Become the Greatest Scholar in Hogwarts History!

"Welcome to the Gryffindor Common Room." Percy cleared his throat, interrupting everyone's exclamations, and began his first official speech as Prefect.

"The boys' dormitory is on the left, and the girls' dormitory is on the right. You'll find that all your luggage has already been taken up there. The dormitory stairs are enchanted. Girls can go into the boys' dormitory, but if boys try to enter the girls' dormitory..." He put on a serious expression. "The stairs will turn into a smooth slide and send you straight back down. Don't ask me why. It's a school rule."

Hermione nodded in agreement beside him.

"Notices will be posted on the bulletin board in the common room. You'd better check it every day. Curfew is at ten o'clock at night. After that, you must stay in the tower. Understood?"

"Understood!" the first-years answered in a scattered chorus.

"Good." Percy nodded with satisfaction. "Now, off to bed. You have classes tomorrow. Remember, you represent the glory of Gryffindor."

With that, he held his head high and headed for the upper-year dormitories.

"Finally, that's over." Ron let out a huge yawn. "I'm about to fall asleep. Come on, Harry, Lane. Let's go see our beds!"

The three of them followed the crowd up the spiral staircase to the boys' dormitory.

The dormitory was a circular room, with five four-poster beds arranged in a ring, each draped in deep-red flannel curtains.

Their respective trunks stood at the foot of each bed.

A large iron stove burned brightly in the center of the room, keeping it as warm as spring.

Outside the window lay the nightscape of Hogwarts and a brilliant starry sky.

Ron excitedly flopped onto one of the beds and rolled around. "Good grief! I've never slept in a bed this comfortable! It's a thousand times better than that creaky old bed at home!"

Harry, too, carefully sat down on his bed and stroked the soft bedding. A feeling he had never known before—a sense of "home"—warmed his heart.

The other two boys in the dormitory, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, had found their beds too and were excitedly discussing the day's events.

"That Sorting Hat really can read minds! It almost put me in Hufflepuff!" Seamus said.

"And those ghosts! I nearly thought I was seeing things!" Dean added.

Amid the mingled excitement and exhaustion, the boys quickly changed into their pajamas and drew their bed curtains. The room gradually quieted, until only the crackling of logs in the fireplace and the occasional gust of wind outside could be heard.

Harry, Ron, Seamus, and Dean had spent the day caught up in excitement. They were fast asleep almost as soon as their heads touched their pillows.

Their even breathing rose and fell throughout the warm room.

But Lin Yuan didn't sleep.

He drew his bed curtains, shutting out the light and everyone's gaze to create a small, private space.

Then, instead of lying down, he sat cross-legged and assumed the standard meditation posture of a cultivator.

His eyes closed gently, his breathing grew long and steady, and he entered a state of serene detachment from the world around him.

The next moment, he stopped holding back his vast, refined Soul Power.

It was like a supernova suddenly blazing to life in the dark universe.

His invisible Spiritual Sense, transcending the physical dimensions, spread out from him in an instant, like quicksilver pouring across the ground, like a silent tide!

It pierced the thick stone walls of Gryffindor Tower and swept past the plush armchairs and warm fireplaces.

It spread downward, through floor after floor, past the bustling common room and the moving staircases, past the empty Great Hall, reaching all the way down to the deepest foundations of the castle.

It rose upward, through ceilings and past classroom after classroom and office after office. It passed through the towering spires and merged with the cold starlight in the night sky.

At that moment, the entire Hogwarts Castle appeared in Lin Yuan's mind, complete and three-dimensional, in a way it never had before.

This was no longer a building of bricks and timber, seen with the eyes.

It was a... magnificent, impossibly complex "spiritual energy map" made of magic!

In his perception, the entire castle was like a living heart.

Countless currents of magic, thick and thin like meridians, surged and circulated in every corner of the castle, sustaining the life of this vast magical construct.

The magic in most areas was evenly distributed and steady, like a placid river.

But in a few places, the magical light shone unusually bright, like beacons in the night, radiating energy unlike anything else.

The first place he sensed clearly was the headmaster's office, directly behind the High Table.

The energy field there was so complex it made his scalp tingle.

It was like an astrolabe made of countless interlocking gears.

There was the deep, tranquil energy radiating from ancient magical objects; the fiery, life-filled energy from Fawkes; the Sorting Hat's blended energy, belonging to the four Founders and capable of seeing into souls; and countless other mysterious energies that Lin Yuan couldn't yet decipher, protected by layers of magical seals.

At the center of all that energy was Albus Dumbledore's personal Magic Field, as vast as the deep sea and as brilliant as the stars.

It was like a star, using its powerful gravity to bring all the surrounding energies together in perfect harmony.

"A mobile super-energy core... with a top-tier defensive fortress besides." Lin Yuan assessed it inwardly. "Trying to break in would be a fool's dream."

Next, his Spiritual Sense continued downward, through solid layers of rock, until it reached the depths beneath the castle.

There, he sensed a completely different source of energy.

It was... cold, filled with ancient malice and the aura of slumber.

It was like a giant serpent coiled deep beneath the earth, sunk into a long sleep. Yet with every "breath" it took, the magic around it seemed to grow ever so slightly sluggish.

That power was steeped in "death" and "petrification."

"The Chamber of Secrets... so that's where it is." Lin Yuan understood at once. "The energy is powerful, but dormant, and its structure is relatively simple. Not much of a threat. I can study it up close when Harry opens this dungeon."

Then his Spiritual Sense began sweeping back and forth across the seventh-floor area of the castle.

He sensed a very peculiar place.

It was a "blank" area.

On his spiritual energy map, the fluctuations there were almost nonexistent.

But this "nothingness" wasn't truly empty. It was a quantum-like chaos.

It both existed and didn't exist.

It was both empty and contained every possibility.

It was like a hard drive waiting for a program to be written onto it, or a cloud server that could instantly generate any app its user wanted.

"Room of Requirement..." Lin Yuan's soul lingered at the edge of the area, overwhelmed. "This... this is practically a magical construct on the level of the Law of Causality! It isn't simple Transfiguration or space magic. It touches directly on the world's fundamental rule of 'wishes come true'! Who created it? What powers it? How does it work?"

By comparison, the Killing Curse and the Patronus Charm were like children's building blocks.

The Room of Requirement was the true miracle, something that touched the "realm of the gods" in this world!

Analyze it!

If he could unravel even one ten-thousandth of its mysteries, the path to cultivation would no longer be a dream!

Lin Yuan forcibly suppressed his excitement and continued mapping the castle.

He sensed the "information field" in the library, dense as a sea of stars and formed from the magical knowledge contained in countless books.

He sensed the vast gathering of life energy in the Forbidden Forest, wild and chaotic, brimming with primal vitality and the law of the survival of the fittest.

He sensed the depths of the Black Lake, cold and gloomy, filled with the magic of countless unknown Fantastic Beasts dwelling in its unfathomable waters...

All night, Lin Yuan's soul roamed across Hogwarts's incomparable "spiritual energy map."

Like a child connecting to the internet for the first time, he explored this new world, full of treasures, greedily and without tiring.

It wasn't until daybreak that he slowly withdrew his Spiritual Sense.

He tried, as he had back on Earth, to "communicate with" and "absorb" the "spiritual energy" that filled Hogwarts, so dense it was almost liquid.

On Earth, spiritual energy had been as thin as smoke. He could sense it but couldn't draw upon it.

Here, it was as vast as the sea. He felt as though he were immersed in it.

Carefully, he used his soul to send the surrounding spiritual energy a command to "absorb."

But the result was the same.

That spiritual energy—or the "magic" of this world—didn't respond at all to the standard method of "drawing spiritual energy into the body" passed down among cultivators for millions of years.

They were like a crowd of proud spirits with minds of their own. They were willing to circle and dance around him, and even to lend him a little "help" when he cast those clumsy spells he had learned from books.

But they absolutely refused to enter his body and become part of his power.

Lin Yuan refused to give up and tried several more times.

The result was the same every time.

He could clearly feel an invisible, insurmountable "barrier" between his body and the energy of this world.

It was as if he were using an Android phone and trying to log into Apple's App Store.

The systems were incompatible; the protocols didn't match.

Lin Yuan sighed silently and opened his eyes.

Outside the window, the sky had already begun to pale.

He finally understood.

In this world, he was an "undocumented outsider."

The world's rules didn't recognize his "identity."

He possessed a powerful soul and the highest cultivation theory, yet he was like a warrior armed with the art of slaying dragons, arrived on a continent without any dragons.

If he wanted immortality, cultivation, and to unravel this world's ultimate mysteries, he couldn't keep clinging to his old "Android system."

He had to start from scratch.

First, he had to learn this world's "language," obtain this world's "ID card," download this world's "apps," and become a qualified "Apple user."

Then he could use his powerful "hacking skills," brought from another world, to crack, modify, and rewrite this world's "source code."

In the end, he would make this world serve him.

"The road ahead is long and far..." Lin Yuan murmured, but there was not a trace of discouragement in his eyes. Instead, they burned with a challenge unlike any he had faced before.

His gaze fell on the brand-new copy of Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 at the foot of his bed.

Let it all begin here.

Become the greatest scholar in Hogwarts history!