Chapter 3458: Revealing Secrets

————It will be later~~

————

In the Secret Ritual Chamber of Yongle City.

Xia Duo quickly completed the preparations before the ritual; in truth, there was not much to prepare. The Present World Anchor altar, as the primary Spellcasting auxiliary tool, did not even need adjustment, and most of the rest was merely psychological preparation.

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

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

"Just do my best!"

After comforting himself with these final words, Xia Duo began to cast the spell to project his consciousness into the Astral Plane; at this stage, it still followed the normal procedure of a Prophecy Ritual.

Soon, he saw the planar Time Line spreading outward from the Present World Anchor like a Time Spring. If he had not anchored the present, what he would have seen would be an endless river of time with no discernible direction.

Any scene seen in such a river of time could be 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 methods for determining time, whether through intuition or some definite 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 came from there. The prophecy spells of the Red Heart Alliance did indeed originate from Elven Magic at the beginning.

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 turned into Netheril Magic under Xia Duo's interference—the Red Heart Alliance had to rely on this fast-track magic to grow rapidly in its early stages.

This also caused the prophecy spells of the Red Heart Alliance to eventually become a product of the pure Netheril Magic system, which included the Present World Anchor altar.

The method used by Elven prophets of the Main Plane to determine the time nodes of prophetic visions was mainly through multiple prophecies, scrying the present world, and intuition.

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

At least Pafen did not possess the ability to exclude prophetic visions prior to a preset time node before the prophecy took place; the first thing he had to do after each prophecy was to determine the time node he had foreseen.

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 be anchored at the current time node of the Spellcaster.

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 was not that he "could" choose the past, but that he happened to already possess an anchor belonging to the past; if he did not have one, he could not conjure it out of thin air.

The reason it is called the Present World Anchor is precisely 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; instead, 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 be fairly certain that when changing the past (relative to his present) through Time Force, having an anchor that exists in the past is very 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 had placed to foresee the course of the war.)

If changing the past is like rowing a boat against the current, then changing the future is drifting downstream.

Regarding the future, it is not even a matter of changing it, because the future has not happened yet; it is merely guiding it toward a future one hopes to see, nothing more.

It was precisely because of this advantage that Xia Duo had the confidence to have a final showdown 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 that his biggest disadvantage was not mastering the means to manipulate the Time Line through Arcane Magic; the trump card he relied 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 of 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 as much as possible, using every bit of this limited Time Force where it mattered most.

And now, all preparations were complete. 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, and amidst the surging waters of time, he instantly locked onto a scene he deemed quite good.

Then, he used the characteristic of Time Force to create and destroy Time Lines to instantly overwrite 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 state.

But in the Main Plane, existences unable to transcend the Time Line could not perceive such a change, but 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 unrelated to him.

But in the Main Plane, existences unable to transcend the Time Line could not perceive such a change, but 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 unrelated to him.