[You have obtained the talent — Piercing Subtlety Heavenly Eye.]
[With this eye, you may gaze upward upon the nine-fold firmament and its stars; look downward into the ninefold netherworld and its earth-veins; and, between, behold the laws and principles of all things. Nothing escapes its sight; nothing remains unknown.]
[Even among immortals and gods, fewer than one in ten thousand can open such a Heavenly Eye. Some, with this eye, may behold all Six Realms. Though your cultivation is still shallow, gaining this talent will greatly expand your range of vision and your power of insight. Within its scope, everything you see may be traced back to its underlying principle.]
Theodore's spirit jolted. His face lit with fresh delight.
Before, with Seven-Apertures Exquisite Heart, he could understand the nature of things—but only after he'd seen them, and often only when they lay fully exposed.
Now, with Piercing Subtlety Heavenly Eye, his range of vision had expanded dramatically.
It was like a game map suddenly being lit up.
In theory, he could sweep the terrain with his Heavenly Eye, then know at a glance where anything useful to him lay within its reach.
If he ever needed to find some rare herb, he could open the eye and have a real chance of spotting it.
And before, even with all his perception and insight, some things simply couldn't be analysed because he couldn't see the structure—like the Room of Requirement. If you couldn't see how it worked, how could you comprehend it?
But now, with his Heavenly Eye, his field of view and his capacity for fine observation had both soared.
Anything he could see, he could dissect.
Some things would no longer be mere appearances; he'd be able to peer straight through to their core.
Compared to Seven-Apertures Exquisite Heart and Spirit-Rhino Insight Eye, Piercing Subtlety Heavenly Eye was a clear, all-round upgrade.
Theodore took a breath, then activated the talent.
The world changed in an instant.
Everything became sharp—a level of clarity he'd never experienced.
He could see motes of dust that had been invisible before.
There's an old line in the Buddhist scriptures: "When a Buddha looks into a bowl of water, he sees eighty-four thousand tiny beings."
With Piercing Subtlety Heavenly Eye, Theodore felt quite similar.
And that was just the most trivial aspect of it.
The true wonder lay in its ability to pierce the principles behind all things—far beyond what Seven-Apertures Exquisite Heart could do on its own.
For example, before, even though Theodore had experienced the effects of the Room of Requirement, because he couldn't see how its magic functioned, his Exquisite Heart couldn't fully analyse it.
Now, when he opened the Heavenly Eye, he could actually see the currents of magic themselves—trace them, follow them back to their source.
His heart stirred with sudden understanding.
"The Room of Requirement only appears when students have urgent needs. I hadn't thought too deeply about that before, but now it clicks."
"Magic, in essence, is the manifestation of a sufficiently strong and clearly defined thought. Even Transfiguration—the most complex branch—follows this rule."
"You must think clearly of what you want to transform into for the spell to work."
"And the students' intense desires… are the perfect fuel for Transfiguration."
"Inside the Room of Requirement, there is not only incredibly profound Transfiguration magic, but also a kind of enchantment that collects desires and emotions."
"Every time someone opens the room and uses it, the Room gathers that wish and stores it, turning it into fuel to drive Transfiguration."
"The original Room of Requirement would never have been capable of what it does now. But after a thousand years, and Merlin knows how many students' wishes poured into it, the Transfiguration within has been amplified by this ocean of desire to an unprecedented level."
"If the Room of Requirement ever gained a will of its own—or if some wizard could fully seize control of all the desire stored within—then the Transfiguration it unleashed would leave Dumbledore, Voldemort, and their like choking in the dust."
"In a way… if there truly is such a thing as a miracle in the wizarding world, then the Room of Requirement, in its full glory, is probably the closest thing to divine."
Having pierced even this small part of the Room's mystery, Theodore found himself genuinely shaken.
No wonder Dumbledore, in the original timeline, had praised the Room so highly, calling it Hogwarts' greatest secret.
No wonder Voldemort had chosen to hide one of his Horcruxes in there.
The place deserved every bit of that reputation.
He couldn't help wondering which of the Founders had created this room.
Its Transfiguration mastery and grasp of the essence of magic… were clearly far beyond anything modern witches and wizards could reach.
If, like Godric Gryffindor, the creator of the Room had somehow survived into the present day, and they returned to reclaim and fully wield it—
They might be able to perform Transfiguration that completely broke through the so-called Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration.
"The Founders wouldn't have gone to all this trouble just to give students a playground and a space for pranks or training."
"From the very beginning… was the true intention to let the Room slowly accumulate a vast ocean of wish-power over centuries?"
Thoughts flashed through Theodore's mind.
A layout spanning a thousand years?
The fog surrounding the Four Founders seemed to grow thicker by the second.
Another thought surfaced.
The giant squid that might be Godric Gryffindor was lying right now at the bottom of the Black Lake.
If he wanted to know the truth of that era, perhaps he could use Piercing Subtlety Heavenly Eye to take a closer look. Maybe he'd find a loose thread to pull.
On that impulse, Theodore invoked the Heavenly Eye again, turning his senses toward the Black Lake.
Under its gaze, even the walls of the Room of Requirement ceased to exist.
His vision pierced outward; the distant Black Lake rushed toward him.
It felt like the water itself was surging up to engulf him.
Fortunately, even though the lake water was as black as ink, nothing in it could hide from the Heavenly Eye.
Every detail stood out in stark relief.
Theodore's sight dove deeper and deeper—past schools of fish, past the merfolk cities in the depths—until at last he saw the massive silhouette of the giant squid sprawled across a jagged field of strange rock formations on the lakebed.
Up until now, he had only half believed that the giant squid could actually be Godric Gryffindor—his suspicion rested mostly on hints from the system.
But now, under the Heavenly Eye, that guess was finally confirmed.
"I can see the magical patterns inside its body. This is absolutely an Animagus transformation."
"And not the stable kind either, but that category of complex, advanced Animagus work that modern wizards have labelled 'extremely dangerous and prone to unpredictable mutations'."
"Godric Gryffindor… it can only be him."
"But there's something else coiled around him that's even stronger than his magic."
"An ancient aura—ancient, savage… mad… indescribable…"
Theodore focused all his attention, using the Heavenly Eye to study the mad aura surrounding the squid.
But it was as if the giant creature sensed the probing.
Its countless tentacles began to thrash wildly, stirring the lakebed into a chaotic storm of silt and current.
A hoarse, garbled voice echoed in the depths.
"Withdraw… your gaze…"
"When you stare into madness…"
"It is staring back at you…"
A violent warning surged through Theodore's heart.
That mad aura had somehow crossed the distance of the lake—
It was in the Room of Requirement.
It was coming straight for him.
A radiant gold burst from Theodore's body.
Proved Diamond Body Never Fails flared to life of its own accord. Its golden light was thicker and more sacred than ever, flooding his body with an aura of inviolable holiness.
No evil could invade.
He had barely started to relax when his expression tightened again.
That mad aura kept slamming into the golden light, each impact weakened and wiped away, but still—
Little by little, it was wearing the light down.
Only after several long minutes did the last traces of madness finally fade.
Compared to before, the gold around Theodore's body was noticeably dimmer.
He clenched his fists, shock burning in his eyes.
Since obtaining Proved Diamond Body Never Fails, nothing in the wizarding world had ever shaken that immortal golden light.
Let alone erode it like this.
What was that madness coiled around Godric Gryffindor?
Judging from its intensity, the depth of this world was terrifying.
Deep enough to drown someone like Dumbledore without a trace.
No wonder the Four Founders had all met such grim, unnatural fates.
His gaze slid instinctively to the system screen—
And he nearly choked on his own breath at the new prompt.
[With your Piercing Subtlety Heavenly Eye newly awakened, you forgot the limits of heaven and earth and dared to look beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens, into a region filled with primordial chaos, in which a Dao Palace faintly appeared.]
[Within that palace sat a figure you could not comprehend.]
[This is the Purple Cloud Palace beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens—Dao Court of Hongjun.]
[That unfathomable figure and aura are none other than the one who merged with the Dao itself, teacher of the Saints, embodiment of the Heavenly Dao of the Primordial World—Dao Ancestor Hongjun!]
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