The Shopkeeper of All Worlds in the British Wizarding World

Chapter 538 The History of Horcruxes (Please subscribe, please bookmark, please vote)
"Albus, how could you give such a dangerous book on dark magic to Ryan? You have to know that he is not even an adult." Professor McGonagall's angry voice came from the headmaster's office. After deciding to make an unbreakable oath, Dumbledore chose Professor McGonagall as a witness, but after Professor McGonagall knew the content of the oath, she immediately expressed her dissatisfaction.

"Minerva, this concerns many innocent lives." Dumbledore looked at Professor McGonagall and explained seriously, "I also know that this knowledge is very dangerous, but doing this is the safest way."

"The safest approach? Albus, I don't know when we need to push such a young child to the front?" Professor McGonagall asked angrily after listening to Professor Dumbledore's explanation.

"I don't want to do this either, but I think Ryan is no longer an ordinary child. He has enough will and strength to solve this problem. At the same time, he is the only one who can solve the problem we are facing now."

"Yes, the principal is right." Ryan nodded beside him. "I am doing this voluntarily, please help me!"

After repeated persuasion from Ryan and Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall finally agreed to be the witness. After she nodded, Professor Dumbledore stood up from the chair, walked around the table and held Ryan's right hand with his own. Professor McGonagall took out her wand and touched the wand head on their two clasped hands.

"Ryan, are you willing to never use dark magic like Horcruxes?" Dumbledore asked.

"I do," said Ryan, and as soon as he finished speaking a thin, blinding tongue of fire burst from Professor McGonagall's wand, wrapping itself around their joined hands like a red-hot wire.

"Are you willing to keep these secrets to the best of your ability, and not let this evil knowledge pass from you?"

"I do," Ryan said. A second tongue of fire burst out of the wand and entwined with the first, forming a thin, glowing red chain. Like a rope, like a flaming snake.

"Then the oath is established." Professor McGonagall announced, and the flaming chains that had been wrapped around the hands of Ryan and Headmaster Dumbledore disappeared instantly, which meant that the oath was established.

"Okay, you can read this book now." After Professor McGonagall left the headmaster's office, Dumbledore took out a black book with copper cover covering the corners and spine from the locked drawer and handed it to Ryan, then continued: "But for safety reasons, you can only read this book in my office and cannot take it out."

"I see. I should be able to finish reading this book soon." Ryan said as he took the book with both hands, only to find that it was just a thin book and the feel was definitely not that of parchment.

"Is this a human skin book?" After touching the cover of the book, Ryan recognized the material of the book. Because when he was cleaning up those mutant predators in the radiation world, he had seen more than one human skin.

"Yes." Dumbledore nodded. "This is human skin that the author dug up after digging up more than a dozen graves, because people used to think that books about the soul were best recorded on human skin. A few decades ago, this book was placed in the restricted area of ​​Hogwarts, but I put it away after Voldemort made the Horcruxes."

"That doesn't sound too bad." Ryan shrugged. This was much better than the mutants in the radiation world skinning people alive, and he understood why Dumbledore put the book away. It was just like for security reasons, there would not be detailed process flow charts about the production of certain weapons or some bad drugs in the libraries of ordinary universities.

So Ryan felt that there was no need to act like a paranoid person, always thinking that whenever the principal put away certain books, he was suppressing the younger generation. The ones who really wanted to suppress students were those pure-blood families who read their books so much that they would rather let the books rot at home than take them out. After thinking about these trivial matters, Ryan began to observe the book carefully. It was at this time that he discovered that there were gold-plated letters on the cover of the book, but now they have all been eroded by time.

"The Road to Immortality" Ryan spelled out the Latin title of the book under the light of the principal's office. Although the title was a bit boastful, he had to admit that Horcruxes were indeed a genius idea. It's just that the flaws of this kind of immortality are too great.

After opening the book, Ryan found that it was a handwritten copy. The copyist used magic ink mixed with dragon blood and mandrake juice to ensure that the book could be circulated for a long time. In addition to the main content and some illustrations, the readers' experiences recorded in the blanks between the lines allowed Ryan to see the development history of Horcrux production.

Horcruxes originated from mummies in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian wizards used magic to cut off a part of their body and cultivate it into another body of their own. In this way, when their body was damaged beyond repair, their soul would abandon the damaged body and use the spare body prepared in advance to revive. This magic was later known to Muggles, but they did not know the details. Therefore, the local people had the habit of making mummies, and it was said that mummies could be resurrected.

Later, as this magic spread, some wizards who wanted to gain immortality improved this magic. The improved magic did not need to cultivate the spare body into a human form in advance, so this thing could be put into a small magic box, which greatly increased its concealment. At the same time, the biggest difference from the previous one was that when a part of the body was cut out, a part of the soul was also cut out through complex magical means.

In this way, the effect of the passage of time on the part of the body and soul protected by the special magic container will be suppressed to the minimum, and the connection between the soul fragment and the soul body will feed back this situation to the main body, allowing the main body to gain a long life. At the same time, as long as the container is not discovered, the wizard cannot be killed. However, every time they are resurrected, their minds will suffer irreversible damage, so the number of resurrections is also limited.

In modern times, this magic was improved again. The complicated soul-cutting magic was replaced by killing, and it no longer required cutting off a part of the body, only cutting off the soul. This is how the real method of making Horcruxes came into being.

Although this greatly lowered the threshold for making Horcruxes and simplified the production process, it also caused serious consequences. On the one hand, it completely transformed the originally neutral magic into an evil black magic, causing the user's body to suffer additional damage when facing magic such as thunder magic or holy light.

On the other hand, after the original body is destroyed, it cannot be directly resurrected like the previous two methods, but it is necessary to use other means to create a new body.

However, even this simplified version of the Horcrux production method is actually far beyond the knowledge of a normal wizard. Ryan understood these contents with the knowledge he collected from multiple worlds. As an orphan, Voldemort was a true genius who could understand these things just by living in Hogwarts for six years and being exposed to the magical world.

Apart from anything else, it was amazing that he could learn Latin to a high level in such a short time. Ryan felt that he would never be able to do this if he didn't have the golden finger.

It took Ryan five full hours to put down the book "The Road to Immortality" in his hand. Thanks to the previous upgrade of strength, his memory and comprehension abilities took a big step forward, which allowed him to finish reading the book in a short period of time.

"I think I have some idea." Looking at Headmaster Dumbledore who was looking at him with concern, Ryan nodded and said, "But I need time."

"That's good enough." Headmaster Dumbledore put away the book. "Remember not to be impatient. We have enough time to wait. If the price of saving an innocent life is another innocent life, then such a rescue is completely meaningless."

(End of this chapter)