Avada Kedavra!!!

Quirrell's body trembled against his will. His weak-willed soul was no match for his master's will.

He abruptly drew his wand from beneath his cloak and pointed it at the eerily calm figure's back.

"No!" Firenze roared. He recognized the spell's opening motion.

"Ryan! Get out of the way!" Harry, who had just recovered a little from the searing pain and could barely see straight, also screamed instinctively.

Quirrell's mouth formed the unforgivable curse that embodied ultimate terror:

"Avada Kedavra!!!"

A thick, dazzling beam of concentrated, ghastly green light tore through the darkness of the Forbidden Forest like a soul-stealing arrow from the underworld. Bearing the irresistible law of death, it shot straight at Lin Yuan's chest!

As Hermione and Harry watched in despair and Firenze stared in shock, the green light struck Lin Yuan squarely, without a doubt.

There was no explosion.

No scream.

He wasn't even knocked backward.

The terrifying green light, powerful enough to kill any living thing in an instant, touched Lin Yuan's body and vanished without a sound, like a drop of water merging into an endless sea.

Lin Yuan's body merely swayed a little.

Time seemed to freeze in that instant.

The ferocious expression on Quirrell's face as he cast the spell turned to utter disbelief.

His entire worldview crumbled in that moment.

"No... No, it's impossible... This can't be!!!"

The remnant soul of Voldemort in his mind let out an even more terrified scream.

Voldemort knew magic better than Quirrell. He knew what this meant!

Avada Kedavra was a pure attack on the soul, the embodiment of the law of death. It couldn't be blocked or stopped by physical defenses!

The only thing that could make it fail was... a soul power more fundamental than its own!

At that very moment, an unknown upheaval was taking place in Lin Yuan's inner world, where he could see within himself.

The instant the green light entered his body, his Soul Power began to circulate on instinct.

For the first time, that sea of soul power faced a true "outside enemy."

Under Lin Yuan's analysis, the Avada Kedavra curse was instantly broken down into two parts:

First, the caster's pure "killing intent" and "malice." These were the "key" that made the curse work.

Second, the vast and pure "magical power" that formed the spell itself. This was the spell's "warhead."

When that tremendous "malice" flooded into Lin Yuan's sea of soul power, it was like pouring a bottle of poisonous ink into an endless ocean.

It didn't even cause a ripple. That little bit of "malice" was instantly diluted, purified, and erased without a trace, as though it had never existed.

The essence of Lin Yuan's soul transcended anything this world could comprehend. Its purity and vastness made Voldemort's tainted malice look laughably small.

The "key" had failed.

All that remained was the "warhead," stripped of its fuse—a vast, pure mass of magic with no target to attack.

For a cultivator who desperately needed to turn outside energy into his own spiritual energy, this was practically...

A gift from the heavens.

Lin Yuan felt a cold, surging current of energy wash through every part of his body.

His cultivation technique rapidly "digested" it, extracting fragments of its laws and converting the pure energy into wisps of refined spiritual energy that flowed into his dantian sea of Qi.

A completely new thought, one he'd never had before, exploded through his mind like a real bolt of lightning.

"So that's it... That's how it works!"

"The essence of this world's magic is a crude way of using mental power—malice—as an 'instruction' to drive magical power—energy—and manipulate the world's 'laws'!"

"Avada Kedavra uses 'killing intent' to manipulate the 'law of death'!"

"As long as my soul is powerful enough to ignore the caster's 'instruction,' any spell directed at me will lose the 'meaning' it's been given and revert to its most fundamental state: energy..."

"And I can... absorb all of that energy!"

This insight was worth more than a month of meditation in the Room of Requirement or reading every book in the library!

He'd found it!

He'd found the most fundamental and efficient way to turn this world's entire system of magic into his own spiritual energy!

Anyone who cast a spell at him would be giving him "experience" and "mana"!

As the realization sank in, a sense of unprecedented clarity and relief swept through his soul. But then came the immense mental strain of processing that vast energy and forcibly analyzing the "law of death."

Lin Yuan groaned. His vision went black, and his body swayed. At last, he could no longer hold himself up and slowly fell forward.

To Quirrell and Voldemort, it looked as if Lin Yuan had stood unharmed for several seconds after taking an Avada Kedavra to the chest, only to collapse from exhaustion.

To Quirrell and Voldemort, this was a miracle—and divine punishment.

"Monster... He's a monster!!"

Fear completely consumed Quirrell's reason. With a shriek that sounded nothing like a human voice, he forgot his master's orders and the unicorn on the ground. He turned and scrambled away, then bolted into the dark depths of the forest faster than ever before, vanishing from sight.

Silence.

A deathly silence.

All that remained in the clearing were a stunned Hermione, Harry—who had just recovered from the pain and shock, disbelief written all over his face—and Firenze, the centaur, equally shaken.

Together, they had witnessed a miracle that shattered everything the wizarding world knew.

A first-year student had taken an Avada Kedavra head-on and... survived.

"R-Ryan..." Harry scrambled over and, with trembling hands, lifted the unconscious Lin Yuan.

The hospital at Hogwarts always smelled of disinfectant, so clean it was almost pungent, mixed with the strange, bittersweet scent of boiling herbs.

Sunlight streamed through the tall, narrow Gothic windows, casting long, still patches of light across the polished floor. Fine dust drifted through the air, slowly dancing in the beams.

Lin Yuan's consciousness slowly rose from the stillness and returned to his body.

He didn't open his eyes right away. Instead, he sank his soul into his body.

He immediately "saw" the aftermath of the battle.

His meridians were unharmed.

After being violently swept by that torrent of magical power, they hadn't been damaged at all. In fact, they'd undergone an intense "tempering," becoming stronger and wider than before.

If his meridians had once been country lanes, they were now at least post roads wide enough for two horses to travel side by side.

The dantian sea of Qi had held only a thin layer of spiritual energy, so faint it had been almost nonexistent. Now, however, it had grown by a clearly visible wisp.

It was still pitifully little, but for a "stranger" in a place where spiritual energy had dried up, it was like finding a handful of clear spring water in the desert.