The Old Ones of Hogwarts

Chapter 487, Page 496: The Broken Cycle 6

Chapter 487, Page 496: The Broken Cycle 6

Even with the vast knowledge, forbidden experiences, and profound understanding of Ian Prince's power and mystery accumulated over millennia by the elderly Saruman, his young face still uncontrollably displayed an extremely obvious blank expression, a mixture of astonishment and bewilderment.

A cold, turbulent void?

He understands.

The body's instinctive trembling caused by the fusion impact and the tearing of spacetime?

He understands.

But—"newcomers"? "This batch"? "The ones with the highest physical fitness"?

These words, combined with Ian Prince's expressionless face and matter-of-fact tone, constituted a bizarre expression that completely exceeded Saruman's cognitive logic and linguistic comprehension, whether in his younger or millennia-merged form—truly incomprehensible.

Millennia of wisdom spun frantically, attempting to decipher the deeper meaning, metaphor, or some ancient code he didn't understand behind the words. Was it mockery? A test? Or some specific terminology involving the rules of space and time?

Got nothing.

The literal meaning of this sentence is so simple as to be childish, but the context in which it appears and the speaker's identity make it seem utterly absurd and incomprehensible.

Saruman opened his mouth, wanting to respond, but found that any words seemed pale and powerless at this moment. He could only continue to maintain that slightly blank expression, in the cold, trembling void, engaging in a one-sided, misunderstanding-ridden, "silent" stare with the young legend above him who was looking down at him and speaking inexplicable words.

"Have I seen you somewhere before?"

Two people from different eras.

Two people who once crossed paths.

They meet again at this moment.

And the ancient stories that should belong only to history, to Saruman, are now strangely connected with the later stories represented by Ian.

This is the magic of the magical world.

Perhaps we need to shift our perspective at this moment.

Even time.

Perhaps we should go back to five minutes ago.

Let's get back to the real protagonist.

cough cough.

The moment Ian opened the magic circle and stepped inside—the one-sided "cleanup" in the center of R'lyeh and the analysis of the magic circle—were merely necessary steps for Ian Prince to overcome some noisy obstacles on his path and a standard procedure for obtaining key information.

The moment the final rune, imbued with his will and magic, was embedded in the array's core and the ancient teleportation mechanism was forcibly activated, he knew he had found the right place.

The raging energy turbulence, the torn spatial rifts, and the spacetime storms powerful enough to crush ordinary matter into elementary particles—these scenes, which would be considered desperate for mortals and even most legendary wizards, were, in Ian's eyes, nothing more than a slightly bumpy "passage" leading to his destination.

Unlike Saruman and the other two, he was not helplessly swept up and torn apart. In the instant that brilliant light burst forth, the "domain" around him—that realm of absolute self, absolute order, seemingly independent of any external rules—like the hull of the most solid submarine, isolated all chaos and harm from the outside.

therefore.

Ian simply followed the "signposts" of the activated magic circle, descending steadily and calmly into the depths of this bizarre space. Soon, he found himself "standing" in the crevice of this deep space, twisted by R'lyeh's madness and ancient magic.

This is not entirely nothingness; it is more like amber, solidified after reality and nightmare, order and chaos have been forcibly stirred together.

The field of vision was filled with distorted patches of color that could not be described by geometry. They slowly crawled, merged, and split, emitting a low-frequency hum that was mind-altering.

Occasionally, fragments of images, like shattered memories, flit by—the spire of a sunken city, the shadow of an unbelievably gigantic creature, stars arranged in blasphemous patterns—

There were many, but they were all blurry and fleeting.

If the concept of "air" still exists, then it's just space, permeated with a far more intense and primal atmosphere of madness than that of the city of R'lyeh.

Those were fragments of dreams unconsciously released by the Great Old One Cthulhu as he slept, each one enough to drive an ordinary wizard mad. But to Ian, these were merely "background noise" that needed to be filtered out, and could even serve as a reference point for analyzing Cthulhu's current state.

"It really is their hideout."

Ian narrowed his cold eyes slightly, his powerful mental energy spreading and scanning silently in all directions from him like the most sophisticated radar.

He was sensing the "structure" of this space, searching for possible "weak points," "energy nodes," or—traces left by other "visitors."

"It's so obvious that Cthulhu's true form must be sleeping here." Ian's goal was clear—to find the true core of Cthulhu, and then, while the other party's power was suppressed to its lowest point due to unfavorable star position, to complete what seemed like a predetermined schedule to him.

As for those few "little tails" behind him.

He had naturally noticed it long ago.

From their hiding like frightened rabbits outside R'lyeh, to their supposedly concealed following of the aftermath of the battle, and finally to their spying from behind a pillar as he broke the magic circle—every single one of their actions was as clear as ink on a blank sheet of paper within the vast expanse of his spiritual perception.

Ian didn't even bother to look.

In the brief interval between analyzing the magic circle, he only needed a very slight mental fluctuation, and the "Searching for Minds," powerful enough to crush all mental defenses, silently swept over the three trembling souls.

Young Saruman's thirst for knowledge, anxiety, and hidden pride; the warrior Kag's loyalty, despair, and protectiveness of his comrades; and the pain and struggle within the soul of the girl named Lina, slowly being eroded and twisted by the power of the deep sea—all memories, emotions, and intentions unfold like open pages of a book.

He casually "browsed" it.

"So they're an adventurer party that strayed into the ruins—trapped in the Infinite Corridor, their companions corrupted, trying to find a way out—and they saw me as a possible hope or a guide?" Ian understood, then lost interest. However, the fine virtues taught at Hogwarts prevented him from taking any action to stop them.

and.

He wouldn't even bother chasing them away unless they were in his way—just like he wouldn't deliberately step on ants on the road unless they crawled onto his shoes.

Therefore, when Ian sensed the magic circle activating again and the three people being swept into the temporal turbulence by the out-of-control aftershocks, Ian did not pay any attention.

He even slightly adjusted the edges of his "domain".

So as not to let them be annihilated by the energy he unintentionally released—not because he thought killing was meaningless or like cleaning up trash, but simply because he was merciful enough.

"They followed us in."

Now, Ian felt a slight disturbance on the teleportation coordinates he had left behind—meaning that "something" had entered through the passage he had opened.

Ian stopped exploring, turned slightly, and turned his "gaze" in the direction from which the fluctuations came. Sure enough, he saw the three familiar figures, tumbling and falling like drowning people in the chaotic energy flow. The young silver-robed wizard, the robust warrior, and the faintly aura-depleted corruptor on his back.

Looking at their disheveled and terrified appearance, especially the young wizard's face which showed a mixture of relief, pain, and undisguised horror upon seeing him—a long-dormant, almost instinctive, wicked sense of amusement quietly surfaced in Ian's mind.

He recalled a phrase that seemed to have been popular long ago, in a long-forgotten fragment of a life completely different from his present. Using it here, seeing the other person's bewildered yet forced composure, it was surprisingly—somewhat fitting? After all, the wizard named Saruman was indeed the first to awaken.

Harboring a childlike mischievousness, Ian calmly spoke as the silver-robed wizard struggled to steady himself, his silver eyes seeming to mature and deepen in an instant. He imprinted his cold, mocking words directly into the wizard's perception.

"Cold, shivering—it seems you're the most physically fit among this batch of new recruits."

The results were unexpectedly good.

Ian saw the silver-robed wizard's face freeze in astonishment, the bewilderment flashing in his eyes, and the chaotic fluctuations emanating from his soul—a frantic attempt at analysis that yielded nothing. That dazed expression seemed to add a tiny, insignificant spark of "life" to this deathly, frenzied space.

"Haha~"

Having satisfied his perverse sense of humor, Ian no longer cared about the effect of the line that the other person couldn't understand at all.

His attention returned to the three, especially the young wizard Saruman who had just completed a strange soul fusion.

In Ian's perception, the young man's soul state was quite interesting. Although he originally possessed considerable talent and had touched the threshold of legendary status, he was essentially still within the realm of "mortals." However, in the brief instant he fell into the spacetime turbulence, his soul core seemed to have been forcibly "injected" with an extremely vast, ancient, and deeply rooted spiritual essence filled with vicissitudes and obsession.

That wasn't possession; it was more like a profound fusion and enlightenment that instantly increased the young man's soul capacity and "quality" by several orders of magnitude, even giving it a faint sense of being out of place in his current era, as if it came from a distant future.

"The breath of time—and a trace of—a raven?" A subtle ripple flickered in the depths of Ian's cold eyes. He was exceptionally sensitive to fluctuations in time and had some understanding of certain ancient concepts that lingered on the edge of spacetime. The changes in this young wizard's soul clearly involved a very high level of temporal interference.

This was somewhat unexpected for Ian.

It seems that these "little tails" have some secrets he doesn't know about.

However, that's all.

Whatever extraordinary events Saruman experienced or what he merged with, in Ian's eyes, their intrusion into this area was an extremely foolish and dangerous act.

This is not a place for them.

Ian's gaze slowly swept over the three. Saruman's forced composure, Kag's wary yet desperate stance as he held Lina tightly on his back, and Lina's increasingly faint, corrupted aura that seemed to be consuming her last vestiges of humanity. His gaze finally settled on Saruman's face.

Ian noticed the unease and a faint fear—as if the person had discovered a secret they shouldn't have—that the man was trying to hide in his silver eyes.

Then, Ian spoke. His voice remained calm and even, echoing clearly in this eerie crevice, directly reaching the consciousness of the three: "You," he paused, as if stating an obvious fact, "shouldn't have come in."

These words, like a cold verdict, instantly shattered the little composure Saruman had managed to maintain through the fusion of souls! In Saruman's understanding, this mysterious and terrifying young legend first uttered strange words that he could not comprehend at all, and then laughed a few times in a hysterical manner.

It's completely unfathomable.

Now they've directly stated that they "shouldn't have come in." Combined with the overwhelming power and disregard for life they've previously displayed, this is practically tantamount to issuing a death sentence!

He believed that Ian thought they were in his way, that they had peeked into secrets they shouldn't have, and that he wanted to casually eliminate them, these "ants," in this unknown space-time gap!

At this very moment.

The heavy memories brought by millennia of wisdom surged forth instantly—those enemies casually wiped away by legend, those sacrifices utterly worthless before a higher level of existence—

Fear, like a cold, venomous snake, coiled tightly around his heart.

This is not the Saruman who actually lived for a thousand years.

and so.

Even if one retains memories.

It is still difficult to make accurate judgments.

His face turned deathly pale in an instant, even more so than during the previous soul fusion.

His lips trembled slightly uncontrollably, as if he wanted to explain, to plead, or at least say something, but his throat felt as if it were being choked, and he couldn't make a sound.

He could only stare helplessly into Ian's cold eyes, which seemed devoid of any human emotion, and felt the shadow of death looming over him.

"What's going on!"

Kag also awoke at that moment.

Although Kag couldn't understand the possible meaning behind Ian's words, he could clearly feel Saruman's sudden outburst of fear, a tremor that came from the depths of his soul.

"Don't worry! Even if he's a legend! He'll have to kill me first before he can kill you! A warrior's oath!" He roared, desperately shielding Lina behind him, his broken greatsword held horizontally in front of him. Although he knew it might be meaningless in front of that legend, his warrior's instincts made him adopt a final defensive stance.

Ok.

That's what he thinks.

For a moment, this twisted, crevice-like space was filled with a desperate silence. Only the indescribable patches of color in the distance continued to writhe silently.

And the sound of Saruman's heart pounding so hard it seemed to leap out of his chest.

"??????"

Ian looked at Saruman's deathly pale face, as if he were about to be crushed to death, and at Kag's futile yet determined defensive stance.

I was completely bewildered.

What he just said was really just a simple warning based on facts. How come these people acted as if he had killed their own mother after he said it?

Say something.

Ian was somewhat puzzled by Saruman and the others' reactions. Well, it's just that people look at things differently from different perspectives.

Obviously.

Saruman and others have many misunderstandings about Ian.