The ancient, sacrificial-looking plaza in front of them was at least the size of three standard Quidditch pitches, and the snake statues surrounding the plaza were each no smaller than the 360-year-old female Basilisk at Hogwarts.
"Damn, this is high-class stuff!" Victor couldn't help but exclaim.
A scene this grand would be impressive anywhere.
Next, the two of them walked around the entire plaza, but besides the marble platform in the center, they didn't find anything particularly special or any hidden mechanisms.
"Luna, did you find anything over there?" Victor asked the figure on the other side of the plaza.
"No…" Luna shook her head.
So, they walked together towards the platform in the center of the plaza.
Victor looked at the bright white groove on the platform, which was integrated with the serpentine base. Without any hesitation, he placed the serpentine ring he had obtained from the hidden pool onto it.
The dark golden ring, inlaid with a black gem, formed a stark contrast with the pristine white marble.
But after a while, nothing happened.
"No reaction," Luna said, giving her characteristic head tilt and blinking her eyes in confusion.
"Maybe it's missing a special component to activate it," Victor said, frowning in thought. He then pulled a small, frost-covered glass bottle from his pocket, which contained a dark red liquid.
"It's Harry's blood."
He briefly explained, then shook the bottle of blood. With a flick of his thumb, he sent the stopper flying, and a drop of dark red blood landed on the ring.
Instantly, the black gem absorbed the blood and emitted a vibrant red glow, completely different from when Victor had tested it with his own blood back at the hidden pool.
Before long, as the red light gradually dimmed, the mechanism that had been sealed for thousands of years was finally activated.
Suddenly, a seemingly endless stream of blood flowed from the serpentine ring, down the groove, along the exquisite carvings on the marble base, and onto the ground.
The intertwining of white and vibrant red exuded an eerie and sinister aura.
Immediately afterward, the seven giant snake statues surrounding the plaza suddenly began to writhe. The Ouroboros let go of its tail, then bared its sharp fangs, opening its mouth wide to form a dark, black hole.
Seeing this, Victor quickly took Luna's hand and walked towards it.
Between the two fangs, three ancient stone staircases led down into the darkness below.
Without any hesitation, Victor sent a few light spheres ahead to scout the way, then took Luna's hand and entered the mysterious snake's mouth, which led to an unknown destination.
The stairs spiraled downwards, with smooth stone walls on both sides of the passage.
The two of them walked for several minutes before they finally reached the end of the stairs.
Under the light of the few spheres, it was still incredibly dark, with only the dry, gray stone bricks on the ground visible.
So, Victor raised his hand and merged the few light spheres into one, expanding its size.
Instantly, a "sun" slowly rose into the air, and the surroundings immediately brightened. What came into view was a huge underground space comparable to the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch.
The immense underground space was shaped like an inverted oval eggshell. Countless irregular, roughly processed stones were stacked on top of each other, forming a completely sealed stadium-like structure.
On the wide, uneven ground, several huge, elongated, winged skeletons lay curled up in the center of the basement. Their postures made them look like they were guarding something, giving off a very solemn feeling.
"Those are Basilisks!" Luna said in surprise, looking at the huge skeletons in the distance.
Although their bodies were much smaller than Hogni's, it was still clear that these skeletons belonged to the Basilisks that Slytherin had bred with Great Auk.
"Let's go take a look," Victor said, and he led the way, with Luna close behind him.
Walking inside the Basilisk's skeleton, Victor immediately saw a familiar face.
"Salazar Slytherin…" Victor said suddenly, his tone certain.
Inside the skeleton, a stone statue of a man, about two meters tall, sat on a stool also made of stone. The statue's right hand held a staff inlaid with an unknown crystal, and its left hand held a book pressed to its chest. The eyes on its face stared straight ahead, expressing something unknown.
The face on the statue was almost identical to Slytherin's stone statue in the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts, but it looked older, and its beard was much longer.
"So this is Slytherin's tomb?" Victor walked up to the statue and examined it carefully, then looked at the Basilisk skeletons around him. "It looks like he willingly looked into the Basilisk's eyes and then became like this."
"Why would he do that?" Luna asked, confused.
"I'm not sure, but…" Victor reached out and took the book from the statue's left hand. "Perhaps this will give us the answer."
He then looked down at the cover.
The book seemed to be made of parchment. It was hard to the touch and a bit pale, but the gilded letters on the cover were still clearly visible: Salazar Slytherin.
It was surprising that after a thousand years, the book was still in perfect condition, aside from a little dust.
Flipping the cover, he saw a simple sentence on the first page: Heir, ask me a question; my life's work is all here.
"This… isn't this exactly like Voldemort's Horcrux diary?!"
As Victor looked at the sentence, a sense of uncanny familiarity washed over him.
He couldn't help but feel a flicker of suspicion in his heart. Was this book a Horcrux that Salazar Slytherin had created himself?
Or was it that, like Godric Gryffindor, he had also put a part of his consciousness into this book?
Thinking this, Victor turned the pages again, but the subsequent parchment pages were all blank, with no written records, exactly like Voldemort's diary.
This only deepened Victor's suspicion.
But just then, three calls interrupted his thoughts.
"Victor…"
"What is it?" Victor subconsciously looked in the direction of the voice.
He looked up and saw that at some point, Luna had taken the staff from the Slytherin statue and broken it into two halves.
"Look, it's broken," Luna said, holding up the two broken pieces of the staff.
"…"
Victor was speechless.
He walked over, took the two broken pieces of the staff in his hand, and examined them carefully.
"It's just an ordinary oak staff. It was just so old that it had rotted, so it broke with a snap," Victor said, then examined the crystal on the staff. "There are also incomplete alchemical runes on the crystal, but they're too badly shattered to be repaired."
After speaking, he handed the staff back to Luna.
"Is this Slytherin's wand?" Luna asked curiously, fiddling with the staff.
"I don't know, but I've never heard of anyone being able to add alchemy to a wand," Victor replied, shaking his head. "It's said that Slytherin's true wand was passed down to the Gaunt family, but in the 17th century, it was stolen by the founder of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Isolt Sayre, and has been buried underground ever since."
"My wand is made of oak. I want to take this home!"
"Of course you can. Do you want me to repair it? I can make it less likely to break."
"No, I like it the way it is now," Luna said, shaking her head. She then put the broken, old staff into the Undetectable Extension Charm pouch that Victor had given her.
After dealing with the staff, Victor continued to study the book in his hand. He tried to take out a quill and write on the parchment: Hello, Salazar Slytherin.
The ink gradually disappeared into the parchment, but there was no reaction.
"It doesn't seem to want to talk to us," Luna said softly, looking down at the scene.
"That's probably because it only responds to the right person." Victor thought for a moment, then took out another bottle of red liquid from his pocket and said with a smile, "This is Harry's, too. I brought extra just in case."
He had drawn ten bottles of blood from Harry, so he had eight spare bottles in his pocket.
He remembered how Harry's face had gone ghostly pale when he saw the needle used to draw the blood.
Victor poured Harry's blood onto the parchment. The bright red blood gradually soaked into the parchment, and the book instantly emitted a green glow.
Then, the pages of the book began to flip rapidly. Immediately afterward, a phantom figure floated out of the book and condensed into an old, wizened, monkey-like figure with a long, sparse beard that almost touched the hem of his robes.
"Salazar Slytherin?" Victor looked at the figure intently, then asked tentatively.
"I am Salazar Slytherin," Slytherin replied expressionlessly.
"Are you a Horcrux or something else?"
"I would not desecrate my own soul. If I had wanted to live forever, I would not have allowed Jarayim to kill me."
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