Sorting? Do I Have to Fight a Troll?

"How are they going to sort us?" Harry asked Ron nervously. "Will it hurt?"

"I don't know... Fred and George joked that we'd have to fight a Troll," Ron said, looking even paler than he had on the lake. "But I'm sure they were lying... right?"

Hermione, meanwhile, was a completely different story.

"I know for a fact that we won't have to fight a Troll," she began reciting at lightning speed, as if it could ease her nerves. "I've reviewed every spell we might need, like Incendio or the Levitation Charm, in case we have to demonstrate our magical abilities..."

Far from comforting anyone, her words only made everyone around her more anxious.

Lin Yuan leaned against the wall, listening with interest.

Of course, he knew what the Sorting Ceremony involved. It was just a talking hat.

What interested him was how the hat worked.

"Did it read minds? Scan the soul's traits? Or did it rely on some deeper algorithm based on 'fate' or 'causality'?" he wondered. "The hat itself is a powerful magical object, but where does its 'intelligence' come from? Does it bear the Soul Imprint of an ancient wizard, or did some kind of alchemy create genuine artificial intelligence?"

Just then, a commotion arose from the back of the crowd.

Several students suddenly let out muffled shrieks and pointed toward the wall.

A dozen or so pearly white, translucent ghosts filed out through the wall behind them. They drifted along, arguing heatedly about something.

A ghost who looked like a jolly, fat friar cheerfully said, "Forget about it. Peeves is causing trouble again. We should give him another chance!"

"My dear friar, we've given Peeves far too many chances already!" retorted a ghost with a crooked bow tie and a melancholy look in his eyes. "He's brought shame upon the entire ghost community!"

Completely ignoring the wide-eyed, living first-years in the room, they filed straight through the opposite wall and disappeared.

"Whoa..." Ron murmured. "So the stories are true."

Hermione put away her spellbook knowledge, too. The existence of ghosts clearly went beyond anything she'd read in books.

Lin Yuan watched with rapt interest.

"So that's how it is. They aren't true souls, but more like 'information remnants' made up of intense obsessions and magical energy. They're trapped in the form and memories they had at the moment of death, unable to enter the true cycle of reincarnation. In a sense, this is a kind of 'immortality,' but the price is eternal imprisonment."

He had gained a new understanding of the world's "soul studies."

"All right, we're ready. Follow me."

Professor McGonagall appeared in the doorway again. Her stern expression immediately silenced the first-years, who nervously lined up.

They followed Professor McGonagall out of the small room, through the Entrance Hall, and up to the huge double doors leading into the dining hall.

The moment the doors swung open, it was as if the whole world had lit up.

The Hogwarts Great Hall was stranger and more magnificent than anything Harry had ever imagined.

Hundreds upon hundreds of candles floated in midair, illuminating four long tables already filled with students.

Golden plates and goblets gleamed on the tables.

At the very front of the hall stood the High Table, where the teachers sat.

But the most astonishing thing was the ceiling.

It was an expanse of black as deep as the edge of the universe, gleaming like luxurious velvet. Countless stars, some bright and some dim, glittered across it as if they were within reach. A few wispy silver clouds drifted slowly and gracefully overhead.

"It's been enchanted with extremely advanced magic, allowing it to perfectly simulate the real sky outside in real time. I read about it in Appendix Three of Hogwarts, A History." Standing beside Harry, Hermione whispered the words in a reverent, almost worshipful tone, speaking both to herself and to him.

Harry had stopped listening to what she was saying. He simply stared up at the magnificent, lifelike night sky, feeling as if he'd become an insignificant speck of dust adrift in the vast, boundless universe. It was a dream more splendid and unreal than any he'd ever had.

Lin Yuan glanced up.

"Hmm. A large, permanent illusion array, synced directly with the weather system outside. Advanced, but not difficult to understand in principle," he calmly decided to himself.

Professor McGonagall led them to the front of the hall and lined them up between the High Table and the students' tables, facing the entire school.

In the center sat a wizarding legend whom Harry had seen only on a Chocolate Frog card: a man seated in a magnificent, enormous chair that looked as if it had been made of solid gold and carved with intricate designs.

And this man, arguably the most legendary wizard in the Wizarding World, was sitting right in front of him, alive and well.

Albus Dumbledore.

His silvery white hair, pure as moonlight, and his beard, long enough to tuck into his belt, glimmered with a soft, almost holy light in the floating candlelight.

His high-bridged nose looked as if it had been broken several times, giving it a strangely crooked shape.

He wore his trademark Half-moon Spectacles. Behind the lenses, his clear blue eyes, like a summer sky, shone with kindness, wisdom, and a hint of all-knowing amusement as he smiled at the nervous first-years huddled together like startled quails.

When Dumbledore's gaze passed over Lin Yuan, Lin Yuan clearly felt a gentle yet irresistible mental force brush lightly against his soul, like a spring breeze.

Lin Yuan's heart tightened.

Good grief!

Was he scanning everyone indiscriminately?

He immediately stilled every ripple of his soul, disguising himself as an ordinary eleven-year-old boy who was curious about the future and a little nervous.

The gaze lingered on him only briefly before moving on.

Lin Yuan secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

"The greatest White Wizard really is unfathomable," he concluded. "His mental power—or what this world calls 'Legilimency'—has reached a level almost akin to the Dao. It nourishes silently, like rain, and is impossible to guard against. I'll have to stay on my toes whenever I'm around him."

Still, he hadn't come away empty-handed. In that brief moment, Lin Yuan had used his soul to "see" the true essence concealed beneath Dumbledore's aged body.

That aged body was nothing more than a shell.

Beneath it lay a soul core so powerful it was terrifying, blazing and bright as a star.

His magic was nothing like Professor McGonagall's, precise and elegant. It was more like a boundless, unfathomably deep blue ocean.

Its surface was calm, but beneath the waves lay a power capable of raising a tempest—or even unleashing a force of destruction that could overturn the entire world.

Lin Yuan could even sense, with extraordinary clarity, a force of law so powerful and obscure, steeped in death and destiny, that it coiled around the wand in Dumbledore's hand like a venomous snake. The wand looked utterly unremarkable, as if it were made from ordinary elder wood, yet the force had formed a strange symbiotic bond with Dumbledore's own soul.