Hogwarts Raven

Chapter 420, Page 419: The Most Important Thing for Wizards

Perhaps it's not just love that can unleash boundless power.

The old man himself was a genius that people couldn't help but admire. Many of his theories and research findings pointed directly to the core essence that Ian also found very rewarding.

"Indeed, gourmets are all hidden geniuses—well, that's just me praising myself." Just when Ian thought the core of these notes was time magic, he discovered something that made his eyes freeze in the middle and back of a particularly thick notebook wrapped in black leather.

The title of that section, written in a dark red ink, read—"Spiritual Origins and the Hypothesis of Reconstructing Life Imprints." Yes, this wasn't research on time. The content revealed by that title clearly transcended the realm of time magic, touching upon taboos in the realm of life and death!
"No, he's researched all of this stuff?"

Ian's expression turned serious.

He slowed his reading pace, carefully perusing the contents. In these chapters, Musa explored in detail how to locate and "salvage" the essential life information of the deceased from the vast river of time or the spiritual dimension, starting from residual strong emotional imprints, blood ties, or specific soul beacons.

Musa proposed several methods that could theoretically "resurrect" the dead.

One method involves searching for the extremely rare "Stone of the Other Shore," a legendary object believed to be able to hold fragments of the soul. Combined with a powerful time anchor, this allows the dissipated soul to be reassembled and drawn back to the present world.

This involves the ethereal and mythical aspects of mythology. However, since the Three Sacred Relics of Death can exist, no one knows whether things mentioned in other stories are also true.

The world of wizards.

Everything is possible.

That's why Ian won't make judgments blindly.

“This thing seems to have a lot to do with the Mystic Realm. I wonder if Musa has found any clues about it?” Ian continued to flip through his notes.

He saw that Musa had indeed gone to search for it, but after meeting some other people who were also searching for this thing, he learned some things and chose to give up.

The note beside it, written in trembling handwriting, reads: “The price: those who return will not be human, but twisted beings carrying the turbulent currents of time and the aura of death.”

This is clearly just hearsay and an unverifiable guess. However, as someone who loves his wife and children dearly, Musa would certainly not take such a gamble.

after all.

He firmly believed that he could find other forms of despair, and the unique rationality of wizards and alchemists reminded him, preventing him from falling into the quagmire of madness.

“Moussa lost that path, but quickly found another one.” Ian continued flipping through the notes. Another method involved using the flesh and soul of a close relative as a sacrifice and vessel to perform an ancient life-exchange ritual. There were also annotations beside it, the handwriting almost piercing the paper, conveying immense pain.

“Rejected! How is this any different from murder? That is not the life my wife and children would want. If they were resurrected, they would suffer greater pain than if I had lost them.”

Ian turned the pages, his heart heavy. Musa had clearly researched the possibility of resurrecting the dead in despair. His research was undeniably thorough, even proposing some audacious ideas that surprised Ian. However, behind each method lay his sober and painful annotations—the cost was enormous, the process cruel, the outcome unpredictable, and it might even desecrate the will of the deceased.

Don't even say it.

Musa really thought things through very thoroughly.

After all, he was a master of alchemy.

Unlike most stubborn and reckless dark wizards, he not only had to consider the resurrection of his wife and children, but also how they would face their future life after their resurrection.

Because it is so comprehensive, Musa could only exclude this type of option, which is also one of the most available choices—a very simple principle to understand.

after all.

Through the ages.

Most of the wizards who seek resurrection from the dead are dark wizards who are afraid of death and unwilling to leave the human world. The methods they research and devise are naturally morally unacceptable.

As for white wizards, very few of them research such things. Most white wizards have a very indifferent attitude towards death. Of course, there are also white wizards like Musa who lost their loved ones and want to resurrect them, but these white wizards are ultimately a minority, and even fewer of them can achieve any results.

A wizard who can't even protect his family isn't that powerful—the number of powerful wizards like Albus Dumbledore, who are destined to lose their families and live a lonely life, can actually be counted on one hand throughout history. Most wizards lose their families because they didn't truly protect them.

"It's unbelievable that while he was exploring the mysteries of the time dimension, he still had the energy to search through mountains and rivers for the path to resurrection. His obsession must have transcended decades of physical exhaustion." The more Ian read through the notes, the more he could feel Musa's profound love for his wife and children.

This is indeed an obsession.

The notebook also contained something even more mystical, involving the search for the legendary "twig of the World Tree" or the "water of the Well of Eternity," whose creative power could be used to reshape the body and then import a well-preserved life imprint. However, this was even more mysterious, clearly something Musa could not possibly find through his arduous search.

He spent many, many years searching for what was mentioned in this method.

In the end nothing was found.

Finally, on the last page of these studies on resurrection, Musa wrote in hasty and weary handwriting: "All paths seem to lead to a deeper abyss. Salvation may have been a false proposition from the beginning. Forcibly reversing life and death may not bring reunion, but another form of tragedy, a more eternal one."

“I…can’t do that. I can’t let them suffer a fate worse than death just to satisfy my own longing. Perhaps…the only thing I can do, and the only thing I should do, is…to find an answer. So that they, and myself, can find peace.”

Upon seeing this, Ian gently closed his notebook and let out a long sigh of relief.

He understood. Musa wasn't incapable of attempting dangerous resurrection rituals; given the depth of knowledge he displayed in his notes and his understanding of time and the soul, he might indeed have been able to make a significant impact. But he ultimately chose to forgo it. Because his love for his wife and children was so pure that it couldn't tolerate the slightest desecration.

This makes it impossible for him to accept any way that might taint their existence or cause them pain in exchange for an uncertain "reunion".

He turned all his energy toward a seemingly "simple" but actually equally difficult direction—to find the truth, or to find a way to save his wife and children in the past.

This is not just about finding answers, but also about showing respect – respect for the lives lost, and respect for the beautiful love and family bond itself.

Ian carefully put the notebook away and looked out the window. The African night sky was filled with exceptionally bright and dazzling stars.

“A respectable scholar, a loving husband and father,” Ian murmured to himself. “Rest assured, Mr. Musa. I will find your answer. Not only for the commission, but also for your reverence and love for life that you have maintained even in despair.”

He decides.

I will finish dealing with the affairs in Africa as soon as possible. Then I will set off for that frozen north to explore the underground labyrinth that swallowed happiness and to fulfill this heavy and solemn promise.

Ian stood by the hotel window, gazing out. The African night was as dark as ink, but unlike the neon-lit darkness of the city, the nights on this land were brimming with wild vitality. In the distance, the vast primeval forests presented a serene, inky blue outline under the moonlight.

Like a crouching behemoth.

The calls of nocturnal animals, the buzzing of insects, and the rustling of plant leaves in the wind intertwine to create an ancient and mysterious symphony.

The air was filled with the scent of damp earth and the intense sweet fragrance of some tropical flowers, all of which formed a stark contrast to the desolation and cold of the Siberian ice field he was about to visit.

Ian's thoughts, however, were not entirely immersed in the vibrant night scene projected from who-knows-where by magic, but rather drifted involuntarily to the most daring and central part recorded in Musa's notes—the theory of "deceiving time".

“Deceive time…” Ian murmured the tempting and dangerous phrase to himself.

In the understanding of ordinary wizards, the Time-Turner is already the limit of touching the rules of time. It allows users to go back to the past within a limited time, but they must strictly abide by the unspoken rule of "not changing major events", otherwise it will cause unpredictable paradoxes, or even lead to the demise of the time traveler himself.

This is more like a cautious "wading" along the edge of the river of time than a true "deception" or "mastery," while Musa's theory clearly goes much further.

Even more...unconventional.

“Yes, that can be done.” Ian recalled some key passages from the notes and corroborated them with some of the settings and legends about time that he knew.

In the world of Harry Potter.

Time itself seems to possess a certain "elasticity" and "self-repairing" ability.

If you use a time-twister to go back in time, the act of "observing" you do may itself become part of history, such as Hermione and Harry saving Buckbeak and Sirius.

This plot has already hinted that time is not a one-way, unshakeable straight line, but may be a more complex closed loop or network structure that allows for limited interaction.

Musa's theory attempts to amplify this "interaction" and find a way to allow individuals to be "exempted" from the linear passage of time to some extent. One of his core ideas, which draws on some ancient alchemical concepts, is called "sensory desensitization and cognitive anchoring."

In simple terms, he believes that time affects humans largely through our own physiological senses and cognitive systems. We feel old because cells divide and die under a macroscopic rule of time; we remember the past because memories leave physical or magical traces in the brain.

If we can temporarily "deceive" or "block" the body and soul from their direct perception of the passage of time, while using a powerful and stable "cognitive anchor," such as an extremely strong emotional obsession or a complex, self-referential magical contract, we can achieve our goals.

If we use these to define our own "time coordinates," then theoretically, an individual may be able to escape the influence of the external macroscopic time flow within a local scope.

The notes contain a very vivid analogy: time is like a never-ending river, and most living beings are like fish in the river, only able to flow downstream. The time converter is like a small speedboat going against the current, but with limited fuel and unable to stray too far from the main course.

What Musa wanted to do was to make the fish jump out of the water temporarily, suspend it in the air, and tie it to a fixed point on the riverbank with a sturdy cable, so that it could have a brief opportunity to observe the river and even try to move in different directions without worrying about being swept away by the river.

"Isn't this just trying to transcend the Three Realms and be outside the Five Elements?" When Ian studied magic, he would also bring along some theories and sayings from his hometown.

This provided him with considerable assistance in his study of magic.

After all, everything in the universe.

Same way.

Musa's idea was clearly very similar to a certain concept in the East, and it could be described as audacious to the point of madness, after all, it was something that transcended the Three Realms and was not subject to the Five Elements.

The last being capable of this was an invincible monkey. Besides this idea, Musa had other, even more outlandish, ideas involving the concepts of "time replicas" or "branching possibilities." He speculated that each choice could create a ephemeral, parallel branch of time.

The "past" that the time converter returns to may not be the true and only history, but rather the most likely "copy" projected based on the user's cognition and choices.

One of his research goals is to figure out how to stably enter a specific "copy" and conduct more extensive exploration within it without triggering a drastic collapse of the main timeline.

He even imagined...

If we can find the "possible branch" that occurred after my wife and children entered that underground project, we might be able to glimpse what happened to them without affecting the main timeline.

Thus, changes are made.

In Ian's view, these ideas were undoubtedly extremely crazy and risky. Stripping away the sense of time? A slight misstep could cause the caster to become completely lost in the turbulent currents of time, becoming an eternal wandering spirit. Stabilizing a time replica? This involves interfering with the fundamental structure of reality.

The consequences were unpredictable, even to legendary wizards.

"If you're not careful, you can get trapped in the so-called fate of being abandoned, or you may end up in the wrong time and space and world of fate that I once experienced."

Ian's knowledge and experience are far richer than Musa's.

however.

Even so, Ian had to admit that Musa's theories, though crude and full of assumptions, demonstrated breadth of thought and courage to break free from traditional constraints.

It's truly amazing.

Ian himself had considered the deeper mysteries of time.

Like Ian, Dumbledore, with their level of understanding and wisdom, had long since transcended the appearance of the Time-Turner and touched upon some of the essence of the rules of time.

They realized early on that time is not absolute; it can be "deceived," or more accurately, "exploited" and "negotiated." Dumbledore cleverly used the lag in prophecy and information to maneuver on the chessboard of time. Ian's own understanding of higher-dimensional magic also made him realize that, from a higher perspective, the boundaries between past, present, and future may not be as clear as mortals perceive.

However, their research, in terms of both depth and boldness, seems to fall short of Musa's "obsession," which also indirectly confirms the wizarding laws that Ian once summarized.

"The most important thing for a wizard is a boundless and unconventional imagination."

(End of this chapter)