Morning light filtered through the painted ceramic beaded curtain, casting dappled shadows on the stone table. Ian gazed at the runes faintly visible beneath the woman's veil; the magical patterns rose and fell gently with her breath, writhing like living things.
The noise in the restaurant was muffled into a distant hum by the Soundproofing Charm, and even the sound of the owner wiping the copper kettle became indistinct.
This is clearly some kind of magic that can prevent others from eavesdropping and accidentally overhearing their conversation, which has been used silently.
"You saw what happened at the temple last night, didn't you?" The woman's tone was very confident, with a strong sense of certainty.
Ian didn't look up, his eyes still fixed on the soup bowl in his hands. "You seem to know a lot."
"I'll only ask you," the Black-robed woman leaned forward slightly, her gaze beneath the veil sharp as a knife, "Do you know 'that thing'?"
Ian remained calm and composed, showing no sign of panic. He didn't want to follow the other person's lead in the conversation.
After all, once you fall into the opponent's rhythm, you become very passive, Ian is not the type to be passive.
He was very adept at social skills and had knowledge of things like Man-Eating Tree; he was already a Psychology master when he was Muggle.
"So you know I've been to the temple?" Ian stirred the date porridge with Silver Spoon, the sweet aroma of honey filling the air between them.
The woman's eyes curved slightly behind her veil; she was smiling. She reached up and removed a colorful bead from her ear, placing it on the table and gently pushing it aside.
As the bead rolled to Ian's hand, a scene of the temple suddenly appeared on its surface—the very scene he had explored in the temple's Chamber of Secrets the previous night. Of course, Ian wasn't in the scene, but something was moving unnaturally.
It looked as if someone had picked it up and examined it, and some Potion Ingredients had disappeared into thin air; anyone with a discerning eye could tell something was amiss.
Ian began to feel a little guilty.
What does this tell us?
He knew he couldn't admit to taking those things; otherwise, it would be a huge loss for him if they were taken back.
Since they'd be used in evil rituals anyway if placed in a temple, it's better to let Ian, the Potions Master, have them instead.
Fortunately, the woman didn't pursue the matter further.
"It doesn't prove anything, but I know it was definitely you."
The woman gently shook her head, her veil fluttering slightly. "Your Disillusionment Charm is extremely sophisticated; I cannot detect your presence. But I understand Wizard —especially those like you who dare to question the Wizard of the temple. Curiosity is your most fatal weakness, and also... your most powerful weapon."
Her words were not without merit.
"Alright."
Ian's fingertips lightly touched the colorful bead, and the eerie image instantly vanished. This seemingly decorative little object was actually an exquisite magical artifact capable of recording the Magic Power residue of specific scenes, essentially an ancient video recorder.
It can also be used as a more discreet surveillance camera that doesn't require electricity; even Ian didn't find any trace of it last night.
"Get out of here!"
"Do not touch me!"
Suddenly, the sound of a ceramic pot shattering came from the other side of the restaurant. The two turned their heads at the same time and saw a drunk man being carried out of the restaurant by a waiter. Taking advantage of the commotion, Ian lowered his voice and asked the veiled Black-robed woman in the black robe a question.
"What exactly are you doing? Why is the maid's body sealed? What are the priests afraid of? What... are you plotting?" He put down his spoon, leaned forward, and tried to verify the information he knew.
Incidentally, it also helps to uncover the answers to mysteries that one has yet to solve.
However.
The Black-robed woman did not answer. She slowly raised her hand, her fingertips lightly touching her lips, a slow and meaningful movement. Then, she shook her head, a hint of helplessness and warning in her eyes.
Ian understood instantly— the Silencing Charm.
An extremely ancient and powerful silencing spell. Once cast, the person cannot voluntarily utter anything related to a specific secret; otherwise, they will suffer intense pain or even mental breakdown. What's even more terrifying is that this spell is often not voluntarily imposed, but rather forced upon them by a higher authority to ensure the secret is not revealed.
This spell not only prevents the target from revealing secrets, but it can even distort related memories, making it impossible for outsiders to obtain information through Legilimency.
"All the participants?" Ian asked, somewhat surprised. The other person's actions were like lightning cleaving through the fog. Ian suddenly realized that perhaps all the priests who participated in the core ritual of the temple, and even all those who knew the inside story, had been subjected to similar spells. No wonder the priests looked solemn but remained silent when facing the corpses.
It's no wonder this news wasn't leaked; because it couldn't be revealed, it became a closely guarded secret.
"Yes."
The woman nodded slightly, the colorful beads on her veil clinking together softly. Her eyes suddenly turned to the window—a group of temple guards were passing through the Street, their bronze spears gleaming blindingly in the sunlight.
There's nothing to be nervous about.
The woman was merely expressing that the guards had also suffered similar silencing, or even more effective memory and cognitive alteration than her silence.
"If you want to find the truth, you need to find the answer yourself." The woman picked up a bowl of hot soup that had appeared on the table sometime during the night and sipped it slowly. Her movements were elegant and restrained, as if she were performing some kind of ritual.
Seeing this, Ian didn't press the matter further, but simply pushed the honey jar towards her. "It seems you really want someone to sabotage the temple's plans."
The woman's reaction was peculiar. She neither admitted nor denied it, but instead dipped Silver Spoon in honey and drew a fragmented sun pattern on the stone table. When the pattern was two-thirds complete, she suddenly frowned, swore, and then wiped it away with her sleeve, her movements so quick as if she were afraid of being discovered.
It's obvious.
This was a prompt, and certain magical constraints began to affect her, to the point that she had no choice but to stop her prompting behavior.
"Try this." Ian suddenly raised his voice, pushing a plate of dried figs towards them. "It's from the Sinai Peninsula."
The innkeeper came over to refill the tea, and the Soundproofing Charm dissipated. The two chatted about trivial matters like ordinary diners until the morning prayer bells rang from the direction of the temple. As the woman stood up, a colorful bead slipped from her wrist and rolled to Ian's feet.
"Pay attention to the woman who died today." These words drifted into Ian's ears like a spider's thread as she bent down to pick up the beads.
Ian's Silver Spoon stopped in mid-air: "The body wasn't already—"
He hadn't finished speaking.
The woman was about to leave.
"Tonight, pay attention to that dead woman, not her corpse... but her 'death.'" The woman didn't turn around, only slightly turned her face, her veil gleaming eerily in the sunlight. Before she finished speaking, she had already turned and walked towards the door, her black robe fluttering gently in the night wind, like a ghost of the night. The wind chimes rang again, and her figure completely disappeared into the darkness outside.
It's as if they never existed.
As she left, she stirred up a strange wind, and the sounds of the colorful beads colliding together formed a brief melody. Ian stared at her departing figure, his brow furrowing involuntarily. The woman's steps seemed unhurried, but he noticed that the movement of her right foot was somewhat unnatural—as if she were stepping to a specific rhythm, or as if she were leaving a mark on the ground that only Wizard could see.
"Some kind of Morse Code hint?" Ian was somewhat helpless, because he was not Wizard of this era, so of course he wouldn't understand this special code, which might be considered a little-known fact among Wizard.
The noise from the restaurant returned to his ears. As the one-eyed owner came to collect the dishes, he quietly slipped Ian a palm leaf with hieroglyphs written on it in beeswax, hinting at the woman's identity.
The enthusiastic boss probably saw through the woman's disguise, or at least knew she came from the temple and was afraid Ian might be deceived.
He's a warm-hearted boss, and he must have had a mysterious past, otherwise he wouldn't have such keen insight.
Ian crumpled the leaf in his palm, the fragments burning to ash as they drifted through his fingers. He glanced out the window one last time— the Black-robed woman had disappeared around the street corner, but the lingering scent of that peculiar spice in the air felt like a silent invitation. She was exploiting his curiosity as Wizard.
As for the purpose...
Perhaps they wanted Ian to investigate further, or perhaps it was just a bait-and-switch tactic to make Ian a sacrifice as well.
Ian couldn't make an accurate judgment on this, after all, he didn't know that woman very well.
The date porridge on the table had cooled, a thin film forming on the surface. Ian poked a hole in the film with his silver Silver Spoon, suddenly realizing a contradiction: if all the participants were under Silencing Charm, how had the Black-robed woman been hinting at so much information to him? Unless—unless the spell on her was wearing off, or—
"A loophole was deliberately left." Ian muttered to himself, his fingers unconsciously stroking the wand hidden in his sleeve. He remembered the sun pattern the woman had erased after drawing two-thirds of it, the strange gait of her right foot, and even the melody created when the colored beads collided. These all seemed like some kind of carefully designed code.
Outside the window, the clouds above the temple began to spiral unnaturally. Ian looked away and placed a few copper coins under the empty bowl. As he stood up, he caught a glimpse of something glittering on the opposite seat—a grain of Golden Sand left by the woman was eerily suspended half an inch above the table, forming an arrow shape pointing north.
What's there?
The suspended Golden Sand arrow trembled slightly before Ian's eyes, like a Magic Compass guiding the way. He reached out and touched it, and the tiny particles immediately dispersed, then recombine in the air to form a simple hourglass shape.
Ian noticed the suggestive arrow and pondered. The other person said to keep an eye on the other's death until night, which meant nothing unusual had happened yet? Ian became increasingly curious about what the woman meant and what kind of changes were taking place in this city.
"A secret that will eventually be buried by history." Ian knew that by witnessing the past, he might have caused the demise of the Ancient Egypt pantheon.
As he pondered, he pulled out a waist token, his fingers unconsciously stroking the bronze token he had taken from the woman.
The waist tag is engraved with delicate lotus patterns along its edge, and in the center is a sun symbol entwined with a snake, which feels cold and heavy to the touch.
This was clearly not the mark of an ordinary priest; the magical fluctuations it contained reminded him of the Protective Charm in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts.
"It's quite substantial."
Ian weighed the waist token in his hand.
It was a nameplate he'd taken from the woman. It wasn't that Ian wanted to impersonate her, but rather that he wanted to borrow her identity for a while—the white stone pillars of the Great Library of Memphis gleamed like ivory in the midday sun.
Before this magnificent alabaster building, twelve guards stood on either side, their breastplates adorned not with the usual Eye of Horus, but with a serpent entwined around the sun, identical to the emblem on their waist badges. Ian adjusted his breathing, letting his black robe fall naturally to cover his waist—where his wand was already poised to strike.
"Good day, wise one." The guard captain raised his bronze spear to block the gate, his gaze as sharp as a hawk's. "Closed today for maintenance."
Ian calmly revealed his waist badge, its bronze gleaming with an eerie blue-green luster in the sunlight. The guard captain's pupils contracted sharply; he took a half-step back, his spear tip slightly lowered. "Please forgive me, but an envoy of the High Priest favored by the gods is certainly permitted passage."
"Don't be too nervous, I'm just testing your alertness." Ian mimicked the echoing tone of the Black-robed woman, his fingers lightly tracing the patterns on his waist badge. To his surprise, the guards all knelt down on one knee in unison, their spear shafts slamming heavily into the ground, producing a synchronized boom.
It's obvious.
Women's status was indeed quite high, so much so that even their messengers were highly respected. Ian entered the library with a clear conscience.
The library's Bronze Door slid open silently, revealing a deep, dark corridor inside. The moment Ian stepped inside, the light behind him suddenly distorted, and the doors rippled like water before Reparo —it was a Spatial Partition Charm, of an alarmingly high level.
The interior space was far more expansive than its exterior suggested. Towering bookshelves spiraled upwards, reaching a dome hundreds of meters high, while countless papyrus scrolls and clay tablets floated in the air, moving slowly along some mysterious trajectory. Ian's wand warmed slightly in his sleeve—every inch of the air here was permeated with ancient and powerful magic.
"What area of knowledge is required?" a hoarse voice suddenly rang out. Ian turned around and saw a dwarf-like old man emerge from the shadows, seven-colored threads wrapped around his withered fingers, each thread connected to a scroll of literature in the air.
"The complete Heliopolis Rituals," Ian deliberately uttered a taboo name, "And the Resonance of Stars and Brains."
The old man's brow twitched, and the threads suddenly tightened. "Are you sure? This type of document requires level three access."
Upon hearing this...
Ian pulled out his waist tag again.
Seeing this, the old man staggered back, a flicker of fear flashing in his cloudy eyes. "Yes, sir. To the western forbidden chamber, marked with purple flames."
He quickly pointed Ian in a direction. After passing through three hidden archways, Ian finally arrived at the real Restricted Section. The air here was so heavy it felt almost tangible, and every step felt like wading through glue. The torches on the walls burned with eerie purple flames, stretching his shadow into a distorted, monstrous shape.
The labels on the first shelf made his heart race—" The Divine Grafting," " Guide to Cultivating Artificial Deities," and " Nineteen Methods for Refining Solar Essence." These forbidden books, long extinct in later generations, were now laid bare before him.
"This is also a forbidden technique that those people are using..." Ian quickly pulled out the thinnest scroll, the papyrus trembling slightly at his fingertips.
It resisted as if it were a living thing.
" Memory Palace." He murmured the incantation, his eyes suddenly turning silver-white. This was a secret technique invented by the Hogwarts Library, capable of directly imprinting any text seen into the depths of one's mind. The hieroglyphs on the scrolls crawled into his pupils like ants.
Ian is drawing upon ancient knowledge.
(End of this chapter)