A magical journey that begins in Azkaban.

Chapter 553: The Petrified Wizard

The sound of footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, making people feel a little uneasy. Rogge's eyes fell on the dark shadows that appeared and disappeared in the distance, and he walked quickly through the corridor and came to a large warehouse.

"Where are the people?" He stared at the locked iron door in front of him, and doubts arose in his heart, "Could I have seen it wrong?"

When the heavy iron door was pushed open, the scene inside made Roger gasp.

This place is like a jade museum, with countless jade carvings neatly arranged on shelves and in boxes, including jade dragons, icy bodhisattvas, and several jade hands.

"So all the stolen goods from Barcelona are hidden here?" Jackie Chan exclaimed and followed him into the warehouse.

He sighed as he handed the sword to Roger, his eyes gleaming with curiosity, "What kind of spell did you cast on those furniture outside just now?"

"You mean to restore them to their original state?" Rogge smiled and said confidently, "Don't worry, even if these precious jade pieces are accidentally broken, I can use spells to perfectly repair them."

He motioned for Jackie Chan to follow him, and waved his wand gently, sensing the faint traces of magic in the warehouse. The two of them walked carefully among the jade artifacts, fearing that they might alert the enemy hiding in the dark.

Jackie Chan's eyes were involuntarily drawn to the magic wand in Roger's hand. He asked in a low voice, "Is this the magic wand? It looks completely different from Dad's dried lizard and pufferfish."

"Well, although the appearance is different, the actual function is similar." Roger pointed his wand at the door lock and whispered: "Alaho Open"

With a slight sound, the tightly closed door opened. He then used the fluorescent light to illuminate the dim room behind the door.

"They are all media for wizards to communicate magic. With these tools, we can ensure the power and accuracy of the spells."

The two held their breath and stepped into the room carefully. The entire wall was covered with carefully crafted wooden racks, on which hundreds of wands of various shapes were neatly displayed. Various weak magic powers were mixed together, and Roger could no longer find any traces of the previous ones.

Jackie Chan noticed several wands on the table. They were stained with dark blood and looked particularly dazzling in the dim light.

His voice became serious. "These...are all wands? Why are they stained with blood?"

"That's right." Roger sighed, "The Bowei family is indeed different from other wand families."

"Most wizards have their own wands, but the wizarding world is not peaceful. We will divide wizards into white wizards and dark wizards based on the nature of the spells."

Jackie Chan nodded thoughtfully: "This sounds a bit like the 'qi' that Dad mentioned. Dad said that there are evil qi and righteous qi in the world, and the two forces confront and balance each other."

"Well, this may be the philosophical interpretation of the same power by different cultures. Eastern culture emphasizes the harmony of yin and yang, and the balance of black and white; while the magic world tends to pursue a single purity." Roger paused and continued to explain.

“Since the 20th century, a particularly powerful white wizard has emerged in the European wizarding world: Albus Dumbledore. He defeated the rising Dark Lord twice in a row and brought long-term peace to the wizarding world.”

"The snake-man virus that raged some time ago, the Death Eaters' attack on the Magical Capitol of the United States... that series of horrific events were all the work of the second Dark Lord's comeback."

"If we use the Yin-Yang philosophy to explain it, it can be understood that the righteousness represented by Dumbledore is too strong, and the world unconsciously breeds dark wizards to maintain balance. This natural check and balance mechanism explains to some extent why the Dark Lord will not be extinct."

"As for these wands..." His eyes swept across the countless wands in the room, and his tone became heavy. "They are probably the spoils of Death Eaters or dark wizards. After the original owner of the wand was killed, it was sent to the Bowen family for transformation and then sold again."

This approach saves time and effort, and is undoubtedly a good choice for those forces eager to expand. This also explains why Chris went to the Bowei family to seek the wand technology of the Jonker family.

Jackie Chan's eyes flashed with shock when he heard this. There were hundreds of wands on the shelf in front of him alone. In other words, at least a hundred wizards were killed.

"Oh my god, this is horrible. Sheriff Black never mentioned any connection between the Jade Thief and wizards."

"Perhaps it's because of this disaster that has swept the world that bad guys always attract other bad guys." Rogge quickly looked around the room and thought to himself, "What was the shadow that just disappeared?"

Just then, a familiar voice came from behind, interrupting their conversation: "Jackie Chan, did you meet a wizard?"

Turning around, I saw my dad wearing a red Santa hat, and behind him was Tru, who was as big as a hill.

"Ah, is it you?" Dad looked at Rogge and exclaimed, "What an evil aura."

Tru asked in a simple voice, "Dad, isn't he a good man?"

"I'm not talking about him." Dad held his glasses and shook his head, saying in Cantonese: "He is a dark wizard, not an evil wizard."

"Is there a difference?" Tru scratched his head, looking confused, "Daolong is also a dark wizard."

Roger understood some of it and explained in fluent Mandarin: "Magic itself is not black or white. It is because wizards use spells that there is such a distinction."

"I admit that frequent exposure to black magic does have some impact on one's personality. However, darkness and evil are two completely different concepts."

"Just like Jackie Chan's niece Xiaoyu, being naughty doesn't mean you are a bad kid, right..."

"I heard someone calling me?" Xiaoyu's voice suddenly sounded beside him.

Everyone was startled and turned to look, only to see Xiaoyu sticking her head out of a big box with a naughty smile on her face. No one noticed when and how she came in.

"Xiao Yu!" Uncle Long, Dad, and Tru exclaimed in unison, with surprise and a hint of helplessness in their voices.

"The power of the spell?" Rogge looked at her curiously, then turned to his father and continued the previous topic: "The evil aura you mentioned just now..."

Dad's expression became serious. He slowly raised his hand and pointed to the wall behind Roger: "It's behind the wall."

He turned to his apprentice and said, "Tru, Dad needs your help to knock it open."

"Let me do it." Before Tru could speak, Rogge had already waved his wand. Multiple sharp blades were like laser knives, cutting a perfect rectangular opening in the thick wall.

"Stone sculptures..." Before Xiaoyu finished speaking, Jackie Chan immediately covered her eyes. His intuition told him that these might be people.

As the dust cleared, the scene behind the wall gradually became clear. A dozen stone sculptures appeared before everyone's eyes, some standing, some lying, in different postures.

However, the expression of each statue is chilling, with faces full of fear and distortion, as if they witnessed the devil from hell at the last moment of their lives.

What’s even more creepy is that one can still seem to feel a hint of residual panic in those petrified eyeballs.

Roger put on dragon-skin gloves and carefully examined their bodies. Finally, he shook his head regretfully, spread his hands and said, "The basilisk has been here."

"Basilisk? What is that?" Jackie Chan asked, with a hint of uneasiness in his voice. Xiaoyu took this opportunity to pry open Uncle Long's hand and see the scene inside through his fingers.

"An extremely dangerous magical creature. It hatches from a rooster's egg, and its snake eyes have magical powers similar to Medusa. Any creature that looks directly into its eyes will be instantly turned into stone."

"Even eyes that see it through reflection in water or mirrors will be affected."

"Turn into stone?"

"No, the whole body is stiff. This state can be cured by a potion made from mandrake." The old man said nothing and walked to a petrified wizard. He carefully examined it, gently stroking his fingers across the cold surface of the stone statue. Finally, he sighed deeply, and a trace of sadness flashed in his eyes.

Jackie Chan noticed his father's expression and asked unwillingly, "Dad, can't you save him?"

In his heart, his father's magic is always omnipotent, as if there is no problem he can't solve.

"They have completely turned into stone. You can't ask Dad to turn stones back into living people..."

"Where is the rat talisman?" Xiaoyu said suddenly.

"Once activated by the Rat Charm, it will become a whole new life." Dad shook his head. "Magic is powerful, but it has its limits. Once lost, even the most powerful wizard cannot restore it."

While Dad was explaining to everyone, Roger's attention was attracted by something else. He looked around every corner of the room, wondering how the basilisk got into this confined space.

Suddenly, his sight stopped at the vent in the corner of the wall. There were several obvious scratches there, and snake skin fragments of varying sizes were scattered in front of the baseboard just below.

"I see." Roger muttered to himself.

Because the basilisk at Hogwarts was too huge, he subconsciously thought that the basilisk was originally of this size. For a moment, he even forgot that the basilisk left by Salazar had lived in the underground chamber for more than a thousand years.

If this basilisk was hatched after Voldemort's resurrection, it would only take a year at most.

"Could it be that the figure just now was Voldemort?" Roger thought of this possibility and immediately shook his head and rejected it, "It can't be him."

"With Voldemort's arrogant personality, he would never escape like this. It is more likely that one of his subordinates is carrying out a mission with the basilisk."

"One more thing. To defeat magic with magic..."

Roger coughed lightly, interrupting his father who was talking nonstop, "Dad, can you use a tracking spell? I suspect the one carrying the basilisk is a Death Eater."

"You don't know how to use the tracking spell?" Dad looked at Rogge in surprise. After all, in his eyes, the magic power in the other party's body was very strong.

Roger smiled awkwardly: "There is no such magic in school."

"School?" A trace of surprise flashed in the old man's eyes. "You mean, you are still in school?"

"Yes, Hogwarts is a seven-year magic school, and I still have two years to graduate."

Xiaoyu excitedly grabbed the wand on the table and asked with sparkling eyes: "Dad, can I learn magic?"

"No!" Jackie Chan and his father refused in unison.

"Okay, Dad is going to track down the snake monster." Dad took out the pufferfish and began to chant, "Go away, monsters and ghosts, go away, monsters and ghosts..."

Roger watched his father casting the spell with great concentration, but to his surprise, he could not understand the principle behind it. This Eastern magic was fundamentally different from the Western magic he had learned.

The pufferfish's head was gradually enveloped by a soft fluorescent glow, the brightness of which changed as Dad pointed it in different directions.

"The basilisk is in the east." Dad pointed in the direction of the brightest fluorescence.

"Hey, where is the magic school you mentioned?" Xiaoyu quietly slipped to Roger's side and asked in a low voice unwillingly.

"These are two different magic systems." Rogge did not refuse and patiently explained: "In the magic system I studied, children with magical talents usually awaken before the age of ten. As for you..."

He paused, carefully recalling Xiaoyu's age. At the same time, he waved his wand and cleverly transformed the glass in the furniture store into glasses, distributing them to everyone as protection.

"You've definitely surpassed that." He remembered that when Jackie Chan Adventures began, Xiaoyu was already 11 years old.

Xiaoyu pouted, her face full of disappointment. But she soon thought of something, looked up at Tru, and said anxiously: "But Tru has just become Dad's apprentice. He is older than me, can't he also learn magic?"

"These are two questions." Roger shrugged. "First, Dad's magic is different from mine. Maybe it's just the names that are similar. Second, have you ever thought about why Dad didn't accept Cheng Long as his apprentice?"

These words made Xiaoyu stunned. She seemed to understand something, looked down at her hands, and realized that even with a wand, she couldn't cast spells like her father.

Seeing this, Roger's tone became softer: "In addition, the wands in the room just now were left behind by the dead wizards." He smiled and walked forward quickly.

Hong Kong at this time nominally belonged to the British system, but its culture was completely different from that of the British Isles. There were some taboos about the things of the dead.

Xiaoyu quickly took out the magic wand she had just taken from her pocket, hesitated for a moment, turned around and threw it back into the furniture store.

"This direction..." Jackie Chan looked at the messy block not far away and frowned, "District 13."

"By the way, why is the entrance to District 13 also a telephone booth..." Rogge was about to say something, but was interrupted by a sudden force.

Tru had squeezed into the phone booth at some point, making the already small space even more crowded. The others were pressed against the glass, unable to move.

"I hate telephone booths." Rogge, full of resentment, was taken to the "absolutely safe District 13" by the high-speed moving telephone booth.

With a "bang", the door of the telephone booth opened and everyone was squeezed out by Tru.

Roger turned his head and complained, "My neck."

"Jackie Chan?" Sheriff Black greeted him warmly and soon noticed a strange face. "This is..."

"A student from England." Roger introduced himself with a smile. "A magical creature has sneaked in. It's very dangerous. It's best to let your people wear glasses. I guess agents would never lack sunglasses." He pointed to the increasingly dazzling pufferfish in his father's hand.

"Magical creatures?" Blake frowned, as if he was digesting this sudden information.

The old man held up the pufferfish and said as he walked, "An evil snake monster that can turn people to stone."

Jackie Chan quickly added: "Blake, the situation is really urgent. It's very dangerous, be sure to wear glasses."

"Impossible, District 13 is the safest place..." Sheriff Blake was interrupted by a loud explosion before he could finish his words.

The sound and the pufferfish pointed in the same direction, the safe in Area 13.

Everyone was startled by the sudden explosion. The agents immediately took action, some evacuating the researchers, and some approaching the source of the explosion with guns in hand.

"Hurry up and get your people to evacuate." Rogge kindly reminded him as he passed by him, "Sir, use magic to fight magic."

(End of this chapter)