As Voldemort spoke, the stone statue suddenly trembled and split open.
A huge crack spread from the statue's centerline. The stone that formed it was reduced to fine powder by some force and kept collapsing. In moments, the statue had been split in two.
Amid the dust, something at the center of the statue's chest was revealed.
It was a clay coffin, like a mummy's sarcophagus.
Suddenly, thick white fog spread outward from the clay coffin at an astonishing speed, as though space meant nothing before it. In an instant, it shrouded the entire underground chamber.
There was no need to deliberately keep their eyes closed now, because even with their eyes open, they could not see where the basilisk was.
But at that moment, something different appeared in the air.
They looked like cocoons at first, but on closer inspection, they were over a hundred students floating in the thick fog. All of them were unconscious, as though asleep, their bodies tightly wrapped by long snakes and hanging in midair like pupae suspended upside down from branches.
No wonder there had been so few students around the school. They had all been captured and brought here.
But why had they not seen these students before?
"Albus, this looks like a human sacrifice ritual." Grindelwald looked at the students. "Hogwarts actually had something like this hidden away?"
"Salazar Slytherin." Dumbledore frowned.
He understood a little now.
Legend said that Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders, had fallen out with the others and left the school because he was dissatisfied with Hogwarts' policy of teaching all students regardless of background. At the same time, he had built a Chamber of Secrets to purge the non-pure-blood students who were "unqualified to learn."
Dumbledore had never really believed that legend.
Even after