At Hogwarts, the story begins with deconstructing Avada Kedavra.

Chapter 82 New World Tantric Buddhism

Just as the ghastly green Killing Curse was about to touch the grey-cloaked man, the teleportation Dumbledore had left in the foundation was instantly activated by Voldemort's overflowing killing intent.

The magical patterns hidden in the cracks of the stone bricks burst forth with a blinding white light.

"Whoosh," to the principal's office.

The once spacious office instantly became incredibly crowded.

Everyone looked disheveled when they landed.

Harry Potter crashed heavily onto the carpet, his hands still trembling violently from touching Quirrell's charred skin, emitting a nauseating burnt smell.

He struggled to lift his head, and the left lens of his glasses shattered when they hit the ground, making his vision fragmented.

The most tragic case was that of Quirrell.

Or rather, the monster that possessed Quirrell.

Quirrell slumped by the fire like a lump of mud, the purple scarf that once belonged to Voldemort long gone.

His snake-like face was contorted as he gasped for air in the principal's office.

Finally, there was the man in the gray cloak.

He stood in the very center of the room, the hem of his cloak not even wrinkled from the teleportation.

Dumbledore, who had been sitting upright in an armchair, had now stood up.

He held a magic wand in his hand, the tip pointing towards the ground, and his once kind blue eyes were now filled with coldness.

Nicolas Flamel remained seated in his original position.

The old alchemist put down his teacup, the rim of which struck the tray with a crisp "ding".

The room fell into dead silence.

All the past principals in the portrait are awake.

Delis de Winter even stood up from the frame, covering her mouth in horror.

This was originally Dumbledore's private theater, but now it's packed with uninvited guests.

However, that pale green light did not dissipate.

The most despair-inducing characteristic of the Avada Kedavra curse, which is called "unforgivable," is its absoluteness.

It does not accept interception, it does not accept reduction, and even crossing space cannot shake off its lock.

As everyone tumbled onto the thick carpet in the principal's office, the green light, like a leech, followed closely behind the teleportation trail.

Since the gray-cloaked man was the last one to be spatially anchored and captured, the death curse descended upon the principal's office almost right past the back of his head.

"Get out of the way!" Dumbledore's eyes widened in fury.

Even the greatest white wizard of this century could not undo the killing curse that had already taken shape at this moment.

Harry cowered on the ground in terror, watching helplessly as the green, a symbol of death, was about to engulf the gray figure.

The man in the gray cloak didn't even turn around.

Just as the green light was about to touch him, he slashed his wand through the air with his right hand, "Hiss—!!!"

A heart-wrenching scream, unlike anything in human form, echoed in the quiet center of the principal's office.

A gray, distorted shadow was forcibly pulled out of the air in front of him.

The shadow's outline was blurry, like countless painful faces constantly melting and reforming, emanating a suffocating, rotting sulfurous odor.

That was the "Soul of Embers" forcibly crushed and solidified by alchemy.

"!"

The killing curse struck that twisted soul.

The moment the green light touched the gray shadow, it burrowed into the shadow like a venomous snake finding its prey.

The originally illusory shadow, illuminated by the green light, revealed dense cracks, and then, in less than half a second, completely turned into black dust and dissipated in the principal's office.

The man in the gray cloak swayed slightly, but he remained standing firmly.

The death curse was blocked.

The complete annihilation of a soul was exchanged for this "unstoppable" blow.

Dumbledore's blue eyes gleamed with unprecedented horror and scrutiny.

As the leader of the White Wizards, he knew all too well what had just happened.

That's not defensive magic, that's evil magic.

This wizard used a tormented soul as a "scapegoat" to fill the killing quota of the Killing Curse.

"You—you're toying with souls?" Dumbledore's voice trembled with rage. "That's utterly evil—that's a blasphemy heavier than death!"

"Who exactly are you?!"

Snape was already standing by the door, the tip of his wand glowing faintly.

He stared intently at the spot where the black dust had disappeared, a complex emotion flashing in his eyes—fear mixed with a twisted sense of resonance.

As a former Death Eater, he had witnessed Avada Kedavra countless times, but he had never seen anyone so casually toss out a soul to save him from death, as if throwing away a rag.

The old alchemist sitting in the chair almost collapsed.

His eyes, which had seen through six hundred years of history, were now filled with a murky sorrow.

"This is Substitute Alchemy—that soul, did you create it yourself?" Nico's voice was low, almost dreamlike. "Albus, you're right, this is no longer magic."

Quirrell, slumped by the fireplace, hissed in pain.

That was the first time Voldemort felt his "authority" was challenged.

He had always believed himself to be the one who understood the essence of the soul best—he had shattered his own soul. But the wizard before him carried with him nothing but these twisted fragments of the soul, used as consumables.

"You are—one of my kind—" Voldemort roared, but he felt the instinctive rejection of a predator encountering a higher predator.

The atmosphere inside the principal's office was incredibly heavy.

That's enough.

Dumbledore's deep voice rang out, not loud, but carrying an undeniable air of authority.

With a gentle wave of his Elder Wand, a ripple of gentle yet powerful magic swept across the entire area.

Harry felt his eyelids grow incredibly heavy, and the burning sensation, screams, and ghastly green nightmares vanished in an instant.

Before he could even utter a question, he collapsed limply onto the carpet and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

"Severus," Dumbledore said, not looking at Snape, his gaze still fixed on the grey-cloaked man, "take Harry to the infirmary. Bobby knows how to treat those burns."

Guard the doorway and don't allow anyone to approach.

Snape's eyes churned violently. He gave the gray-cloaked man a deep look, then glanced with disgust at Quirrell, who lay dead by the fire.

He said nothing, but strode forward, stiffly picked up Harry, and his black robe swept across the room like a dark cloud, disappearing into the end of the corridor as the office door closed.

At this moment, Quirrell, by the fire, made his final struggle.

"Heh—heh—" Voldemort's face rippled violently on Quirrell's head. Due to the feedback from the Killing Curse, his broken body was on the verge of collapse.

"Dumbledore—you think you've won?" Voldemort's voice was weak and sinister. "Look around you—this monster—what he brought back is more greedy than I am—he's gnawing at the very foundation of the soul—"

His gaze shifted to the gray-cloaked figure, his snake-like pupils narrowing to slits: "I've memorized your scent—the blasphemer of alchemy—you and I will one day—become one again—"

"Get out of my school, Tom." Dumbledore strode forward, and the silver instruments on his desk emitted a series of sharp beeps.

With a piercing scream, Quirrell's body seemed to have been drained of its last breath, and he collapsed to the ground.

A thick, black smoke rose from the body, twisting into a terrifying human face in mid-air. It let out a shriek of resentment before crashing into the window and disappearing without a trace in the moonlight.

The principal's office fell silent again, with only Quirrell's charred corpse as proof of what had just happened.

Dumbledore slowly turned around.

Fawkes took flight from the perch, letting out a long, mournful cry. It seemed to loathe the aura of the "Ember Spirit" from before, hovering above Dumbledore's head and refusing to approach the center of the office.

"Nico, my old friend, I think the following conversation is perhaps not suitable as a pastime for afternoon tea."

"Dumbledore said in a low voice, but he did not let Nico leave."

He needed a witness, a wise man who also stood at the pinnacle of alchemy, to examine this "outlier" before him.

Dumbledore took half a step forward, slightly raising the tip of his staff, pointing at the pile of black dust at the feet of the gray-cloaked man.

"That soul—" Dumbledore began, his tone filled with anguish, "I once thought that Tom's act of tearing the soul apart was the deepest sin in the world."

But you showed me another possibility: you see the soul as fuel, as a consumable.

"In the ironclad rules of the magical world, the soul is an untouchable realm."

You have crossed a taboo.

Dumbledore's eyes flashed with a sharp light, as if trying to pierce through the gray fabric: "You infiltrated Hogwarts, and even openly displayed this sorcery before us—is your goal the Philosopher's Stone, or the school itself?"

Nicolas Flamel, who was standing nearby, also stood up. The six-hundred-year-old man pointed to the pile of ashes with trembling hands and said in a hoarse voice, "Albus—I can't sense any living presence in that shadow. It's not the soul of a single human being."

It's more like—several pure souls were forcibly pieced together by some force.

"Young man, if you can still call yourself human, you should know that wielding this power will lead to a far more miserable end than Tom's."

Facing Dumbledore and Nicolas Flamel, two monuments in the wizarding world, the gray-cloaked man let out a sneer.

He slowly raised his hand and stroked the magic wand.

"Albus Dumbledore, Nicolas Flamel—you have sat in the decaying old world for too long, and even the scent of your souls has become stale."

His voice was no longer suppressed; it was as if countless voices were whispering at the same time: "I came here not for that stone called 'immortality' but actually a shackle—I only ask one question."

He tilted his head slightly, the shadow beneath his hood facing Dumbledore: "Lucian Ashford, where is he?"

Dumbledore suddenly realized what was going on the moment he heard the surname.

"Ashford—" Dumbledore repeated softly, as the long-buried memories in his mind were unearthed, "that Tantric family that was exiled and cursed in the New World."

You should have disappeared a hundred years ago.

Nicolas Flamel was deathly pale, and he gripped the armchair with trembling hands: "Albus, I remember now—they combined Far Eastern esoteric sorcery with that lifeless arcane art—it was nothing short of a blasphemy against reason."

"

"It seems history hasn't completely buried you." Dumbledore's blue eyes lost their kindness, replaced by a chilling intensity. "Since you've come seeking that forbidden surname, then I cannot let you leave this office."

"leave?"

The gray-cloaked man let out a haughty growl, and his hands suddenly formed a strange and twisted hand seal in front of his chest.

"Mahakara style!"

As he chanted in a low voice, the principal's office, which was originally filled with the scent of oak, changed color.

Countless purple soul lines spread from the cloaked figure's feet, and in the gaps between these lines, wisps of viscous, pitch-black smoke drifted—the most insidious "karmic force" in Tantric Buddhism.

"boom!"

This burst of magic, a combination of arcane power and evil curses, caused the portraits in the headmaster's room to scream in agony.

Dumbledore showed no fear. He swung his Elder Wand downwards, and a blazing platinum light curtain rose out of thin air, blocking the distorted lines from the outside.

"If you think these tricks can shake Hogwarts—"

"Don't rush, great White Wizard."

The cloaked figure snorted coldly, and suddenly opened his left hand. Dark green blood seeped from the tips of his five fingers, which condensed in the air into five complex Sanskrit runes, which were then quickly captured and magnified.

"The five aggregates are all empty!"

This is an extremely terrifying spell.

Arcane structures provide perfect guidance, while Tantric evil methods target the stripping away of the soul.

The five runes transformed into five rays, constantly changing direction in the air, avoiding Dumbledore's frontal defenses, and penetrating Dumbledore's protective charms from various tricky angles.

"Albus!" Nicolas Flamel exclaimed. He tried to raise his wand to help, but found that the surrounding space had become as heavy as swamp, with undead seeping out.

Dumbledore did not back down. He twirled his wand and chanted ancient Latin, instantly liquefying the air in the headmaster's office.

A phoenix made of pure flame roared out of the void and collided with the five rays.

The shockwave from the explosion shattered the desk into pieces.

"Your soul is too hard, Dumbledore."

"But in Ashford's eyes, everything is just consumables," the cloaked figure murmured. The carpet beneath his feet had been scorched by magic, revealing a stone base beneath.

He suddenly spread his arms, and a grotesque rift opened in the space behind him. Countless pale hands emerged from the rift. "Since Lucien isn't here, I'll find him myself."

His hands changed into mudras again, and those pale hands began to chant in unison, a sound that sent chills down one's spine.

An ancient and sinister aura enveloped the entire tower.

Dumbledore knew he couldn't keep testing them.

"The Phoenix's Lament!"

He raised the Elder Wand, and his entire body was enveloped in a blinding red light.

At this moment, the greatest wizard of this century fully demonstrated his dominance.

He tried to crush those evil arcane lines along with the cloaked man.

The battle has only just entered its most brutal phase.