Chapter 3496: Reappearance of Decay Zones, Emergency Consultations

————It will be later~~

————

As for the Time Force Xia Duo consumed in his last reshaping of the Time Line, it was about the same as he had estimated, still around fifty units, with no obvious increase or decrease.

As for the trip to Taiweimansa, the ideal situation did not occur; Xia Duo only had time to grab Kalano before he was targeted by Dafuni, who had arrived quickly.

But through his intentional avoidance of battle and the deterrence of his War Spell, the two sides did not engage in a direct conflict, which could be considered as achieving his goal of hiding the fact that he could transcend the Time Line with his consciousness and intended to collect Time Force.

From here on out, this Time Line would be entirely Xia Duo's home field.

After the reinforcements from Xinnaliya and Beilunuo joined, the Alliance fought back and forth with the Illuminati on various local battlefields, and under the stimulation of the reinforcements, the various countries also accelerated their recruitment speed; the situation looked excellent.

But for Xia Duo, the local battlefields were not important; they were merely tools used to delay the progress of the Illuminati's ritual, as long as the situation did not become one-sided for the Alliance.

His true targets remained those key battlefields identified in the previous few Time Lines; only those key battlefields could allow him to collect Time Force, and as long as he could continuously collect Time Force, he could make this war last until the end of time.

Of course, in reality, such an outrageous scenario was impossible.

Whether it was Dafuni accelerating the ritual progress at the Time Line level, or he himself repeatedly reshaping the Time Line to anchor victories and collect Time Force, both would cause the final collision between the two sides to happen sooner.

Therefore, this was actually a war whose outcome could be seen at a glance.

As for the victory or defeat of the war, judging by the time perception Xia Duo had developed after using Time Force multiple times, he had a vague premonition—that he could win.

Of course, that was on the condition that he continued to do what he was currently doing, and that no major variables arose on the Illuminati's side.

……

After the Battle of Tear Drop Lake, Xia Duo came once again to the banks of the Xiangshui River on the southern border of Yierlan, where he had collected about half a Time Gem's (initial state) worth of Time Force in the previous Time Line.

Without considering decay, it was enough for him to reshape the Time Line seven or eight times.

And now, having arrived at this "old place" again, and while the Illuminati remained completely unaware of his existence, Xia Duo felt a few more points of anticipation for this harvest.

Soon, before the Alliance Monitoring Center could detect the Time-Involving Signal, the Time Flow Regulator that had already been put into use began collecting Time Force once again.

Not long after this, Xia Duo received a synchronization of information from the Alliance Monitoring Center, stating that they had detected a relatively strong Time-Involving Signal reaction in the central area of Xiangshui Lake.

"What is the specific level of the signal intensity?"

"The peak reached Level 4, and it is now stable at Level 3."

According to the standards set by the Alliance Time Research Laboratory for Time-Involving Signals, anything below Level 1 could be regarded as normal background fluctuation of the Time Line, and reaching Level 1 basically meant that some kind of interference factor had appeared.

And now, having arrived at this "old place" again, and while the Illuminati remained completely unaware of his existence, Xia Duo felt a few more points of anticipation for this harvest.

Starting from Level 2, the higher it went, the more it indicated human factors, and it also represented the intensity of the Time Line Fluctuation; a peak of Level 4 stabilizing at Level 3 must be the location of the Illuminati's Time-Involving Ritual.

It was just that the Alliance in this Time Line had not yet been able to judge the criticality of this Xiangshui River battlefield, still regarding it as just an ordinary Time Signal Source Point, and thus the forces dispatched were not prominent.

Xia Duo did not alert the Alliance side, and even actively avoided the command of this battlefield, focusing solely on collecting his Time Force; after all, this Time Line would likely still be abandoned by him.

In any case, he could start over from the beginning, so there was no need to take the Alliance's losses on local battlefields too heavily, as long as they were not at a major disadvantage overall.

Xia Duo could feel the cause of this mindset he now had, and he could also understand that this mindset might lead to less-than-ideal results, but at the moment, this was indeed the more ideal way to handle things.

And because of this, he felt even more disgusted by the existence of the Illuminati.

Mastering Time Force to toy with all living beings—this was what the Illuminati was doing; in order to oppose the Illuminati, Xia Duo even went, time and time again, to learn to do things that he himself did not actually like to do, just as the Illuminati did.

Controlling the Time Line felt even more evil than controlling other people's minds!

……

Nearly an hour passed, and the Alliance Mages, unsurprisingly, suffered a crushing defeat on the banks of the Xiangshui River. Xia Duo watched with his own eyes as that group of Alliance Mages either died or fled; he had felt moved, and had even had the thought of intervening, but in the end, he gave it up.

Just like the Alliance Mages who sacrificed themselves in the Battle of Tear Drop Lake in the first Time Line, Xia Duo had immediately changed the result of that battle after restarting the Time Line, but doing so had no real practical significance.

Because that Time Line was once again replaced by a new Time Line, and everything could only remain in Xia Duo's memory; the so-called result of the failure of the Battle of Tear Drop Lake did not actually exist.

At least, it did not exist in the memories of those Alliance Mages who had personally experienced the battle.

"A total of three hundred units."

On the way to the next key battlefield, Xia Duo carefully checked the Time Force reserves in the Time Flow Regulator and discovered that the Time Force he had collected on the Xiangshui River battlefield this time was more than in the previous Time Line.

In the previous Time Line, the Time Force he had collected was not yet three hundred units, but now it had exceeded it; it was hard to say what this meant, and Xia Duo would not change his plan.

Xia Duo could feel the cause of this mindset he now had, and he could also understand that this mindset might lead to less-than-ideal results, but at the moment, this was indeed the more ideal way to handle things.

Because he had encountered Dafuni lying in wait on the Red River Valley battlefield in the previous Time Line, this time, Xia Duo simply changed to a different battlefield; in any case, after collecting, organizing, and analyzing information on Time-Involving battlefields across several Time Lines, he could roughly determine over five key battlefields.

There was no need to collect them in strict chronological order; in fact, as long as he collected more Time Force than was needed to reshape the Time Line in a single Time Line, it was considered a profit, and the Illuminati would pay a greater price for it.

And the Time Force required to reshape the Time Line only needed the fifty units Xia Duo had defined himself; now that he had already collected 300 units, it had already greatly exceeded his expectations.

It was even the case that because he had collected over 300 units twice in a row (the previous time plus what was collected during the engagement with Dafuni at Taiweimansa already exceeded it).

His true targets remained those key battlefields identified in the previous few Time Lines; only those key battlefields could allow him to collect Time Force, and as long as he could continuously collect Time Force, he could make this war last until the end of time.