"Have you found it?"
Li Mu asked.
"There's a Chamber of Secrets deep underground. Fawkes found Basilisk shed skin inside."
Dumbledore replied after communicating with Fawkes.
"I'll go first."
As he spoke, Li Mu climbed straight into the pipe.
Dumbledore had been planning to alert the other professors and make preparations. He frowned and followed reluctantly. It wasn't that he was worried about being unable to handle a Basilisk; he simply felt that the other professors shouldn't be kept in the dark about its appearance.
But Snape had already gone down, so Dumbledore had no choice but to follow.
After traveling through the long pipe to the underground depths, Phoenix Fawkes had already flown ahead of Li Mu.
The Basilisk seemed to have gone out to hunt, and wasn't in the underground Chamber of Secrets.
Li Mu turned to look at the pipe's exit. Dumbledore was still inside and hadn't come out yet.
He waved his wand. Fiendfyre appeared at its tip, and he sent an Incendio cast with Fiendfyre surging straight into the pipe.
Li Mu turned, pointed his wand at Phoenix Fawkes, and cast the Imperius Curse, having already locked onto him.
Completely taken by surprise, Phoenix Fawkes had his consciousness seized by the Imperius Curse on the spot. Although his natural resistance to magic let him break free quickly, Li Mu had already tossed him into a Binding Birdcage in the brief moment he'd lost consciousness.
Because Fawkes was resisting, Li Mu couldn't store the birdcage inside the Phoenix in his soul.
Just as he was about to petrify or stun Fawkes, the Fiendfyre in the pipe was dispelled by Dumbledore using Fiendfyre's countercurse.
Dumbledore charged out of the pipe with an Iron Skin Charm in place. He had assumed a powerful Dark Wizard was lurking in the shadows and had attacked him, but instead he saw Snape holding Fawkes captive. The Snape he knew would never do such a thing.
Li Mu set the birdcage aside, took out a potion that would reverse the effects of the Polyjuice Potion, and drank it.
Dumbledore's heart sank. So the Snape he'd been dealing with was an impostor.
Their eyes met, and Dumbledore cast Legilimency.
But he couldn't see a single memory. The mysterious wizard from the East standing before him had mastered a powerful Legilimency Defense, one that could completely resist Legilimency's attempts to read his memories. Dumbledore could only faintly sense the wizard's murderous intent toward him.
Li Mu flicked his wand, unleashing a vast wave of Fiendfyre that swept toward Dumbledore.
All Spells End!
Dumbledore waved his wand. All Spells End, capable of stopping nearly every spell, merged with the Iron Skin Charm around him. The moment any approaching Fiendfyre touched the charm, All Spells End dispersed it into Magic Power.
"Near-absolute defense against spells."
Li Mu praised him.
"Tell me who you are, and I won't send you to Azkaban," Dumbledore warned sternly.
"I've already destroyed Azkaban. How are you going to send me there?"
Li Mu shook his head with a laugh.
He flicked his wand again, and the Fiendfyre reappeared, transforming into a Fire Phoenix that bombarded the underground Chamber of Secrets.
The Chamber was deep beneath Hogwarts. If the whole area collapsed, Hogwarts would be in serious trouble.
After their brief exchange, Dumbledore judged that the mysterious wizard's strength was about on a professor's level.
That wasn't enough to pose a fatal threat to him. So while fending off the Killing Curse Li Mu sent right after, Dumbledore still had enough strength to use All Spells End again and again, forcibly dispersing the Black Phoenixes of Fiendfyre that were blasting in every direction.
But before a minute had passed, Dumbledore sensed something was wrong.
Fiendfyre was high-level Dark Magic, and summoning it consumed a great deal of Magic Power. It took no less Magic Power than his use of All Spells End. Yet the mysterious wizard had spent the whole minute making Fiendfyre over and over. The sheer amount of Magic Power he was displaying was completely at odds with his apparent strength.
"Are you trying to exhaust my Magic Power?" Dumbledore asked in disbelief.
At last, he stopped worrying about protecting Hogwarts and pointed his wand at the Basilisk shed skin nearby.
With a Transfiguration spell, the shed skin became a living Basilisk. It lacked the Basilisk's dangerous eyes, which could kill anyone who met its gaze, but it still had all the creature's tremendous strength. It charged at Li Mu through the Fiendfyre, transformed into a Fiendfyre Serpent.
Apparition was impossible inside the Chamber, so Dumbledore immediately cast an Illusionary Body Curse on himself.
Frostfire Rose appeared in Li Mu's left hand, and he fired two Frostfire Armor-Piercing Bullets at once.
The first Frostfire Armor-Piercing Bullet froze the Fiendfyre Serpent's head. The second set it ablaze and blew it apart. If it had been a living Basilisk, that would have killed it, but this fake, conjured by a Polymorph Spell, continued to charge at Li Mu.
And just then, Dumbledore appeared not far behind Li Mu, his wand releasing a red flash.
With a Fiendfyre Serpent in front and a Sleeping Charm behind, even an Iron Skin Charm could only block one.
On the verge of disaster, Li Mu gathered all his Magic Power into his wand and pointed it at the Fiendfyre Serpent.
Confringo!
The power of the Explosion Curse struck the Fiendfyre Serpent directly. It exploded in the underground Chamber like a bomb, and all of Hogwarts Castle shook. The cramped Chamber was left in utter ruin by the blast of Fiendfyre.
All Spells End could block Fiendfyre, but it couldn't stop the physical impact of the Explosion Curse.
Dumbledore cast several Iron Skin Charms in quick succession, but the shock wave from the exploding Fiendfyre Serpent still hurled him into the wall at the edge of the Chamber.
Yet the mysterious wizard, who had borne the brunt of the Explosion Curse, had barely moved from where he stood.
A Super Iron Skin Charm around the mysterious wizard had blocked all the damage. He'd even had enough strength left to put an ordinary Iron Skin Charm on the birdcage holding Fawkes and control the Fiendfyre so that it avoided the cage.
Super Iron Skin Charms were difficult to cast. Usually, several wizards had to work together to conjure one.
Although Dumbledore could cast one on his own, a Super Iron Skin Charm that couldn't be cast instantly was less effective than an ordinary Iron Skin Charm.
If he'd made even one mistake while casting the Iron Skin Charms in rapid succession just now, the Confringo would have killed him.
After narrowly escaping death, Dumbledore's murderous intent was finally roused.
"Not even a scratch after all that."
Li Mu licked his lips, cracked and dry from the blistering heat, his whole body trembling with excitement.
Dumbledore disappeared again, and Li Mu cast an Illusionary Body Curse as well, vanishing from sight.
Both were invisible, using Tracking Charms in secret to search for each other. Neither cast Human Presence, the spell that broke the other's Illusionary Body Curse, because it produced a strong magical signature. It would reveal the caster to their enemy even as it dispelled the enemy's invisibility.
The subtler Tracking Charm, on the other hand, let them search for their enemy while staying invisible.
"I've found you."
Li Mu found Dumbledore first. He could have seized the opportunity to launch a surprise attack.
But just as he was about to act, he hesitated.
His Tracking Charm was at most around LV6. Unless Dumbledore's Illusionary Body Curse was below LV6, there was no way Li Mu could have found him so easily. But if Dumbledore's Illusionary Body Curse was below LV6, why would he have chosen to fight while invisible?
Unless it was a trap—unless Dumbledore's Illusionary Body Curse was well above LV6, and he'd deliberately let Li Mu find him.
If so, Li Mu might as well turn the tables and play along.
PS: Thanks to the two brothers [Joke Artifact] and [Lan Feng Zi Yun 11] for their 500-reward donations, and to the two brothers [Hongchen Zhong De Lianxin Zhe] and [Suan La Tu Dou Si ty] for their 100-reward donations.
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