"Let's give it a try..."
Li Mu took out a Time Turner and gently turned the hourglass in the middle.
He instantly felt himself hurtling backward. Before long, he had returned to an hour earlier. At that point, his past self hadn't yet arrived at the Ministry of Magic. Li Mu stood in the Chamber of Time in the Department of Mysteries, cast an Illusionary Body Curse, and silently waited in a corner.
After more than half an hour, he saw another version of himself appear.
But this version wasn't really alive. He couldn't sense any Origin HuoZhong in him.
The Anchor of Fantasy locked onto this world, then used the story and settings Li Mu had added to extrapolate and complete it on its own.
But the Harry Potter movies themselves had a hard time explaining how the Time Turner worked. So after the world corrected it, the Time Turner in his hands differed from the one in the movies. It couldn't actually change the past; it could only let him enter a Mirror World and travel back in time.
The Mirror World wasn't real. It was merely an illusory reflection of the real world.
And the Mirror World didn't cover the entire world, either. Its range extended only one thousand meters around the Time Turner's holder.
If the Time Turner really could reverse time and return to the past as it did in the movies, allow its user to affect the past, and then easily return to the future, the Fantasy Coordinate for this world would take far more than a little Spark Energy to materialize.
The cost of converting the Time Turner through Fantasy Conversion would surely be far more than one hundred thousand units of HuoZhong Source Power, too.
A treasure that could truly take someone back to the past would conservatively need to be orange-grade, or even red-grade.
Although he could only return to a Mirror World of the past and observe without changing anything, that didn't mean the Time Turner was worthless. First, he could learn what had happened in the past through the Mirror World. Second, while five hours passed in the Mirror World, only an instant passed in reality. That meant each use of the Time Turner effectively gave him five extra hours of life.
Usually, a Time Turner could be activated once a day.
Five extra hours a day added up to another seventy-six days each year for leisure or cultivation. If a boss got his hands on one, he could give his employees an extra seventy-six days off a year while still making them work every day. ()
Li Mu turned the hourglass in the metal timepiece. Time suddenly sped up around him, and he instantly left the Mirror World.
After leaving the Department of Mysteries, Li Mu began Apparating all over the world.
Of the seventeen Alien Races he'd selected, the information on fifteen had been accurate. Once he found a member of one of these communal races, he could use Legilimency to locate their lair. Then a few Super Fierce Fire Curses were enough to wipe out an entire race.
Only the information the Ministry of Magic had gathered on vampires and treants was wrong; he'd found just a few of each.
Even so, by the end of the day, his accumulated HuoZhong Source Power, including what he'd already had, had reached 2,995 units.
That was more than enough to convert the Fire Seed Human Skin Mask. He'd also have enough to improve his overall strength in a few days.
By then, he wouldn't just be unbeatable in a one-on-one fight; he'd truly be powerful enough to sweep through all the wizards.
After returning to the Ministry of Magic, Li Mu deepened his control over Magic Power with the Polymorph Spell while sorting through the magic books handed over by the Ministry and the various magical families. He planned to filter out the Magic Knowledge he'd already mastered, then copy down the rest and turn it into Kindling Tomes.
As he read, Li Mu came across some books about Prophecy.
Prophecy was real in this world, but its accuracy was rather poor. Out of ten prophecies, perhaps only one would come true. Besides, very few wizards throughout history had ever mastered Prophecy, and they had almost all come from a handful of families.
The ancestors of these families had fused with Magical Creature bloodlines that excelled at Prophecy.
That was how they inherited the ability. But as their bloodlines grew thinner with each generation, their prophetic abilities weakened. More regrettably, the Magical Creatures with prophetic abilities had all been slaughtered by the Dragonblood Knights during their rise to power.
However, a damaged magical artifact with prophetic properties was still hidden in the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic.
Although it was damaged, it could still make prophecies to some extent.
Most of these prophecies were wrong, but they still had some value for research.
Li Mu knew that the Department of Mysteries had a Divination Hall, but the novels and movies had never described it in detail. If he hadn't gone through these records today, he might have missed the prophetic magical artifact inside.
Half an hour later, Li Mu returned from the Divination Hall in the Department of Mysteries.
He studied the magical artifact in his hands. It was a hollow Crystal Ball about the size of his palm. Inside, it was filled with a pale blue liquid, and a silver-white crystal about the size of a ping-pong ball glowed faintly within it.
No one knew where it had come from, or who had made it.
According to more than a century of research by the Ministry of Magic, the Crystal Ball could make people dream. In their dreams, they might see fragments of memories that felt both real and unreal. These memories might just be the product of wild dreams, but they could also be genuine prophecies.
On the outside, the Crystal Ball looked intact.
But inside, the silver-white crystal in the liquid was covered in cracks.
The Sacrifice Seed didn't react to it, so the only thing he could rely on was the Anchor of Fantasy.
Locking onto it for conversion would cost one thousand units of HuoZhong Source Power.
Li Mu winced at the cost, but finally decided to convert the prophetic Crystal Ball into a Spark Creation.
In an instant, the conversion of the Crystal Ball was complete.
[Nightmare Crystal Ball: Spark Artifact] [Quality: Purple, Heaven Grade] [Effect: Inject Mental Power into the Nightmare Crystal Ball and expend ten units of HuoZhong Source Power to see your own misfortune and death in a dream. Prophecy accuracy increases for those below Transcendence Level LV10, decreases for those above Transcendence Level LV10, and vanishes entirely for those above Transcendence Level LV20.] [Hint: The more powerful the world, the less effective prophecy becomes.]
"It can show me misfortune and death?"
Li Mu held the Nightmare Crystal Ball, both surprised and delighted.
Although it would stop working once he reached Transcendence Level LV20, it could be very useful in the early stages. Ten units of HuoZhong Source Power wasn't a small amount, but he still temporarily separated his Origin HuoZhong from the Elf Wizard Robe, fused it with the Nightmare Crystal Ball instead, and injected his Mental Power.
Li Mu instantly closed his eyes and fell asleep. More than half an hour later, he woke with a start, drenched in cold sweat.
He'd had a nightmare. Driven mad, Nicolas Flamel had started a nuclear war that engulfed the world to avenge his wife, who had died in a Nuclear War. Although Nicolas Flamel had eventually died at Li Mu's hands, the nuclear war had already destroyed most of the world.
"Nicolas Flamel..."
Li Mu put away the Nightmare Crystal Ball, a cold glint in his eyes.
They said the poor feared the ruthless, the ruthless feared the reckless, the reckless feared the suicidal, and the suicidal feared the mad. Nicolas Flamel had gone completely mad. It looked like Li Mu would have to find a way to send him to meet God.
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