"This is outrageous!"
Inside the Somnolen wizard's tower, Slytherin's ghost roared in fury.
What did it mean for a dragon stranded in shallow waters to be bullied by shrimp, or a tiger fallen to the plains to be harassed by dogs? This was exactly that situation.
Back then, Salazar Slytherin's name had shaken the world. As one of the four founders of Hogwarts, how many Dark wizards had died at his hands and become his experimental materials? In that era, which wizard did not feel fear upon hearing his name?
And yet now… he was being forced by a mere junior to sign an entire stack of unequal agreements.
Faced with Slytherin's explosive rage, Wade Reynolds smiled and said, "Everything I promised you, I will help you accomplish. And everything I am asking you to do brings you no harm at all. In fact, some of it even benefits you. So why are you so angry?"
"Bastard! Despicable! How could Hogwarts ever accept a little demon like you…" Slytherin continued to curse loudly.
Wade, however, kept smiling, utterly unmoved by Slytherin's insults.
Eventually, Slytherin grew tired of cursing, and his voice gradually weakened.
Only then did Wade say lazily, "Finished cursing? If you are done, then sign here."
As he spoke, Wade condensed a sheet of slightly illusory parchment out of white mist. The parchment was densely packed with words.
Seeing this, Slytherin immediately jumped up again and resumed cursing…
Wade Reynolds set the parchment aside and continued listening with great patience.
After quite some time, Slytherin finally stopped cursing.
Wade let out a sigh. "Ghosts do not need to breathe, so you really do have impressive stamina when it comes to cursing. That said, I have noticed something about your Slytherin line. None of you are particularly good at insults. There is no creativity at all. Would you like me to teach you?"
This time, Slytherin did not curse again. With a dark expression, he grabbed the illusory parchment, then pulled a translucent quill from his pocket and scrawled his name across it in bold strokes.
By now, he understood that the most infuriating thing was not harsh insults, but someone like Wade, who remained completely unmoved.
It was like punching a wad of cotton, deeply uncomfortable.
Worst of all, after you finished venting, this fellow could casually respond with a single sentence that made your blood boil. It was as if there were needles hidden inside the cotton.
So Slytherin gave up on continuing the quarrel and signed his name without further hesitation.
The instant he signed, Slytherin felt something within him being tugged by the parchment in his hand.
This so-called contract had actually taken effect.
"What kind of magic is this, exactly? Creating illusions within my illusion would already be impressive enough, but you even created a contract that a ghost can sign. I have truly never heard of such magic," Slytherin said. Though furious, he could not help acknowledging the sophistication of Wade's methods.
"All things in the world are constantly advancing. Magic is no exception. So the knowledge you take such pride in may not be as useful in this era as you imagine," Wade said as he put away the ghostly contract.
Wade Reynolds knew very well that Slytherin had no other choice. Moreover, although his terms clearly took advantage of him, Wade was not refusing to help him entirely either. As such, Slytherin was not completely resistant to this so-called unequal agreement.
So his anger now stemmed purely from a sense of wounded pride. That was why Wade had chosen to let him curse to his heart's content. Otherwise, how could he possibly swallow his pride?
Sure enough, after venting freely for dozens of minutes, Slytherin still signed his name without hesitation.
"All right. Now you should take me to have a look at your grave," Wade said with keen interest.
Slytherin was a true magnate. Just a single locket he left behind was already an exceptionally valuable treasure. So how many priceless items would be buried where he lay in rest?
Of course, if Slytherin's ghost had not appeared, Wade would never have shown such disrespect to one of the four founders by digging up his grave. But now that Slytherin's ghost had appeared… in Wade's view, if you had already reappeared and could still curse people, that was not much different from being alive again. If you were not truly dead, then digging up your grave came with absolutely no guilt at all. Besides, leaving such treasures buried in the soil would be such a waste.
"Do you want to go out and take a look first, to confirm the location?" Wade asked.
Slytherin said nothing, merely staring at him in silence.
"What is it?" Wade asked.
"When did you tamper with me?" Slytherin asked in a low voice.
"Hm?" Wade blinked. "I did not…"
"Heh… forget it. It does not matter whether you admit it or not. Since you have tampered with me, I actually feel more at ease," Slytherin said indifferently.
He drifted into the air, carefully sensing his surroundings, then floated back down and tapped the floor with his cane. "Right here."
"Right here? You mean your grave is directly beneath this spot?"
"I do not know whether there is a proper tomb. After all, I died suddenly… but I can sense my remains. They are down below."
"Hiss… then I think I understand why you suddenly appeared in this place," Wade Reynolds said in realization.
Then Wade suddenly asked, "But… if your grave was never discovered, and someone later built a house on top of it… then does that mean your grave does not even have a headstone? That it has been buried and forgotten all this time, without anyone knowing? Surely your direct descendants did not fail to do something as simple as bringing flowers on your death anniversary each year?"
At those words, Slytherin was left completely speechless. Vaguely, he remembered that in his obsession with research, he had indeed not been very close to his children…
"All right, I will stop talking," Wade said, raising his wand and using Transfiguration to part the ground.
After digging downward for more than ten meters, Wade finally discovered a burial chamber that had partially collapsed, along with a stone coffin inside, half-buried in soil.
"So you actually have a tomb chamber. I thought they had simply buried the coffin and called it a day."
"I am Salazar Slytherin. What is strange about having a larger tomb?" Slytherin replied coldly.
Wade Reynolds did not respond, instead beginning to clear away the surrounding soil and search for any treasures or ancient texts that might have survived.
Slytherin, meanwhile, looked at his own coffin with a complicated expression.
The pursuit of immortality had been one of his research goals, but… he had begun that research far too late.
Slytherin had never imagined that he would fall just as his research was getting started…
Suddenly, Slytherin drifted toward his coffin, one hand passing through it and reaching into the stone sarcophagus.
"What are you doing?" Wade asked.
"I want to take another look at my own remains," Slytherin said, his tone complex, before the upper half of his body passed straight through the stone coffin and inside.
Wade did not find anything particularly strange about Slytherin's behavior.
Becoming a ghost and then seeing one's own tomb with one's own eyes… however one thought about it, it was bound to feel unsettling…
But just as Wade was thinking this, Slytherin suddenly let out a furious roar and burst out of the sarcophagus. "Help me pry this coffin open!"
Wade froze for a moment. "That… would that not be inappropriate? This is your coffin, after all…"
Although Wade had entertained the idea of taking the treasures Slytherin left behind, he had never intended to open the coffin itself.
And now, Slytherin's own ghost was actually asking him to pry open his coffin?
"Hurry and open it! I… my remains seem to be… gone!"
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