A certain Hogwarts professor of runes.

“Look here!” Wood said, pointing to a tombstone. “There are some magical runes on it, it seems to be…” His voice trembled.

"What is it?" Percy looked over, holding up his wand.

“We…we’re waiting for you here…” Wood swallowed hard.

"Gudong!"

Just then, they heard a strange noise, and something emerged from the soil in front of Wood's tombstone.

Percy's eyes widened. It was a hand!

"Run, Wood!" He raised his hand and cast a shattering spell.

Wood nimbly leaped away, and a crisp cracking sound came from behind him. When he turned around, he saw a skeletal arm shattered into pieces.

"Ahhh!" Penelope screamed as something grabbed her ankle. She struggled to break free, only to find a pale white hand dangling from her ankle.

"Penelope!"

Percy shouted, then stared in disbelief as Penelope ran a few steps away and, gritting her teeth, unleashed a series of "Shattered Bones" and "Blazing Flames" spells in one direction. The intense light illuminated a corner of the tombstones, and under the influence of the spells, a large crater was blasted into the ground.

About thirty seconds later

A group of people came running up, panting. They looked at the scene in confusion: Percy and Penelope were kissing, two other wizards were looking awkwardly into the distance, and Wood kicked away a skeleton with a missing arm with a look of disgust.

The skeleton was also strangely shaped, about half the height of a person, with short limbs, but a particularly large head that took up almost half of its body.

The giant skull's mouth was stretched wide open, and it made a very human-like "ooh~ ooh~" sound as it clumsily tried to get up from the ground.

Chapter 144 Practical Lesson (II): Nine-Square Puzzle

Penelope blushed, while Percy grinned foolishly beside her.

The Gryffindors cheered excitedly, while several wizards in Ravenclaw glared at Percy with ill intent, as if he had stolen some precious treasure. A few girls whispered amongst themselves.

"Wood, what's this?" A Gryffindor student pointed to the little skeleton wobbling and struggling to its feet on the ground; it wasn't scary at all.

"The 'surprise' Professor Hyp mentioned," Wood said, somewhat annoyed. He had just been terrified.

The freckled wizard next to him added, "They're not aggressive at all, except for the rather frightening way they appear..."

As they were talking, a Ravenclaw girl looked down and saw a pale, bony hand rubbing against her shoe. "Aaaaah!" she screamed dramatically. Wood stepped forward and stomped the bone, crushing it. He shrugged and said to the others, "See, that's the kind of thing."

He then looked at the girl and said, "You're standing a bit too far to the side; that area doesn't look like it's been cleaned up."

The girl blushed and thanked him.

"Aside from these comical little skeletons, have you found anything else?" someone asked.

“The tombstone,” Percy said, trying to sound calm, “has runes on it. I think that’s an important clue.”

Someone suggested, "Why don't we decipher the magic script here first?"

"good idea!"

A dozen or so young wizards split up, each taking charge of two or three tombstones. They took out parchment from their bags and copied down the runes on it.

During this time, the small skeletons buried in the soil sensed the approach of the living and reached out from underground to try to frighten them. But this time the students were prepared and easily avoided their attack.

A few of the bolder ones simply let the little skeletons crawl out, letting them use their slender hand bones to pry open their thighs, while they continued to copy the magical runes on the tombstone.

During this process, every one or two minutes, a fiery red spark would rise in the distance.

Percy, Penelope, and the others finished their tasks early, and they looked at each other's deciphered texts, comparing them with the patterns on the tombstones.

Look here.

Penelope pointed to the numbers on two black stone tombstones nearby, one after the other. "These two are adjacent numbers. The first one says, 'Visitors discovered that the safe house is heavily protected by four magical barriers.' The other one says, 'To the due south, there are a large number of undead.'"

She excitedly said, "The undead correspond to the group of tombstones we are in, and we can find a safe house if we head north!"

“Penelope, you’re always so smart,” Percy complimented.

Penelope snorted: "It seems Professor Hyp has broken up a complete story and placed it on each tombstone. All we have to do is put them back together."

“Hey guys! Don’t forget to write down the tombstone numbers, they’ll come in very handy,” Percy shouted as he turned around.

Finally, a green spark appeared in the distance, high in the sky.

"We're going back the way we came. Have you all finished copying?" After receiving an affirmative response, they hurried back.

This time, they returned to their original position in about two minutes.

The sorcerer who stayed behind looked pale. "You're finally back. I've been feeling someone breathing on my neck the whole time..."

"Thank you for your hard work, Dilis."

Half a minute later, the Slytherin and Hufflepuff students returned. The Slytherin prefect strutting around said, "We found the safe house. If we hadn't been short on time, we would have already broken the magic on it..."

“We also made an important discovery,” Percy argued.

"But those are irrelevant, aren't they?"

Percy blushed and wanted to say something, but Penelope quickly pulled him back. Percy said angrily, "Look at what he's saying!"

Wood pulled over a Hufflepuff student. "Grover, what's going on?"

Grover said, "It took us about three minutes to find the safe house, but we were blocked by magic on the door."

What kind of magic is it?

“A jigsaw puzzle!” Grover said. “The Slytherin students stared at each other blankly, completely clueless about how to play it.”

So the group moved to a safe house.

It was a somewhat oddly shaped square hut, painted dark brown, and from a distance it looked like a large rock, easily overlooked.

The young wizards from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw gathered around and placed four 3x3 grids on the four walls of the hut, with the last spot empty.

“Just tap it with your wand, like this, and the square will move,” Grover explained to the others. “Each square contains a rune, which seems to be meant to be arranged in the correct order to form a sentence.”

“Isn’t that simple? There are only eight runes in total?” Percy said.

“No, Percy, see for yourself,” said the Hufflepuff student.

Percy looked closely, and suddenly realized that he didn't recognize a single one of them...

For a moment, Percy was somewhat dazed. Who am I? Where am I? And what kind of runes do I not recognize?

One is one thing, but you don't recognize eight?

Wood, standing nearby, muttered, "It's just a guess, isn't it? Look at this word, I bet it has something to do with 'radiance'."

The top students present immediately realized, "That's right, this level of difficulty is beyond our capabilities. The professor wants us to be able to identify and deduce the meaning of the words."

Having grasped the true meaning of the riddle, the students exchanged glances. "One college is responsible for one wall?"

Percy glanced at the Slytherin prefect. "Alright."

Twenty minutes have passed...

The young wizards huddled together, looking dejected. "No! It's too hard!"

“Let’s cooperate, Geoffrey,” Penelope said calmly, looking at the Slytherin prefect. “That’s what the professor wants.”

The Slytherin prefect muttered something, but no one else heard it clearly, so they took it as a yes.

Students from the four colleges sat beneath a nine-square puzzle, looking at the runes on it and engaging in a lively discussion.

“Doesn’t the first word sound a bit like Peorth?” a wizard said.

"I think this shape resembles Wyn. Do you see the protruding corners on its edges?"

“Wait, I think I’ve seen a similar rune somewhere before, it looks very much like…” a Hufflepuff witch shrieked. “That’s right, it’s mentioned in a reference book in the fourth-grade textbook, and I happen to have my notes with me.”

“Found it!” She quickly flipped through her notes, then looked up and dramatically announced under everyone’s gaze, “This word is quite ancient; it’s a synonym for ‘wisdom.’”

Although they had only solved one-eighth of the first 3x3 grid, they couldn't help but get excited.

Following this similar line of thought, eight more runes were deciphered in succession.

Penelope counted on her fingers: "Intelligence, excellence and unparalleled, equivalence and similarity, extreme and ultimate, extravagance, wealth or abundance, possession or restraint,"

She looked up. "What did you think of?"

Chapter 145 Practical Lesson (Part 3) - The Key

All the Ravenclaw students laughed.

One of the girls said without hesitation, "Exceptional wisdom is the greatest wealth of mankind."

They quickly arranged themselves in the correct order, and in a dazzling light, the runes disappeared, replaced by a string of elegant, flowing English words shimmering on the wall: "witbeyondmeasurei**an'sgreatesttreasure."

“That’s right! That’s it. This wall clearly represents Ravenclaw, and the other three walls…” Percy said excitedly.

"That represents the other three colleges!"

Everyone thought of this.

Guided by this line of thinking, the runes on the other three walls were also deciphered one after another.

"Courage and fearlessness are my best friends." This is a famous quote from Godric Gryffindor.

"Resilient, honest, upright, and loyal." This is how people describe Hufflepuff.

"To be with honor, to be with strength." This is a famous quote from a renowned Slytherin wizard in history.

Four lines of text shone brightly on the four walls, and everyone instinctively held their breath. Sure enough, the writing on the walls disappeared.

In the darkness, only the light emanating from their wands served as a source of illumination, and this not-so-bright light lit up their excited faces.

An ordinary door appeared, as if it had always been there, and the students went inside.

There was only one table inside, and on the table was a manuscript titled "An Important Manuscript".

Jeffrey turned to the first page, which read: "Collect all four keys to get out of here." The rest of the page was blank.

He scoffed, "Do we still need a key? We can just push the door open and get out..." He suddenly stopped, as if choked by saliva. A layer of cold sweat quickly broke out on his face. "I...can we still find the classroom door?"

After exchanging bewildered glances, Percy spoke to the air, "Professor Hyp... are you there, Professor Hyp?"

No response.

"Looks like we need to collect all the keys." Wood scratched his head. "But where are they?"