The Meow-Meow-Meow-Meow

As Lin Yuan walked out of the Charms classroom, his fellow Gryffindors immediately surrounded him.

"Lane! You're a monster!" Seamus Finnigan gazed at him with such admiration that he looked ready to ask for an autograph on the spot. "Nonverbal Spellcasting? Wandless Magic? I've only ever read about those in the biographies of legendary wizards in Modern Magical History! How did you do it?"

"Yeah, Lane," Harry said, coming over too, his eyes shining with genuine curiosity and admiration. "What did you mean by 'understanding feathers'? It sounds so profound."

Ron, meanwhile, looked utterly crushed, as if he were questioning his whole life.

He poked Harry in the arm with a miserable expression and complained under his breath, "Harry, I feel like I'm the one who's supposed to be the comic relief and make everyone else look good. One of you is the Boy Who Lived, and the other is a mysterious genius who mastered university-level magic before term even started. And what can I do? Set feathers on fire and give myself a cold shower."

"Don't say that, Ron," Harry comforted him. "Your Howler was pretty impressive too. At least it was loud."

Ron's face fell even further.

Hermione Granger didn't join in the commotion.

She walked a little ahead of the group, her back straight as a rod. But Lin Yuan could sense her competitive determination in her slightly quickened steps and tightly pursed lips.

A top student's pride had just faced an unprecedented challenge.

Her textbook-perfect Levitation Charm had paled beside Lin Yuan's Mental Levitation, which had returned to the fundamentals.

Now she couldn't wait to prove in the next class that she was still top of the year.

Lin Yuan responded to the commotion around him with a calm smile and offered no further explanation.

His mind was racing, comparing the Charms class they had just finished with the Transfiguration class that was about to begin.

"Charms add a functional patch to a target. Transfiguration, according to Hermione, changes an object's core properties from the ground up. In other words, it doesn't patch the program; it rewrites the entire source code. The difficulty isn't even on the same level."

A powerful sense of anticipation stirred within him.

Compared with functional, flashy charms, Transfiguration—which could touch the very essence of matter—was closer to the "Great Dao" he pursued.

If he could unravel the rules of Transfiguration, then he would be one step closer to understanding life and the soul, and ultimately achieving immortality of the body.

They crossed several corridors and arrived at a spacious, brightly lit classroom.

Unlike Professor Flitwick's cozy little room, crammed with books, this classroom was unusually bare, even a little bleak.

Several rows of desks and chairs stood in neat formation. The teacher's desk was empty except for a tabby cat sitting quietly atop it, regarding every student who entered with bright green eyes.

"Oh, look, there's a cat," Ron whispered. "I hope it's not Filch's Mrs. Norris. I don't want detention on the first day."

The students found seats, and the classroom filled with hushed chatter.

Everyone was wondering why the professor hadn't arrived, while a cat sat on the teacher's desk.

Harry and Ron eagerly discussed Quidditch, while Hermione had already opened her thick copy of Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration and was hurriedly reading ahead.

Lin Yuan didn't look at his book.

From the moment he entered, his gaze had been fixed on the tabby cat.

"Something's not right."

Through his Spiritual Sense, the cat seemed... too "perfect."

The life force within it was as steady as a straight line, and the magical patterns in its fur were as clear as a printed image.

Most importantly, deep within the soul of this seemingly ordinary feline was a human wizard's soul core—powerful, pure, and immensely complex.

The soul's strength was like finely tempered steel: resilient, keen, and imbued with a sense of order and unquestionable authority.

"I see. An Animagus." Lin Yuan understood at once. "The wizard has perfectly merged their soul and magic with another creature's form, changing even the very nature of their life form. This isn't simply 'rewriting code.' It's replacing the entire operating system with a new one while preserving the core user data. Brilliant. Truly brilliant."

Just as he finished his analysis, the bell rang.

The classroom gradually fell quiet, but the professor still hadn't appeared.

Ron couldn't help whispering to Harry, "Are we going to be late? Is Professor McGonagall really strict?"

Before he could say more, the tabby cat leapt down from the desk.

In midair, its body began to change in a way that left everyone staring in amazement.

The cat stretched and lengthened, its fur vanished, and its limbs became long arms and legs. A black wizard's robe appeared out of thin air.

By the time she landed on her feet, she had become a tall witch.

Her black hair was pinned into a tight bun. Her expression was stern, and behind her square spectacles, her eyes were sharp as a hawk's.

It was Professor Minerva McGonagall.

The classroom fell completely silent. Everyone stared, dumbfounded. Ron's mouth hung open wide enough to fit an egg.

"Wow..." Harry murmured.

Professor McGonagall's keen gaze swept across the room, as if it could see right through every student.

"Transfiguration is the most complex and dangerous branch of magic you will study at Hogwarts," she said, her voice clear and stern, without a hint of emotion. "Anyone who is inattentive or misbehaves in my class will be asked to leave at once and will not be permitted to return. Consider yourselves warned."

Her gaze lingered on Ron and Harry for a second before turning to Hermione.

"Perhaps turning some of you into pocket watches would help you develop a better sense of time. At least then one of you could tell me when it was time to shut up."

The air in the classroom seemed to freeze.

"Transfiguration is a science that demands the utmost concentration and precise control. It is nothing like those little tricks you've just learned, where you wave a wand and see something happen." There was a hint of disdain for Charms in her words. "In Transfiguration, there is no such thing as 'close enough.' The slightest mistake can have extremely serious consequences."

She waved her wand. The teacher's desk in front of her instantly became a roaring lion, then returned to its original form a second later.

The effortless display of advanced Transfiguration made the first-years gasp again.

"Before you learn to turn furniture into animals, you must start with the basics," Professor McGonagall said. "Today, your goal is simple."

She waved her wand again, and an ordinary match appeared on every student's desk.

"You are to turn this match into a needle."

She paused, her keen gaze sweeping over each student.

"You will be changing an organic, flammable wooden object into an inorganic, hard metallic one. This involves a complete change in the object's essential nature. The incantation is simple, and the wand movement is simple, but the real challenge is that your will must be firm and clear."

"You must form an absolutely clear idea of a needle in your mind. Its hardness, its sharpness, its metallic sheen, every last detail. Then, using your magic, you must force that concept onto the match."

"Begin."

At her command, the students immediately scrambled to get started.

"One, two, three, Vera Verto!"

The classroom filled with a chorus of incantations once more.

But this lesson was clearly nowhere near as much fun as Charms.

Most of the students' matches only trembled on their desks before falling still again.

One end of Harry's match grew a little sharper, but the rest still looked like wood.

Ron's match bent slightly and gave off a faint burnt smell, as if it were about to be roasted.

"Mr. Weasley," Professor McGonagall said coldly, "would you care to clarify whether you're trying to turn that into a needle or a cooked noodle?"

Ron's face turned bright red.

Just then, Hermione Granger showed off her talent once again.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as though concentrating all her efforts on forming an image of a needle in her mind.

Then she opened her eyes and, with intense focus, waved her wand and clearly spoke the incantation.

"Vera Verto!"

The match on her desk began to change before their eyes.

The wood grain gradually faded, and a silvery sheen appeared. Both ends of the match contracted; one sharpened, while a small, blurry eye appeared at the other.

A few seconds later, a needle appeared on her desk. It was a little rough and its point wasn't sharp enough, but it was undeniably made of metal.

"Very good." Professor McGonagall walked over and picked up the needle to inspect it. A rare hint of approval appeared on her face. "The shape isn't perfect yet, but you've successfully changed its nature. Miss Granger, five points to Gryffindor."

A confident smile finally returned to Hermione's face. She glanced toward Lin Yuan, her eyes carrying a hint of challenge.

Lin Yuan didn't look at her.

He hadn't even hurried to say the incantation.

Just then, Professor McGonagall's gaze finally fell on Lin Yuan, who hadn't so much as touched his wand.

Once again, he was watching the match in front of him with that "observant" look.

Professor McGonagall frowned in displeasure.

She hated students who were so full of themselves that they wouldn't even bother to try.

"Mr. Lin," she said, striding toward him, her voice taking on a cold, ominous edge. "I hope you haven't ignored every word I said. Transfiguration isn't something you can learn just by 'looking.' If you don't intend to pick up that precious wand of yours, then..."

She hadn't finished speaking.

Even as her cold, warning words still hung in the air,

the match in front of Lin Yuan changed.

It hadn't "begun to change." It had already changed.

The transformation happened so fast that no one saw it.

The instant Professor McGonagall finished speaking, the match lying quietly on the desk seemed to have been fast-forwarded.

Unlike Hermione's match, it didn't go through a slow, struggling, imperfect transformation.

Instead, it underwent a clean annihilation and rebirth.

For an instant, the little piece of wood seemed to lose all physical form, breaking down directly into countless basic particles, invisible to the naked eye and shimmering faintly.

Then, under Lin Yuan's powerful and precise will, as controlled as a surgeon's scalpel, those particles instantly recombined in a new, perfect, unquestionable order.

"Vmmm—"

A faint, almost inaudible hum.

When the light faded, the match had disappeared from the desk.

In its place lay a needle.

A needle so perfect it was breathtaking.

It was a deep silver-gray, its body straight and its lines smooth, without the slightest flaw.

Its point was so sharp it seemed capable of piercing space, glinting with a chilling light.

Most incredible of all, its tiny eye was carved with an exquisitely detailed ring of miniature relief work, so fine that it was almost impossible to make out with the naked eye, winding like rose vines.

It was no longer merely "a needle made from a match."

It looked more like a painstakingly crafted masterpiece by a master artisan, a work of extraordinary skill—

a work of art.

"..."

The scolding Professor McGonagall had been about to deliver caught in her throat.

Her face, usually stern as stone, had gone completely still.

In the span of a single second, her expression shifted from displeasure to shock, then confusion, and finally settled into an astonishment beyond words.

She, Minerva McGonagall—one of Albus Dumbledore's most promising students, a widely recognized authority on Transfiguration, and Hogwarts' strictest professor in decades—had lost her composure in front of the entire class.

She stared blankly and even stumbled forward two steps, coming to Lin Yuan's desk.

Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for the silver needle lying on the desk, a true work of art.

When the tip of her finger touched the needle, a chill ran through it at once.

This was no illusion. It wasn't wood temporarily transformed by magic.

This was a real needle.

She picked it up and held it before her eyes. The gaze that usually blazed with sharpness through her square spectacles remained fixed on it without a blink.

She saw the glinting point and the flawless shaft. Finally, her gaze settled on the tiny carvings—the ones that made even the knowledge she had spent her life mastering seem to tremble.