Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 266 A Reunion After a Thousand Years

After doing all this, Rice walked out of the palace again.

Daphne and the Astorians, standing on the sand dunes opposite the ruins, were stunned. From their perspective, Rice was constantly moving in and out of the ruins, looking extremely busy.

But this busyness had nothing to do with them. Ultimately, it was because the two were not strong enough to withstand even a sneak attack.

"Perhaps we need to focus more on practicing magic," Daphne sighed. "That way we can help Rice as soon as possible."

"Hmm." Astoria nodded, agreeing with her sister's suggestion.

Upon entering the palace ruins, perhaps due to psychological suggestion, Rice felt that something had changed in a certain corner of the passageway—even though the scene before him was exactly the same, Rice just felt that something seemed different.

He hurried deeper into the passage.

Sure enough, the two dog-headed stone statues returned to their original state and stood silently outside the main hall.

After confirming that his guess was correct, Rice returned the way he came, but another unexpected thing happened—he actually heard a human voice!

Ancient palaces...mystical...habits...

The long, narrow passage carried the sound from afar on the wind to where Rice was. Although it was muffled and unclear, he could still clearly recognize that it was his own voice!

Rice's eyes widened suddenly.

He instantly realized that he had underestimated the palace before him. It did not record a period of time, but rather marked a period of time and then sent people who entered the palace to that period of time!

If time is a rushing river, and people are fish drifting along its current, then this palace is the boat on the river, constantly leaving anchor points on the banks. Once the fish jump onto the boat, they are carried upstream to one anchor point after another.

Of course, he might be overthinking it. The palace only recorded the images of him and Daphne entering, but he couldn't gamble; the risks were simply too great.

The biggest taboo in time travel is encountering your past self from previous timelines.

Rice took a deep breath, her mind racing: What should she do? According to the timeline, she would arrive here with Daphne and Astoria within minutes.

He is now especially grateful for his past tendency to teach others. If he hadn't given Daphne and the others a lesson about the Relic Mechanisms along the way, he could have reached this point in less than a minute.

Although he only had a few minutes left, Rice wasn't too panicked. He knew he could find a hiding place.

The reason is very simple: the past self did not see "himself" in the passage, which means that the future self must have successfully hidden himself.

All you need to do is be patient and calmly look for that destined opportunity.

Soon, Rice's gaze fell on a wall.

The moment Rice saw the wall, he suddenly remembered that this was the place where Astoria had discovered the anomaly.

Behind the relief on this wall lies a hidden room.

I had observed it before and found that the seal on the dark room had been opened, but I stopped paying attention to it after that.

But the seal on this dark room has never been broken.

A sudden realization dawned on Rice. He placed his hand on the relief, carefully sensing the magical circulation within it.

Soon, his magic broke through the seal inside the relief, and the sun ornament held in the statue's hands turned into a hole just big enough for one person to squeeze through.

Without hesitation, Rice used a spell to fill the cave with fresh air before crawling inside, and the entrance immediately closed.

The room was pitch black, without a single ray of light. With the aid of the glow spell, Rice was able to make out the layout of the cave: in a dark room not much larger than a wardrobe, there were hundreds of papyrus scrolls piled up.

"Oh?" Rice suddenly became interested and carefully picked up a scroll to read it.

He had initially thought it contained ancient Egyptian incantations, but judging from the illustrations inside the scroll, it was likely a record of ancient Egyptians' worship of the sun god, and perhaps even some so-called "oracle."

Rice wasn't particularly interested in these mystical things, but since he was stuck in the dark room with nothing to do, he simply started studying the contents of the straw scroll—the same mentality as someone who goes into the bathroom without a phone and starts studying shampoo formulas.

Just as Rice was studying the papyrus scrolls in the darkroom under the dim fluorescent light, a conversation came from outside.

"Rice—"

"That should be a dark room or a hidden passageway, and the mechanisms above have been broken."

As the three voices faded into the distance, Rice, inside the dark room, knew he could leave.

What he had just experienced gave Rice a bold idea.

If you can see yourself when you entered the ruins after adjusting the inner compass, what would happen if you adjusted the outer compass to set the palace's time to when Hufflepuff entered?

He might very well encounter Hufflepuff, who entered this place a thousand years ago!

Rice didn't know what would happen next, but just seeing his old friend was enough to motivate him.

After confirming that he was far enough away, Rice left the dark room and followed the passage out of the ruins. Looking at the sun, which had remained almost unchanged, Rice's heart raced.

He instructed Daphne and Astoria to stay where they were, then walked into the central passage and came to the compass.

This time, he moved the outer compass one notch forward.

In an instant, an extremely intense wave of dizziness surged into his mind, causing Rice's vision to go black. At the same time, he felt as if he had been put into a bag, and then someone outside had vacuum-sealed the bag.

The feeling lasted for a few seconds before disappearing completely, but the strong side effects still made Rice vomit.

After his physical discomfort subsided, Rice slowly walked out of the palace. Standing in front of the exit of the passage, his heart was pounding so hard that he could almost hear it and feel the blood rushing to his eardrums.

After exiting the passage, Rice immediately looked at the sand dunes opposite—thankfully, Daphne and Astoria were still standing there.

Without further hesitation, he rushed into the rightmost passage at top speed, and then charged all the way into the deepest part of the main hall.

After waiting patiently in the hall for a while, several clear, crisp sounds rang out from outside the door. Then the hall door opened, and an elderly witch who looked rather travel-worn walked into the hall.

Rice had been waiting for her here for a long time—nearly a thousand years had passed since they last met.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

This is the second update. The next update will (I'll try) at midnight tonight.

(づ￣3￣)づ╭～

(End of this chapter)