Chapter 3457: Clashing in the Shadows

————Currently rushing~~

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Xia Duo quickly finished the preparations before the ritual; in truth, there wasn't much to prepare. The Present World Anchor altar, as the primary Spellcasting auxiliary tool, didn't even need adjustment, and everything else was mostly psychological preparation.

After all, the Time Force he had collected was extremely limited, and now, he had to use this tiny, non-renewable amount of Time Force to oppose the original owners of this very Time Force.

Once he failed, for the Northland Alliance and for the Main Plane, it would likely result in a pyrrhic victory. To be honest, Xia Duo felt immense pressure at this moment, though he would not deliberately shoulder all that pressure himself.

"Just do my best!"

With this final self-consolation, Xia Duo began to cast the Spell, projecting his consciousness into the Astral Plane; up to this point, he was still following the standard procedure for a Prophecy Ritual.

Soon, he saw the Time Line, which was spreading outward from the Present World Anchor like a spring. If he hadn't anchored the present, what he would have seen would be an endless river of time with no discernible direction.

Any image seen within such a river of time could potentially come from the past, present, or future. If one cannot determine the time, it means the prophetic revelation ultimately obtained by the Spellcaster might be meaningless.

Most prophets have their own method for determining time, whether through intuition or some specific condition; at the very least, they must have one.

A prophet who cannot determine time is not even worthy of being called a prophet.

Xia Duo's method came from the Red Heart Alliance of the Projection Plane, and the Prophecy Ritual he was currently using also originated there. The prophecy Spells of the Red Heart Alliance did indeed originate from Elven Magic at the start.

After all, they were all Elves, just infected with Abyssal Aura and turned into Demon Descendants, but the source of their Magic remained the same.

However, compared to the Elven Magic that had maintained its heritage in the Main Plane, the Magic system of the Red Heart Alliance had, under Xia Duo's interference, turned into Netheril Magic—in its early stages, the Red Heart Alliance had to rely on this type of fast-learning Magic to grow rapidly.

This also meant that the development of the Red Heart Alliance's prophecy Spells eventually became a product of the pure Netheril Magic System, including the Present World Anchor altar.

The method used by Elven prophets in the Main Plane to determine the time nodes of prophetic visions is mainly through repeated prophecy, Scrying in the present world, intuition, and other means.

Of course, this was what Xia Duo learned from the memory of Pafen, a prophet he had captured alive. It only represents Pafen and does not mean other prophets are the same, but Pafen was quite famous in the Elf World and had some degree of representativeness.

At the very least, Pafen did not possess the ability to exclude prophetic visions before a preset time node prior to the prophecy. The first thing he had to do after each prophecy was to determine the time node he had glimpsed.

The so-called "prophecy" might be more appropriately called "viewing the river of time," and "viewing the river of time" is not limited to the future.

By the same token, in the Elf World, all Spells involving time and prophecy can basically be determined to use the current time node of the Spellcaster as an anchor.

The Time-Involving Ritual of the Illuminati is no exception.

The reason Xia Duo dared to challenge the Illuminati in this domain, besides having no other choice, was that he could choose an anchor in the past when casting Spells in the Time Domain.

Of course, strictly speaking, it wasn't that he "could" choose the past, but that he happened to already possess an anchor belonging to the past. If he didn't have one, he couldn't just conjure it out of thin air.

The Present World Anchor—the reason it is called that is because it can only anchor the current moment where the Spellcaster is located. But once anchored, the anchor does not automatically move forward with the passage of time; it remains in the past.

Thus, Xia Duo had an advantage, though he was not yet sure how great it was.

But through previous experiments, he could almost be certain that when changing the past (relative to his current time) through Time Force, having an anchor that exists in the past is highly advantageous.

The most intuitive manifestation of this advantage is the reduction in the consumption of Time Force.

In layman's terms, from Xia Duo's current perspective, he is indeed changing the past, but from the perspective of Time Force, having an anchor that exists in the past is actually more like changing the future. (The anchor was set before the start of the decisive battle, which Xia Duo did to predict the course of the war.)

If changing the past is like rowing against the current, then changing the future is like drifting with the flow.

As for the future, one cannot even speak of "changing" it, because the future has not yet happened; one is merely guiding it toward a future one hopes to see, nothing more.

It is precisely because of this advantage that Xia Duo had the confidence to engage in a final decisive battle with the Illuminati on the level of the Time Line, where they were most proficient.

Besides this advantage, there was also the advantage of the overall strength of the Northland Alliance, which could provide sufficient support when Xia Duo attempted to change the past, thereby reducing the number of attempts, unlike the Illuminati who had to keep trying.

Xia Duo was very clear about his biggest disadvantage: he had not mastered the means to manipulate the Time Line through Arcane Magic. The trump card he was relying on for his counterattack was precisely the Time Force he had collected.

And the Time Force he had collected was limited, while the Time Force available to Dafuni of the Illuminati could regenerate infinitely; even if there were certain limitations, it was certainly much more abundant than his.

Therefore, he had to maximize his strengths and avoid his weaknesses, using every bit of this limited Time Force where it mattered most.

And now, everything was ready. Xia Duo believed he had considered everything comprehensively and had done his utmost. As for the rest—if there is a Will of Heaven—then let it be left to the Will of Heaven!

……

A special dimension of the Astral Plane.

Above the Time Spring that continued to flow and spread outward, Xia Duo held the Strange Crystal containing the Time Force, instantly locking onto a scene he deemed suitable within the surging waters of time.

Then, utilizing the characteristic of Time Force to create and destroy Time Lines, he instantly overlaid it onto the other scenes. This was merely a temporal anomaly manifested in the Astral Plane; it existed for only an instant before returning to its original appearance.

But in the Main Plane, existences unable to transcend the Time Line could not perceive such a change, yet for existences capable of maintaining consciousness continuity during the creation and destruction of Time Lines, the past had been changed!

Or rather, when Xia Duo projected his consciousness into the Astral Plane, the time of the Main Plane became completely unrelated to him.

But in the Main Plane, existences unable to transcend the Time Line could not perceive such a change, yet for existences capable of maintaining consciousness continuity during the creation and destruction of Time Lines, the past had been changed!

Or rather, when Xia Duo projected his consciousness into the Astral Plane, the time of the Main Plane became completely unrelated to him.