His Soul Power spread silently from within him, like invisible, impossibly soft strands of spider silk.
On Earth, this power had given him an extraordinary memory and heightened perception, but it couldn't affect reality in the slightest.
But here, in this world brimming with strange magical energy, it was like Archimedes had finally found a lever.
The lever was a little too long, and the thing he was trying to move was a little too small. The efficiency was almost laughable, but... as long as it worked, that was enough.
Lin Yuan split his Soul Power into three strands.
The first, and thinnest, slithered toward Crabbe and Goyle's enormous shoes, which looked big enough to kick a cow to death.
Then it imitated the simplest action in Lin Yuan's mind: tying shoelaces, with the tightest knot imaginable.
His Soul Power trembled faintly, nudging the sluggish magical energy around it as it gently but firmly tied together the two pairs of laces, which looked as if they hadn't been washed in centuries.
The whole process was smooth and silent, even more discreet than Hermione's spell to repair the glasses.
After all, Hermione had needed to say the incantation and wave her wand. Lin Yuan only needed to think.
Two down. Lin Yuan mentally ticked them off.
The second strand of Soul Power was more mischievous.
Like a playful breeze, it shot straight toward Draco Malfoy's head, which gleamed platinum blond.
Malfoy was savoring the pleasure of verbally humiliating them. Looking at Harry and Ron, trembling with anger but unable to do anything about it, he felt he'd reached a personal high.
He was about to say something even nastier and completely crush this clueless "Chosen One" in front of him.
But then his scalp suddenly began to tingle.
A moment later, an irresistible force—as if a mad hairdresser were stirring an egg beater through his hair—began churning it wildly.
Every platinum-blond strand, each one normally held in its perfect place with hair gel, instantly went out of control.
Some stood bolt upright like antennae, others curled up like springs, and still more twisted into knots, messily plastered across his forehead and ears.
In a single second, a refined, noble Pure-blood young master had become a hapless victim of a lightning strike, sporting a head like a bird's nest.
"What... My hair!" Malfoy instinctively reached for his head. His fingers met a chaotic, greasy mess unlike anything he'd ever experienced.
He was completely stunned.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were just as stunned.
They watched Malfoy's hair turn into a ridiculous bird's nest all by itself, without anything touching it.
The corners of Ron's mouth twitched uncontrollably. He used every ounce of strength he had just to keep from bursting out laughing.
"You... you lot... What did you do to me?!" Malfoy's face turned a livid purple. Finally recovering from his shock, he decided Harry and the others had hit him with some curse he didn't know.
He angrily stepped forward, ready to draw his wand.
"I'm warning you, Potter! You—"
Just then, Lin Yuan's third strand of Soul Power, the most important one, precisely targeted Malfoy's vocal cords.
It wasn't aggressive. It merely and gently imitated the vibration of a voice cracking badly during puberty.
So the threatening words Malfoy had been about to say came out as...
"Cluck—!!!"
A sharp, abrupt squawk, like a rooster whose tail had just been stepped on, rang through the compartment.
The "crow" was so clear and loud that it could be heard faintly in the corridor.
The air froze.
Malfoy himself was dumbfounded. He clutched his throat in horror, unable to understand why he'd made such a humiliating sound.
He tried to continue, but all that came out was a string of crowing noises.
"Cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck..."
This time, Ron couldn't hold back any longer.
"Pfft—hahahahahaha!"
His laughter burst out like floodwaters breaking through a dam, instantly washing away all the tension.
Harry couldn't help laughing either. Even Hermione, who was usually so serious, covered her mouth, her shoulders shaking.
"You... You dare laugh at me!" Malfoy was so angry and flustered he felt he'd never been more humiliated in his life.
He pointed at Ron, wanting his two lackeys to teach him a lesson.
"Crabbe! Goyle! Get him! Grab him!"
At his command, Crabbe and Goyle lurched into motion like two heavy machines just starting up. They immediately stepped forward, ready to charge into the compartment.
Then...
"Thump!"
"Bang!"
Two heavy impacts.
With their shoelaces tied tightly together, the moment they took those sudden steps, they lost their balance. One tripped over the other, and the two of them crashed face-first onto the corridor floor like a pair of collapsing hills, dragging Malfoy down with them.
The three of them rolled into a tangled heap.
The scene was chaotic—and spectacular to watch.
"My nose... Goyle, you idiot! Get off me!" Malfoy's scream came from the very bottom of the pile. This time his voice was normal, but full of pain and humiliation.
The three in the compartment were laughing so hard they could barely stand.
This dramatic turn of events was more devastating than any curse.
It was the perfect example of how something could do little physical harm but cause immense humiliation.
The Malfoy trio scrambled to their feet. Crabbe and Goyle were still trying to figure out why their feet seemed stuck together, while Malfoy, his hair a mess and dust smeared across his face, glared venomously at Harry as if he wanted to carve his image into his memory.
But he didn't dare say another word, in case he started crowing again.
"Let's go!" he ground out through clenched teeth, then fled in a graceless hurry with his two lackeys, who were still wrestling with their shoelaces. They stumbled and scrambled out of the place where his dignity had been thoroughly trampled.
The laughter in the compartment gradually died away, leaving behind the relief of having narrowly escaped a bad situation and a lingering sense of bewilderment.
"Merlin... What just happened?" Ron wiped away tears of laughter, his face full of confusion. "His hair... and his voice... Could my rubbish wand have gone off by accident?"
"Impossible," Hermione immediately replied, frowning as she analyzed the scene like a little detective. "I didn't sense any magical energy, and nobody cast a spell. It's so strange, as if... as if they'd been hit with some invisible curse that was specifically meant to make them unlucky."
Harry's gaze drifted involuntarily to Lin Yuan, who had stayed perfectly calm the whole time without even changing his posture.
He saw Lin Yuan calmly reopen his Muggle physics book, wearing the same unruffled expression as before, as if the whole farce had been no more than a breeze passing by the window.
Noticing Harry's gaze, Lin Yuan looked up and gave him a friendly, innocent smile.
"I don't know either."
Meanwhile, Lin Yuan was rapidly reviewing what had happened in his mind.
"Conclusion one: Soul Power consumes less when used against targets who are emotional and distracted than I expected. It seems emotional fluctuations lower their mental defenses."
"Conclusion two: Controlling three strands of Soul Power at once to perform precise actions takes a lot out of me. I'm a little tired."
"Conclusion three: The results are excellent. The cost-benefit ratio is impressive."
He turned a page, the corner of his mouth lifting by an almost imperceptible amount.
It seemed that to conduct research in peace at Hogwarts, he first had to learn how to efficiently... make noisy people shut up.
This journey of study certainly wouldn't be boring.
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