"Don't move yet, I'll be there right away." Lin Ze said to the badge.
He turned to look at Mia.
Mia has put away the wand, and his expression has returned to its usual calm expression.
"Let's go together. I'll ask Carl to bring someone over here to handle it. He should be more professional."
Lin Ze used the communication badge to contact Carl and asked him to bring Mona and Weiqi to handle the Kent Road cellar scene.
Carl was originally complaining on the other end of the badge, but after hearing that it was an alchemy experiment modified body, his attitude immediately changed 180 degrees, and he readily agreed.
"Let's go."
Lin Ze activates "Boundary Break" and takes Mia to travel to the vicinity of Whitechapel District.
The two of them emerged from a deserted alley, and not far away they saw Barty Crouch Jr. standing under the streetlight at the entrance of St. Mary's Lane, holding a wand in his hand, with a rare solemn look on his face.
The abandoned church was at the end of the alley. Half of its spire had collapsed, and the stained glass windows were so shattered that only a few fragments remained stuck in the lead bars, like a row of jagged teeth.
"This way." Barty Crouch Jr. nodded to them, turned around and pushed open the iron fence of the side door of the church.
The three people stepped inside the church.
The murals on the dome are almost invisible due to the erosion of time, the benches are tilted here and there, and the floor is paved with broken marble tiles, which make a fine creaking sound when stepped on.
Barty Crouch Jr. led the two of them around the altar and walked to the wall behind the altar.
He stretched out his hand and pressed somewhere on the wall.
The wall cracked silently, revealing a stone staircase leading downward.
The light at the end of the stone steps was dim and steady, a silver-gray cold light, like it came from some kind of ore.
Lin Ze followed him down the stone steps and into the church catacombs.
The tomb is much larger than the cellar of Kent Road. The walls are made of huge stones and the floor is paved with flat stone slabs.
Then he saw the coffins.
Arranged neatly, from left to right, front to back, every bite is exactly the same.
It is a gray-white sarcophagus with the number Runes engraved on the lid.
Barty Crouch Jr. is right, there are forty-eight in total.
Lin Ze walked to the nearest coffin. The number on the coffin lid was "1".
He walked to a coffin nearby and opened the lid.
Inside the coffin lies an almost completely transformed body.
The skin is gray and white, the limbs are slender, the claws are long and pointed, the two rows of fangs in the mouth are neatly arranged, the eye sockets are deeply sunken, and it is not breathing.
Lin Ze took a closer look at the corpse in the sarcophagus.
Different from the half-finished body in the Kent Road cellar, this one has been completely alienated. It has slender limbs, sharp claws, neat fangs, and deep-set eye sockets. It lies upright, with its hands folded on its chest, and its posture seems to have been deliberately placed.
No breathing.
Lin Ze used the wand to probe, but there was no life response.
"Dead," he said.
Mia walked next to him, looked down at the body in the coffin, and then looked at the inside of the coffin lid.
"There are words here."
The inside of the coffin lid is engraved with a row of small Runes and Lin Ze. Looking closer, I can barely make out it.
"Transformation into the completed body, the first phase of the experiment is terminated."
The first stage.
Lin Ze raised his head and glanced from the first coffin to the last row.
Forty-eight coffins are arranged in order from right to left according to the number. The one on the far left is the farthest. The number on the coffin lid is "48".
He passed one sarcophagus after another, opening each one and taking a look.
Number two, number three, number four...
Around the 20th day, the corpses in the coffins began to change, and the degree of alienation was no longer uniform. Some had their right hands completely transformed, some had only their fingernails turned gray, some had fine hairs all over their bodies, and some had no human features at all on their faces.
The further back you go, the more unstable it becomes.
After the 35th day, the corpses in the coffin had all kinds of strange shapes. One had a spine curved into an arc, like some kind of reptile, and another had a skin surface covered with scaly hardened tissue.
"These are all failures." Mia said.
Lin Ze said nothing and walked straight to the forty-eighth coffin.
The lid of the coffin was open and the interior of the coffin was empty.
"Barty Crouch Jr.." Lin Ze shouted.
"Huh?"
"Were all these coffins closed when you came in?"
"Except for the 48th port, the rest are closed."
"Have you touched the other coffins?"
Barty Crouch Jr. turned to look at him, his eyes turned cold. "What do you mean?"
"It's nothing interesting, just to confirm."
Barty Crouch Jr. stared at him for a while, "There is a record card here, you can read it yourself."
Lin Ze took the card from Barty Crouch Jr.. On the card was written the number, source of the experimental subject, transformation time, and reason for failure.
"No. 37, source: Whitechapel District, transformation duration is fourteen days, failure reason: bone rejection."
"No. 41, source: Charles Street, transformation duration is twenty-three days, failure reason: blood disintegration."
Each card has a square stamp stamped at the end.
The pattern on the seal is of a raven with outstretched wings, holding a bone in its claws.
"Burke Family's family emblem." Mia said.
Mia walked over and took a look, "Knockturn Alley Borgin and Burkes There is a similar pattern on the signboard of the store, but it is much smaller. You can't even notice it if you don't look carefully."
When Lin Ze looked through all the cards, he found that numbers one to forty-seven were there, but Number Forty-Eight was missing. Like the cards in Kent Road's cellar, only numbers one to forty-seven were recorded.
"Is it possible that Number Forty-Eight is also a successful experimental subject?" Mia asked.
"But Number Forty-Nine is still in the sarcophagus..." Lin Ze frowned.
Suddenly he seemed to think of something, "You mean...Number Forty-Eight has started to operate externally?"
Mia nodded slightly.
Lin Ze squatted next to the forty-eighth coffin and gently scratched the bottom of the coffin with the tip of his wand.
There was a light layer of off-white powder on the bottom of the coffin, which was very similar to what was in the stone basin in the Kent Road cellar. When his wand passed over the powder, the fluorescence on the tip of the wand jumped, indicating that this thing still had weak magical activity.
"I have used it, and it has been used for a long time." Lin Ze stood up and patted the dust on his hands.
He looked around, counted the total number of sarcophagi in the tomb, and compared it with the records on the card.
"Nos. 1 to 47 are all there. Number Forty-Eight is an empty coffin. Kent Road has another Number Forty-Nine in the cellar."
"So, the question is, where did Number Forty-Eight go?" Barty Crouch Jr. asked.
"Good question."
Lin Ze walked around the tomb, his eyes scanning the walls and floor.
There is a drag mark on the stone floor that is so shallow that it is almost invisible, extending from the position of the Number Forty-Eight coffin to a stone wall in the deepest part of the tomb.
The surface of the stone wall is rough, and one area is lighter in color than the surrounding area, as if it has been touched frequently.
He walked over and tapped the stone wall with his wand.
Hollow.
"There is a secret door." Barty Crouch Jr. followed and knocked twice.