Hogwarts' Golden Glory

The basilisk's body convulsed violently, and its giant, bright yellow eyes quickly dimmed.

Kane swiftly drew his sword!

The basilisk's corpse crashed to the ground, kicking up clouds of dust!

Kane nimbly leaped down from the corpse, twirling his sword in his hand.

The silver sword can automatically remove dust from its surface!

The sword has already absorbed the basilisk's blood and venom!

The sword now possesses the ability to destroy Horcruxes.

The once noisy tunnel has become deathly silent.

The Sorting Hat was at Dumbledore's feet, its mouth splitting open.

"Well done! Slytherin, 100 points! No, you should be Gryffindor now...wait, which side are you on, kid?!"

Snape stared at the basilisk's corpse on the ground, which was rapidly turning to ashes, and then looked at the sword in Kane's hand, which was still slightly warm.

The Potions Professor's lips moved as if he wanted to say something harsh, but in the end he just stiffly turned his head away: "I'll deal with Lockhart."

Dumbledore stepped forward slowly. The old headmaster's gaze fell on the sword.

"A mighty knight!"

He returned the sword to Dumbledore, "returning it to its rightful owner."

Dumbledore did not take the sword, but gazed at the boy: "The sword has acknowledged you, so it is yours. And I also believe in your courage!"

"Alright!" Kane accepted the sword without hesitation.

Dumbledore was momentarily taken aback; if it were Harry, he probably would have already politely declined.

Dumbledore's outstretched hand froze in mid-air as he watched Kane casually insert the Gryffindor sword into a specially made scabbard inside his dragon-skin robe!

The scabbard was clearly prepared in advance, and its size was a perfect fit.

The old headmaster raised his white eyebrows slightly: "You... are well prepared."

"Opportunity always favors the prepared mind, Principal."

Kane patted the scabbard, making a slight metallic scraping sound.

"Besides, you don't really want me to go and fight Voldemort empty-handed, do you?"

Snape, dragging the unconscious Lockhart, disappeared around the corner of the tunnel.

The remaining two also began to study the secret room.

The scene deep within the secret room slowly unfolded under the light of the magic wand.

It's bigger than I imagined—not a simple tunnel or stone chamber, but a sunken underground palace.

Salazar Slytherin’s colossal statue stands in the center, but what is even more shocking is the surrounding environment: the walls are covered with moving serpentine reliefs, animal bones are scattered on the ground, and the air is filled with the stench of decay from two different sources.

Kane's silver-blue wand was the first to detect the anomaly.

The light from the tip of the staff swept across the ground, illuminating a severed hand covered in gray hair—the fingers were thick, the nails sharp as claws, and dark red scabs remained at the cut.

There was also a silver dagger.

"Werewolves," Dumbledore's voice deepened, "and recently so."

Kane crouched down and gently touched the severed hand with the tip of his wand.

Silver-blue runes spread along the skin, quickly outlining a blurry image: a scarred werewolf retreating in terror, its enormous yellow pupils closing in on the darkness...

"Fenrir Greyback's men."

Kane stood up. "He saw the basilisk's eyes before he died, but strangely..."

He pointed to the ground next to the severed hand, "There are no signs of petrification here, only the remains of something that was swallowed up."

Dumbledore walked up to the statue, and the light from the Elder Wand illuminated several fresh claw marks on the base—between the claw marks were a few basilisk scales that shimmered with a pearly luster.

The old headmaster said slowly, "While the basilisk was still alive, they touched something they shouldn't have, and then..."

"And then they became the basilisk's dinner," Kane continued, his gaze drifting into the deeper darkness behind the statue. "But the question is—how did they get in?"

The two exchanged a glance and simultaneously gave their answer:

"There are other routes."

Kane's silver-blue wand swept across the walls of the secret chamber, the beam stopping at an inconspicuous drain—behind an iron fence about two feet in diameter lay a bottomless dark pipe.

Along the edge of the fence, a few strands of gray hair were stuck in the rusty gaps.

"The school's drainage system." Kane crouched down and picked up a hair with the tip of his wand.

"Wolf fur, and it still smells of decaying leaves from the Forbidden Forest." He looked at the inner wall of the pipe, where there were obvious crawling marks. "It didn't walk in; it crawled in."

Dumbledore's Elder Wand shot out a golden thread, which, like a living thing, burrowed into the pipe and meandered forward in the darkness.

A moment later, the silk thread retracted, its end covered with damp soil and a piece of spider silk from the eight-eyed giant spider.

"The passage connects to the swampy area at the edge of the Forbidden Forest," the old headmaster said, his brow furrowed. "It takes at least four hours to climb through the filter at the bottom of Black Lake and along the main drainage pipe to get here."

"But it's discreet enough." Kane stood up, dusting off his hands. "The castle's plumbing system is in disrepair; Filch hasn't inspected the sewers in at least three years."

He turned to Dumbledore. "You're planning to seal it away?"

Dumbledore had already raised the Elder Wand, its tip glowing with the golden light of a Sealing Charm: "This is the safest option. If the werewolves can get in, so can the others—"

"Then let them in," Kane said suddenly.

The old principal stopped what he was doing.

Kane took out an exquisite silver box from his pocket. Inside were a dozen or so mechanical spiders the size of grains of rice—alchemy trackers he had made in imitation of the eight-eyed giant spider.

He carefully placed one of them at the pipe entrance.

"It was custom-made," Kane explained, "an improved version of the Attachment Charm. Once a living being passes through the conduit, it automatically attaches itself to the other party and continuously sends location information."

He looked at Dumbledore, a cold glint in his grey-blue eyes. "Voldemort will send people to inspect the Chamber of Secrets sooner or later, or rather... to reclaim what he 'lost'."

Dumbledore understood: "You want to use this pipe as a trap."

"It's not a trap, it's an intelligence network." Kane put the remaining mechanical spiders back into the box. "We'll seal the pipes, Voldemort will find other ways. We'll keep it, and 'accidentally' let the news of the werewolf's successful infiltration get out..." He smirked slightly, "Then next time, it might be someone even more important."

The old headmaster silently observed the boy before him.

A moment later, he put down his wand and instead cast a clever disguise spell on the pipe entrance—now it looked like an ordinary drain blocked by moss.

"But we need to monitor," Dumbledore said. "If someone tries to enter Hogwarts through here—"

"It's already under surveillance." Kane raised his right hand, and a palm-sized two-way mirror slid out from his sleeve.

The mirror displayed a complex magic circle, with a green dot slowly pulsating in the center—the location signal of the mechanical spider he had just placed.

"I've set up a main surveillance array in the dorm," Kane said, putting away the mirror. "Whenever the spider is triggered, the mirror will display the intruder's real-time location and movement trajectory."

"If..." he paused, "if it were Voldemort himself, or someone of Nagini's caliber, the edge of the mirror would turn red as a warning."

Dumbledore, unusually, showed an expression of admiration: "How long did it take you to prepare all this?"

"Just some gadgets, nothing much," Kane said casually.