's irrepressible anger.

Xia Duo had currently mastered over eighty percent of the entire ritual spell's processes; if it were a normal spell, he could stop it whenever he wanted, but for this special spell involving Time Line manipulation, he still had to strive for one hundred percent control to stop it safely.

And this opportunity, Palisi clearly did not want to let Xia Duo win too easily.

In other words, from this moment on, Palisi was no longer relevant to this ritual.

And Xia Duo, while minimizing the stimulation of Palisi, continuously "increased capital" into this ongoing ritual spell, thereby achieving the goal of expanding his control.

Palisi had already given up the stalling obstruction he had started using the ritual's inertia, and began to become aggressive!

After all, everyone was together, so there was no need to look for people everywhere; when it was time to leave, they could leave immediately.