Become the Strongest Academic in Hogwarts History!

"Welcome to the Gryffindor common room." Percy cleared his throat, cutting off their awed murmurs, and began his first official speech as prefect.

"Dormitories for boys are on the left, for girls on the right. You'll find all your luggage already sent up. The staircases are enchanted—girls can visit the boys' dorm, but if a boy tries to enter the girls' dorm..." He put on a stern expression, "the stairs will turn into a smooth slide and dump you right back down. Don't ask me why, it's school rules."

Hermione nodded approvingly from the side.

"Various notices will be posted on the common room bulletin board—you'd best check it every day. Curfew is 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 walked toward the older students' dormitory.

"Finally over," Ron let out a huge yawn. "I'm dead tired. 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 dorm was also a circular room, with five four-poster beds draped in deep red flannel curtains arranged in a ring.

At the foot of each bed sat their respective trunks.

In the center of the room, a blazing iron stove made the whole space warm as spring.

Outside the window stretched the night view of Hogwarts and a brilliant starry sky.

Ron pounced excitedly onto a bed, rolling back and forth on it: "Merlin's beard! I've never slept on a bed this comfortable! A million times better than that creaky old thing at home!"

Harry sat down carefully on his own bed, stroking the soft bedding, and a feeling he'd never known before—one called "home"—warmed his heart.

The other two boys in the dorm, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, each found their own beds and chattered excitedly about the day's events.

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

"And those ghosts! I almost thought my eyes were playing tricks on me!" Dean added.

In an atmosphere woven from excitement and exhaustion, the boys quickly changed into their pajamas and drew their bed curtains. The room gradually quieted, leaving only the crackle of burning logs in the fireplace and the occasional whisper of wind outside the window.

Harry, Ron, Seamus, and Dean—children who had spent the day in exhilaration—had barely laid their heads on their pillows before they sank into deep sleep.

Steady breathing rose and fell in the warm room.

But Lin Yuan did not sleep.

He drew his bed curtains, sealing off the light and sight from outside, forming a small, private space.

Then, instead of lying down, he sat cross-legged, assuming the classic meditation posture of a cultivator.

His eyes gently closed, his breathing grew long and steady, and his entire being entered a state of ethereal detachment, where self and world dissolved.

The next moment, his vast and pure Soul Power was no longer restrained.

It was like a supernova suddenly igniting in the dark universe.

Invisible, transcending physical dimensions, his Spiritual Sense radiated outward from him like mercury spilling across the ground, like a silent tide, expanding in an instant!

It pierced through the thick stone walls of the Gryffindor tower, swept past the plush armchairs and the warm fireplace.

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

It rose upward, through the ceilings, past classrooms and offices, past the towering spires, merging with the cold starlight of the night sky.

The entire Hogwarts Castle, at this moment, was presented in Lin Yuan's mind—complete, three-dimensional—in a way it had never been before.

This was no longer a building of brick and wood, seen by the eyes.

It was a map of spiritual energy—a Magic Field—of unparalleled complexity and grandeur!

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

Countless Magic currents, thick and thin like meridians, surged and circulated through every corner of the castle, sustaining the life of this vast magical creation.

Most areas had an even, steady distribution of magic, like gentle rivers.

But a few places blazed with extraordinary magical light, like lighthouses in the night, radiating distinctly different energy fluctuations.

The first he clearly sensed was the Headmaster's office, directly behind the main dais.

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

It was like an astrolabe with countless gears meshing perfectly together.

There was the deep, still energy of ancient magical artifacts; the blazing, life-filled energy radiating from Fawkes the phoenix; the soul-piercing energy of the Sorting Hat, a blend of the four founders; and many other mysterious energies, sealed behind layers of magic, that Lin Yuan could not yet parse.

And at the center of all this energy was Albus Dumbledore's personal Magic Field—vast as the deep sea, brilliant as the starry sky.

It was like a star, using its own immense gravity to perfectly unify all the surrounding energy.

"A mobile super energy core, plus a top-tier defensive fortress," Lin Yuan evaluated in his mind. "Forcing my way in would be nothing but a fool's dream."

Next, his Spiritual Sense continued to descend, through solid rock layers, to the deep underground of the castle.

There, he sensed a completely different energy source.

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

It was like a giant serpent coiled deep beneath the earth, locked in a long hibernation, but each of its "breaths" caused a faint, almost imperceptible stagnation in the surrounding magic.

That power was steeped in the essence of "death" and "petrification."

"The Chamber of Secrets... so it's here." Lin Yuan understood instantly. "The energy fluctuation is powerful, but it's in a dormant state, and its structure is relatively simple—not much of a threat. When Harry opens this dungeon, I can study it up close."

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

He perceived a very peculiar place.

It was a zone of "blankness."

On his spiritual energy map, the energy fluctuation in that spot presented a state close to "nothingness."

But this "nothingness" wasn't truly empty—it was a quantum chaos.

It both existed and didn't exist.

It was both empty and contained all possibilities.

It was like a hard drive waiting to be programmed, or a cloud server that could instantly generate any app based on user demand.

"The Room of Requirement..." Lin Yuan's soul hovered at the edge of that area, his heart filled with awe. "This... this is a magical creation on the level of the Law of Causality! It's not simple Transfiguration or spatial magic—it directly touches the underlying rules of this world, the principle of 'wishes come true'! Who created it? What's its energy source? How does it operate?"

In comparison, things like the Killing Curse or the Patronus Charm were like children playing with building blocks.

The Room of Requirement was a miracle that truly touched the "divine realm" of this world!

Analyze it!

If he could decipher even a ten-thousandth of its secrets, his path to immortality would no longer be a dream!

Lin Yuan forcibly suppressed his excitement and continued drawing his map.

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

He perceived the wild, chaotic life energy in the Forbidden Forest, a massive collection brimming with primal vitality and the law of the jungle.

He perceived the cold, dark, bottomless magic deep within the Black Lake, hiding countless unknown aquatic magical creatures...

All night long, Lin Yuan's soul roamed the unparalleled "spiritual energy map" of Hogwarts.

He was like a child connecting to the internet for the first time, greedily and tirelessly exploring this new world full of treasures.

As dawn approached, he slowly withdrew his Spiritual Sense.

He tried, as he had on Earth, to "communicate with" and "absorb" the rich, almost liquefied "spiritual energy" permeating all of Hogwarts.

On Earth, spiritual energy was thin as smoke—he could perceive it but couldn't channel it.

Here, spiritual energy was thick as an ocean, and he felt as if he were immersed in it.

Carefully, he sent an "absorb" command to the surrounding spiritual energy with his soul.

But it was still the same.

That spiritual energy—or rather, the "magic" of this world—showed no response to his millennia-old, standard immortal cultivation method of "drawing energy into the body."

They were like a group of proud elves with minds of their own. They were willing to swirl and dance around him, even willing to lend a little "help" when he cast those clumsy spells he'd read from books.

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

Lin Yuan didn't give up and tried a few more times.

The result was always the same.

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

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

System incompatibility. Protocol mismatch.

Lin Yuan let out a silent sigh and opened his eyes.

Outside the window, the sky was already turning a pale fish-belly white.

He finally understood.

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

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

He had a powerful soul and top-tier cultivation theory, but he was like a warrior armed with dragon-slaying skills who had come to a continent without dragons.

If he wanted immortality, wanted to cultivate, wanted to unravel the ultimate mysteries of this world, he could no longer cling to his old "Android system."

He had to start from zero.

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

Then, using his powerful "hacking skills" from another world, he would crack, modify, and rewrite this world's "underlying code."

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

"The road ahead is long and winding..." Lin Yuan murmured to himself, but there was no discouragement in his eyes—only an unprecedented flame of challenge burning within.

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

Everything starts here.

Become the strongest scholar in Hogwarts history!