Chapter 274

"Snape..." Voldemort snorted coldly. "Of course he knows; that formula was something I taught him myself."

"As for the Resurrection Potion," Voldemort said smugly, "it is not very difficult. As long as you have read *The Mysteries of Life and Death*, you should have some idea. I can demonstrate it for you right now."

"Quirrell, go grab that boy and use his blood to brew the potion."

*The Mysteries of Life and Death*.

Tom noted the name of the book.

Seeing Quirrell preparing to grab Harry, he stepped forward. "Respected Master, Professor Quirrell seems to be harmed by the protective magic on Harry. Let me do it instead."

Voldemort did not yet know why Quirrell was injured upon touching Harry, but Tom did not seem to be affected by this, so the request was reasonable. "Very well."

Tom came to Harry's side, and under the guise of helping him up, he drew the wand from Harry's waist and suddenly turned to point it.

"Bang!"

The cauldron brewing the Resurrection Potion exploded instantly, and the boiling potion splashed onto Quirrell, causing the latter to let out a scream.

Tom seized the opportunity to grab the Sorcerer's Stone from the table, hugged Harry, and prepared to Apparate.

But Voldemort suddenly let out an extremely angry roar, and Tom felt as if his head had been heavily struck by someone; the spell on the tip of his tongue could not be cast.

Quirrell took the chance to raise his wand. "Petrificus Totalus!"

Tom blocked the spell, then, "Apparate!"

However, Quirrell's next attack arrived almost simultaneously. "Avada Kedavra!"

"Bang!"

The spell hit Tom's body, but at the same time, the two of them turned into a vortex and disappeared from the spot.

In the Forbidden Forest, Tom and Harry suddenly appeared, but they fell to the ground the moment they materialized.

Harry was still unconscious but uninjured, yet a large hole had appeared in Tom's abdomen.

Moreover, one of his arms looked as if it had been torn off by a great force, leaving only a half-broken stump, from which a translucent forearm was revealed, replacing the original flesh and blood.

Just like when he was injured before, Tom did not feel any particular pain.

But disturbed by Quirrell's spell, the Apparition had gone wrong; he had suffered from splinching, and his wand was nowhere to be found.

He sat up and observed the surrounding environment; it was indeed the Forbidden Forest, and fortunately, he hadn't strayed too far.

Then he looked at his broken upper arm and the large hole in his abdomen, and a strange feeling flashed through his heart and vanished.

The wounds on his body were bleeding slowly, and he was indeed very weak, but Tom felt that this was unlikely to lead to death.

"After all, I have already died once; how could I be killed again?"

Even the Killing Curse could do nothing to him.

He took the diary out from his chest. "Perhaps this thing is my true self."

Just as he was pondering, a voice suddenly came from afar. "Find him! He is right around here!"

Voldemort!

Tom was startled; they had actually tracked him down?

He had to hide.

But his wand was lost, and in his current condition, he couldn't carry Harry.

What to do?

He hurriedly rummaged through his pockets; apart from Goblin gold coins, there was only a bottle of Wolfsbane Potion given by Qiu Zhang earlier, but the range of the Goblin gold coins was too short, there was definitely no signal here, and the Wolfsbane Potion seemed useless at this moment.

Wait, Wolfsbane Potion?

The name sounded familiar.

Tom suddenly recalled the memory of Lukas he had seen in the diary.

When Lukas was searching for the ruins of Hogwarts in the future, he had also taken the Wolfsbane Potion; it was said that the Wolfsbane Potion was left behind by the Prophet.

The Prophet...

That prophecy also seemed to say, "The Prophet left the key to him in the Chamber of Secrets."

Tom thought for a moment, then suddenly reached out and rummaged through Harry's pocket, finding a gold coin.

That gold coin, which was larger than a normal Galleon, had a crow engraved on it.

Crow gold coin!

This was a reward from Professor Murphy!

Harry and the others had obtained this gold coin from Murphy's trap, and they had never known what it was for, so they had kept it until this moment, when it was taken by Tom.

"Could this be the key to him?"

"Master, look here, bloodstains!" Quirrell's voice rang out not far away. "They are right here!"

There was no time to hesitate; he had to try.

Tom grabbed Harry with one hand and squeezed the gold coin with the other.

He did not know what the gold coin did, so he could only try to inject magic power into it.

Suddenly, a huge suction force came from the gold coin.

Immediately after, the two of them suddenly disappeared from the spot.

Portkey! This was actually a Portkey!

After a dizzying spin, Harry and Tom suddenly appeared in a private room at the Three Broomsticks.

And at this moment, Murphy was alone in the room, savoring honey beer.

Tom grabbed him. "Teacher! It's you, it really is you."

"What is me?"

"You are... the Prophet..."

After saying this, Tom lost consciousness.

Murphy drained the beer in his glass, came to Tom's side, turned him over, and pried open his other tightly clenched hand.

A red stone was lying there quietly.

The Sorcerer's Stone.

After so much effort, he had finally obtained it.

Murphy breathed a sigh of relief.

The Sorcerer's Stone could not only be used to brew the Immortality Potion, but it could also turn stone into gold, turning stone into elemental gold... this even involved atomic-level changes, and Murphy was very curious about how it achieved this.

In Muggle society, humans could only change matter at the atomic level through fusion and fission reactions.

If the Sorcerer's Stone could really turn stone into gold, then where did the energy in those material conversion processes go? Was it possible to find it and utilize it?

Could it be used for the conversion of other elements?

If it could, this thing might be able to create the heavy fusion engine from *The Wandering Earth*.

Murphy picked up the Sorcerer's Stone and examined it in his palm; suddenly, he felt that something was not quite right.

This thing should logically be an extremely powerful magical artifact; why couldn't he feel a shred of magic power?

He thought for a moment and closed his eyes; in his magical vision, the Sorcerer's Stone was just like an ordinary stone, not emitting any stronger magical fluctuations than things like tables and chairs.

He frowned and injected a trace of magic power into the stone; gradually, the color of the red Sorcerer's Stone faded a little, seemingly turning into some kind of orange-yellow.

Magic color-changing effect...

This damn thing was a crystal!

An ordinary red crystal!

This was not the Sorcerer's Stone!

Then, where was the real Sorcerer's Stone?

Murphy had been observing Tom through the Soul Seed, and he was certain that he hadn't swapped it, and Harry hadn't swapped it, and Voldemort hadn't either, otherwise he wouldn't have needed to chase Tom.

In the next instant, Murphy understood.

Dumbledore.

This old guy had never put the real Sorcerer's Stone into the Mirror of Erised from the beginning!

Behind the trapdoor, it was just a test to challenge Harry.

The most important exam question was whether Harry could obtain the Sorcerer's Stone from the Mirror of Erised without any selfishness.

Since this was just a test, and there was no need to use the Sorcerer's Stone to brew potions or anything, why did he have to put the real Sorcerer's Stone in the mirror?

Wasn't it enough to just let Harry believe that what was in the mirror was the real Sorcerer's Stone?

In this way, whether it was Voldemort, Murphy, or anyone else who wanted to snatch the Sorcerer's Stone, they would only fall into this fake trap and obtain a fake Sorcerer's Stone.

And the real Sorcerer's Stone might have been on Dumbledore the whole time.

After all, for a thing the size of a fist, it wasn't a hassle to carry it around.

That was why he left the school without any scruples, and why he ignored Quirrell's little actions... perhaps even without his own interference, he would have done the same in the original story, otherwise his contradictory behavior could not be explained.

Ha, haha...

An uncontrollable anger surged in Murphy's heart, and he clenched his right hand, actually crushing the "Sorcerer's Stone" into fragments.

Very well, Headmaster, so that's how you want to play?

With a thought, his consciousness connected to a crow thousands of miles away.

"Rasim, how is the monitoring of Dumbledore's owl going? Have you found the location of Nicolas Flamel?"

(End of chapter)