When the secret door was pushed open, a cold wind poured out from inside, carrying a damp and fishy smell unique to the depths of the earth.
Inside is a downward slope passage, which is more than half a meter lower than the floor of the tomb. The walls on both sides are made of rough, unpolished rocks with chisel marks on them. It can be seen that they were dug manually.
"Where... does this lead?" Barty Crouch Jr. asked.
"I don't know, go down and have a look." Lin Ze lit the wand to the maximum and walked down first.
The passage is very narrow, and three people can only line up in one line.
The stone slabs under my feet were a little slippery, and after walking for about ten steps, sporadic murals began to appear on the walls.
They are said to be murals, but they are actually simple drawings carved on the stone surface with sharp objects. The content is very simple, they are all human figures, but the human figures in each painting are different. Some limbs are twisted, some heads are bulging, and some hands and feet are obviously not human.
"These are experimental subjects?" Mia pointed at one of them with his wand and said.
"Written here for who to see?"
Lin Ze frowned.
"It's not normal. It probably wasn't carved by the owner of the laboratory." Mia said.
Lin Ze didn't answer, but he knew what she meant.
The end of the passage suddenly opened up.
It was a space transformed from a natural cave, much smaller than a tomb, about the size of an ordinary bedroom, and filled with things.
Against the wall stood a simple bed made of stones, covered with several layers of old stiff blankets.
There is an enamel cup and several uncovered manuscripts on the bedside.
There was a crooked wooden shelf standing in the corner. There were various bottles and jars on the shelf, some were dry, some were wet, and some contained dark red liquid with a white film floating on the surface.
In the innermost part is a stone table, with a huge piece of parchment spread out on the table.
Lin Ze walked over and brought the wand closer.
Drawn on the parchment is a diagram of human anatomy.
But the object of dissection is not a human being. At least not an ordinary human being.
The human figure in the picture has obvious alienated characteristics: the spine is curved outward, the number of joints in the limbs is one more than that of a normal person, the skull is partially drawn, and the inside is densely marked with Runes annotations.
In the middle of these annotations, there is a line of words written in another kind of handwriting. The font is square and square, completely different from the scrawled Runes.
"Number Forty-Eight, the stable period has reached nine months, no rejection reaction has occurred, and the autonomous consciousness is intact."
Lin Ze stared at that line of words for a long time.
"Look here." Mia stood next to the wooden frame, holding a manuscript in his hand, flipping to a page in the middle and handing it over.
The contents of the manuscript are a diary.
The handwriting was very dense and written very casually, but Lin Ze was stunned after scanning a few lines.
"He spoke today. He asked me why I kept him here. I didn't answer."
"He started refusing to eat. I told him that if he didn't eat, his body would deteriorate."
"He smiled."
"I've never seen a subject smile."
Lin Ze Turn to the next page.
"He started reading. He tore through the few old books I had left outside, and he asked me for more. I told him I didn't have any more books. He said he could wait."
Turn another page.
"I'm not sure if he is still an experimental subject. The way he talks and thinks is no different from normal people. He even started discussing with me the meaning of those Runes."
"He started helping me revise those annotations."
"I'm starting to get scared."
The diary ends here.
The next few pages are all blank.
Lin Ze closed the manuscript and raised his head.
"Number Forty-Eight is completely different from the previous forty-seven. He has self-awareness, can speak, can think, and is even learning."
Lin Ze walked around the stone table and saw a thin layer of dust on the corner of the table that had been wiped by someone's palm. The traces were very new.
"Someone came back recently."
"Recently?" Mia asked.
"Yes."
The three of them fell silent at the same time.
The air in the stone chamber seemed to be stagnant.
Lin Ze subconsciously looked back at the entrance of the passage to confirm that there were no other sounds.
"Number Forty-Eight... If it is a perfect experimental subject, then he has the power of a vampire while retaining human autonomy." Mia's voice was very soft, "He is outside now and may come back at any time."
"Let's go first." Lin Ze rolled up the parchment and manuscripts and stuffed them inside the coat.
"Take these things away and talk about it when you go back."
Barty Crouch Jr. walked at the front, and the three of them got back into the narrow passage.
When climbing back into the tomb, Lin Ze kept thinking about that line of words.
"Autonomous consciousness remains intact."
He always felt that something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
It was already dark when the three of them came out of the church.
Barty Crouch Jr. went to contact the ministry to arrange for manpower to cordon off the scene. Mia returned to the office first. Lin Ze stood in the alley outside the church and took out his diary.
"In addition to the Borgin and Burkes store, where else can Burke Family's raven mark be found?" Lin Ze wrote.
"Burke Family has seven or eight shops in Knockturn Alley. His shop has such a mark. There should also be a few abandoned warehouses, but those were all a long time ago." Riddle replied.
"Did you know that Burke Family has done experiments related to vampires?"
The diary paused for a moment.
"The Vampire Clan? As far as I know, that family values their lives very much, so they shouldn't touch that kind of thing."
"Are you sure?"
"I worked at Borgin and Burkes, and the first item on their taboo list was "no contact with vampire-related materials," and anyone who violated it would be expelled from the family. At that time, I thought this was quite stupid. Blood clan is not as rare as dragon blood, so why avoid it."
Lin Ze closed the diary and stuffed it back into his arms.
When he walked out of the alley, he accidentally caught a glimpse of a person standing under the streetlight across the street.
The man was wearing a dark coat and an old hunting hat with the brim so low that his face could not be seen clearly.
Lin Ze paused slightly.
The man stood under the light for two seconds, then suddenly turned around and walked slowly into the alley next to him.
When Lin Ze chased after him, the alley was empty except for the plastic bags on the ground that were blown by the wind and swirled on the stone road.
He didn't chase anymore, just stood there and watched for a long time.
The light of the street lamp cast a slender shadow behind him, and the wind blew the hem of his clothes slightly swaying.
When Lin Ze returned to the office, Mia had already developed the photos he had taken and placed them neatly on the conference table.
Barty Crouch Jr. also came back, leaning against the window, twirling the wand in his hand.
"Have you read them all?" Lin Ze pulled up a chair and sat down.
"See." Mia pushed the photo over.
Lin Ze Turn over one by one.
Kent Road The experimental bench in the cellar, the bone meal in the stone basin, the scrawled handwriting on the card, then Whitechapel District the sarcophagus in the tomb, the stone chamber behind the secret door, anatomical diagrams, and manuscripts.
The last picture is the inside of the Number Forty-Eight sarcophagus. There are rows of words carved with fingernails on the coffin wall. They are densely packed and carved from the bottom to the top of the coffin, almost covering the entire inner wall.