Chapter 3451: Wanted and Pursued

————Currently rushing~~

————

Moreover, this experience served as a reminder to Xia Duo: what he considered a perfect defense mechanism could very well be a wide-open vulnerability from a different perspective.

In this regard, Xia Duo actually had some research; for instance, the Tower of Time, whose influence could simultaneously exist in the Main Plane, the Ether Plane, and the Shadow Plane, naturally required defensive measures to be established in all three planes at once.

Previously, when Lord Hawk sent people to stir up trouble in Nan Jing, it was because he had neglected defenses in the Shadow Plane that Xia Duo found the opportunity to capture that Arcanist in one fell swoop and detain him in the Tower of Time, buying time for his own subsequent growth.

But in the past, Xia Duo had mostly conducted defenses in planes nearly parallel to the Material Plane, such as the Ether Plane, the Astral Plane, and the Shadow Plane—meaning that when establishing defensive measures, he would involve these three planes simultaneously.

In particular, he had designed quite a few countermeasures against behavior that used these three planes as transit points to bypass defensive measures.

Yet, judging from Wuta's discovery today, it seems the Elemental Plane also holds great potential, or more accurately, the Inner Plane existing within matter might also become a loophole in defense.

It is just that he is not an Elemental Creature after all; even possessing wind and water-related bloodlines, he had never encountered a scene like today's.

Taking a Mage Tower as an example, almost all Mage Towers obtain water through spells rather than piping river water into the tower; the same applies to air, as the air inside and outside a Mage Tower is not connected.

Therefore, he had never considered the possibility of invasion using wind or water, but now, it seems one could bypass most of the Material Plane's defensive mechanisms from the Inner Plane.

If nothing else, at least Wuta's extraordinary perception ability in the Earth Element Domain, as well as the Illuminati's disguise being easily seen through by this ability, were enough to demonstrate the potential for application in this direction.

For a moment, Xia Duo even wanted to invite Wuta to join the Tower of Time to specialize in research related to the Inner Plane, but for now, official business was more important; besides, Wuta was in Calimshan and wouldn't run away, so it wouldn't be too late to invite him after the war.

Moreover, he also needed to think carefully about what kind of conditions the Tower of Time could offer to attract Wuta to join; as a Calimshan Scholar, Wuta likely lacked no research resources.

The only breakthrough point was probably the fact that the other party had already become an Elemental Creature.

Although Calimshan Magic had already developed into true general Arcane Magic, it had, after all, evolved from Bloodline Magic, and it was likely inevitable that research related to the Earth Element Domain would be neglected.

Now, although the major Arcane Magic Systems of the Main Plane already possessed the characteristics of a general magic system, they still had a considerable distance to go before reaching the scientific system of Xia Duo's hometown.

The most obvious point was that magic research in the Main Plane focused more on applied research, with very little investment in basic research, or none at all; those basic research results were often just byproducts of applied research.

According to Xia Duo's understanding, currently only the Tower of Time had invested a large amount of resources in basic research; for example, the Plane Exploration Center was indeed established initially just to discover new planes.

But later, under the guidance of Xia Duo's philosophy, it gradually turned into an exploration of the essence of planes and the Ether Interlayer, with discovering new planes becoming a secondary goal instead.

This was, of course, partly because the Seven Cities Council had already cooperated with the gold dragon Pulitatisi to discover many new planes and had shared them with all councilors, but if the goal was to discover new planes, that goal had already been achieved.

There should have been no need to continue investing a large amount of manpower and material resources afterward, even if it were to explore different technical routes for discovering new planes, one shouldn't have invested that much.

But Xia Duo still invested, and even the most precious manpower resources at the moment—High Mages who had received the Inheritance Ritual—were assigned in several batches one after another; if it were any other Mage Tower organization, they would absolutely not be as generous as he was.

Providing sufficient support could be said to be a huge attraction for someone who wanted to engage in a research field, but if Wuta's heart was not in research, then it might all be in vain.

This was also one of the reasons why Xia Duo did not extend an invitation immediately; it would be best to wait until after the war to ask Talafu or the Mairide Family about Wuta and the situation of Wuta's family, so as to understand the other party's needs and prescribe the right remedy.

As for the present, he still had to find a way to bypass the Illuminati's disguise and enter the interior of the Liexi, to see if he could find the Underdark passage and subsequently find the Illuminati's core ritual.

Thinking of this, Xia Duo asked Wuta: "Is there any way to bypass the disguise here and get inside?"

"I can. The mages who disguised this place think the underground Liexi is just a geological gap; they are thinking too poorly. This bit of disguise cannot stop me at all."

Wuta immediately gave an affirmative answer and even suggested that Xia Duo simply bypass this place and take another path, one that would not touch the disguise or Warning Magic here at all.

"Is that so!"

Xia Duo considered it and agreed with Wuta's suggestion; after all, when it came to the earth and stone domain, Wuta was the expert, and he had always respected the opinions of experts.

"Then I will trouble you, Master Wuta."

With the help of Talafu's relay, Xia Duo quickly communicated the details with Wuta, and then the two of them bypassed this area one after the other, fleeing further downward.

In the process of going down, Wuta was also introducing information about the underground Liexi to Xia Duo: "Many underground Liexi are the extended influence of the Underdark; small ones become underground Liexi, while large ones may extend to the Surface to become Underdark passages.

"I have studied many Underdark Liexi and passages in the south, and they have one thing in common: they are very difficult to destroy. Even if the surface geological Liexi is destroyed, the influence of the Underdark at its root does not disappear, but instead shifts, and then gradually generates other Liexi or passages.

"Of course, such a shift is not always the case; it still has to do with the corresponding Underdark. Some Underdark passages that go straight to the Surface might disappear permanently after being destroyed once, but some underground Liexi can shift and regenerate several times after being destroyed; it is hard to have a fixed rule."

So that was it; Xia Duo previously only knew that the formation of Underdark passages was very strange, and sometimes they had clearly been destroyed, yet new ones could still be found in the vicinity later.

This phenomenon was hard to explain; could it be that the mages who destroyed the Underdark passages at the time were deliberately slacking off? That was obviously unlikely, especially for a country like Cormanthor that extremely hated and feared the Drow.

If they could destroy an Underdark passage once and for all, they would never have slacked off in any way.

Of course, even so, one could not simply assume that the Underdark passage discovered in the Dragonspine Mountains a few years ago was the product of the shift of the underground passage from the Drow War that caused heavy losses to the countries of the Listar Forest before the Cormanthor Birth.