Chapter 244

Snape has been in a very bad mood recently.

Ever since the duel incident, he has almost been avoiding Murphy.

He is even a bit unwilling to appear in crowded places like the Great Hall; when being watched by people, he seems to be able to feel a sense of being pointed at, as if they are laughing at him behind his back.

He knows this is just an illusion.

Now he is already a professor, not some student who made a fool of himself; no one dares to laugh at him.

But even so, when comforted by Flitwick saying "don't take it to heart," he almost bristled; he doesn't need comfort! Even less does he need sympathy! That green kid just played a trick; he didn't lose!

"Forget it, Tom……" Hermione grabbed Tom, who was preparing to block Snape's path, "He is even more terrifying than before; I simply doubt whether you can come back alive."

"Don't worry," Tom smiled, "He can't kill me again."

Having experienced the darkness of the past few days, he really doesn't fear a professor much.

Under the suspicious gazes of his friends, Tom blocked Snape in the corridor leading to the underground classroom.

"Professor, can I take a little of your time?"

Snape, who walked like the wind and looked like a giant bat flying close to the ground, stopped, "Go away, Lucas. Otherwise, Gryffindor will lose fifty points!"

"I am Slytherin, Professor." Tom smiled.

"Oh, is that so? That's truly surprising."

"I have a question I need to ask you."

"Can't the omniscient Murphy Darkholm answer your question?"

"Professor Murphy admitted himself that he doesn't understand, and you might know."

"Ha, that's truly rare."

"Professor, what I want to know is, can you make the Elixir of Life?"

"What?" Snape's eyes instantly became sharp.

"I still remember you saying that you can teach us to resist death…… and what you meant at the time should not just be referring to potions like Dittany and hemostatic medicine."

"Why do you ask this?"

"I heard that it is one of the greatest potions." Tom said, "And I also really want to know if potions really possess omnipotent magic, even capable of resisting death."

"Since you have heard of the Elixir of Life, you should know that it requires the Magic Stone." Snape took a step forward, slightly lifting his head, looking down at him, "I'll ask you again, why ask this? Who told you to ask?"

Tom didn't know that Snape was already suspecting at this moment whether he was sent by Quirrell to test him; he continued: "It is said that the Elixir of Life can be used to reshape the body; do you have anyone you want to resurrect?"

This sentence was undoubtedly very offensive, but Tom didn't care much; he was now basically certain that Snape indeed had the formula for the Elixir of Life, otherwise he could have directly denied it just now, or flicked his sleeves and left.

Tom wanted to test whether Snape really intended to seize the Magic Stone as Harry thought.

If so, then he might feel panicked because his secret was pointed out.

But what Tom didn't expect was that Snape was furious, "It was Murphy who told you to come, wasn't it? Wasn't it!"

This reaction was somewhat unexpected for Tom.

In Tom's conjecture, if Snape were innocent, he might only be angered by his offense, but it could never be as furious as if he had suffered a great humiliation like this.

Snape left, without even saying threats like deducting points; his rage seemed to dissipate suddenly, turning into a terrible silence that Tom couldn't understand, and finally, he turned and left without saying a word.

"Tom…… are you okay?" Harry and the others waited until Snape was far away before daring to come up; they patted Tom, "Hey, are you okay?"

"Professor Snape…… doesn't seem to be the person we are looking for." Tom said.

"What? What did you say to him just now? I saw he was almost unable to control himself from pulling out his wand to duel with you."

Tom was also a bit puzzled, "He seems too sensitive to that sentence……"

But now it is at least confirmed that Snape has the formula for the Elixir of Life.

The rest is the question of how to get the formula from Snape.

……

The study tasks for the second half of the semester are much heavier than the first half, and Harry also has Quidditch matches to prepare for, so he is tired to death every day.

Tom is also very busy; his extracurricular time recently is almost soaked in the library, even more diligent than Hermione.

He is stepping up his learning of various spells; what the notebook said last time stimulated him; of course, using the spells obtained from the notebook cannot defeat the opponent, so he is learning solely with his own brain.

To get rid of the notebook's control, he must possess some ability to protect himself—perhaps the hope is slim, but he doesn't want to sit and wait for death.

Tom never opened that notebook again, so Murphy now has no way to directly guide his actions through the notebook, but Tom's relationship with him has increased a lot recently.

This is because Tom often comes to him for some spell teaching guidance, and Murphy happens to have a project that needs Tom's assistance.

The research he is doing recently is: "Magic Vision Virus".

This was inspired by the training of the "anti-cancer virus".

Now his cancer research institute already has thousands of employees, half of whom are responsible for getting all kinds of strange cancerous tissue samples from all over the world, while the other half are responsible for sample marking and re-auditing the marks.

Because the number of people is even larger than previously imagined, the training volume of the anti-cancer bacterial clusters is much larger than previously expected, but his luck is not very good; among the more than one hundred trained bacterial clusters, more than eighty have already been eliminated by the strict judgment criteria—all individuals in their bacterial clusters were destroyed by the Soul Seed because they had killed normal cells three times or failed to kill cancer cells three times.

To let the remaining twenty bacterial clusters hold on, he had to slow down the training speed and leave enough time for them to reproduce and mutate.

During the training, he suddenly realized that since bacterial clusters can be trained into cancer cell killers, they can of course also be trained into marker microorganisms with affinity for a certain magic attribute.

For example, repeatedly stimulating the bacterial clusters with magic of the "control" attribute; those that react are kept, and those that don't react die; after hundreds of generations of mutation optimization and iteration, then select bacteria or viruses that can produce specific reactions—as long as the sample size is large enough, he can always find such bacteria that meet the requirements.

In this way, a bacterium or virus that can produce a specific reaction to the "control" attribute magic is produced.

Among these viruses or bacteria, one can certainly find a substance that can produce a specific reaction to the "control" attribute magic—for example, just let them release certain ions.

And they must also exist with one or several genes that can express the synthesis of this substance.

Next, as long as these genes are cut and transferred to rod or cone cells, using their original light conversion mechanism, magic stimulation can be used instead of light stimulation, thereby producing magic vision.

Although the process is very complicated, there is no absolute technical bottleneck, and, once this technology succeeds, not only wizards, but even Muggles, and even animals can see magic.

And Tom is mainly responsible for outputting magic to train the bacterial clusters in this project.

After the experimental class was finished, Harry and the others used the Goblin Gold Coins to call Tom to the Gryffindor table, and several young wizards gathered together again.

"After the match today……"

"Match?" Tom has been with Murphy after class recently, obsessed with learning and research, and neither of them has paid attention to sports.

"Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, we won," Harry said, "Anyway, after the match, I saw Snape and Quirrell; Snape was threatening Quirrell; he seems to want to know how to pass Quirrell's trap."

"You still think he has a problem?"

Harry nodded, "And this time, I thought of a way to prove this."

"How to do it?" Hermione also asked.

"Go and ask Quirrell." Harry said, "As long as Quirrell is willing to tell the truth, we will have evidence."

"But Quirrell is a professor; he won't pay attention to us." Ron said.

"Unless, turn into the appearance of a certain professor to ask." Tom said, "Professor Murphy mentioned Polyjuice Potion, which can turn people into another person's appearance."

Tom actually doesn't quite believe that Snape wants to steal the Magic Stone, but if this can really be confirmed, it wouldn't be a bad thing for him.

In a situation where there is no other choice, he might be able to help Snape succeed, and then share the results; anyway, he only needs the Elixir of Life refined by the Magic Stone, not the Magic Stone itself.

"However, it is said that the potion takes more than two months to brew."

"It won't take that long." Hermione thought of something, "Remember Qiu Zhang and the others are researching Transfiguration? Professor Murphy let them make a lot of Polyjuice Potion; maybe I can borrow a bottle."

(End of chapter)