Chapter 173: Immortal Wizard

"First talk about the poison, how long do you guess I have been poisoned?" Deng Buliduo stretched out his hand and examined the withered right little finger.

"A few months?" Harry guessed uncertainly.

"Two years." Deng Buliduo said softly. "When you were in the first year, I couldn't help but look for the traces of the Resurrection Stone again. This time I had a harvest. The bloodline of the Gaunt family finally merged into the Riddle family, and another surname died out."

It seems that his investigation of the Deathly Hallows again aroused Deng Buliduo's greed. Harry felt a bit sorry. Then, he couldn't help but think of Tang Mu Riddle in the diary. In the end, the second brother's family also died out. Perhaps he had become the only inheritor of the Peverells left, so legally speaking, he possessed the complete inheritance right of the three Hallows...

"I found the Resurrection Stone in the old house of the Gaunt family. I was too excited at that time. I thought I could see Ariana immediately, so I turned the stone, but didn't notice that it had already been turned into a Horcrux by Fu Di Mo." Deng Buliduo narrated gently. "I was poisoned almost immediately. It devoured my longing for my family and turned it into a poison that attacked me."

It seems the girl in the Realm of Life and Death is named Ariana, Harry speculated irresponsibly. Is she Dumbledore's sister? Or perhaps his lover who died young?

"Snape didn't have a good way either. He could at most help me suppress the poison for a year." Deng Buliduo said. "But a year's time is too short. I just noticed the secret of the Horcrux and needed time to investigate this matter, so I sought help from Xuanjun."

"Xuanjun is best at magic related to time and fate. He was also helpless about this curse, but he thought of a way that was not a way, and that was the Yama Post." Deng Buliduo said with a bitter smile. "It is a type of divination spell. It will mark a person's destined death. Once the death date is approaching, I will definitely die. Just as they said, if Death intends to come at three o'clock to take you away, then no one can let you live until five o'clock."

"But conversely, if Death intends to come at three o'clock to take you away, then you definitely can't die at one o'clock." Deng Buliduo revealed a cunning smile. "This is precisely another use of the Yama Post. Xuanjun marked my destined death in 1997, so this poison will not have any effect on me before 1997 arrives."

Harry widened his eyes, looking at Deng Buliduo in astonishment. It turned out that the upcoming battle was a battle between two wizards who couldn't die.

"Fu Di Mo thinks he has walked very far on the road of longevity, not knowing that Xuanjun knows more than him." Deng Buliduo's smile gradually became kind. "So, don't worry about me. Before that day in '97 arrives, neither the Killing Curse nor this poison will have any effect on me."

Harry lowered his head a bit unnaturally. He thought of the Sorcerer's Stone again. In fact, there are many

"Let's talk about the wand again. Why do you think Voldemort went to buy a foreign wand?" Dumbledore gently drew his wand again, and Harry noticed that it was all knobby. "Because he is afraid, afraid of this Elder Wand in my hand."

Sure enough, the Elder Wand was indeed in Dumbledore's hand, but Harry still couldn't help saying, "But clearly, the true purpose of the Elder Wand is not to be invincible."

"Setting aside the Hallows, it is still a very powerful wand." Dumbledore placed the wand on the table; he knew Harry was one of the few people in this world who would not be moved by the Elder Wand. "It is enough to deal with Voldemort."

"You are immortal; this is our guarantee of being in an invincible position." Harry said softly, "And Voldemort does not know this, nor does he know that we have already seen through the secret of his immortality. This is where our advantage lies."

"Correct." Dumbledore put away the Elder Wand. "But I cannot guarantee that I will definitely be able to catch Voldemort; we must still keep our focus on the Horcruxes."

"Actually, I have a rough idea." Harry mused, "I remember you saying that the reason Voldemort turned the Resurrection Stone into a Horcrux was because it was his ancestral heirloom?"

"Correct." Dumbledore nodded. "That is why he buried the stone in the Gaunt shack."

"But this means he is also the heir of Slytherin." Harry asked, "Do you know what Voldemort's real name is?"

"Tang Mu Marvolo Riddle; rearrange the letters and it becomes 'I am Lord Voldemort'." Dumbledore said the name very easily. "Looking at you like this, have you remembered something?"

"The diary, that is most likely a Horcrux too!" Harry said firmly. "I actually almost overlooked it."

"Oh..." Dumbledore also fell into memory. "That was perhaps the first Horcrux he made during his student days; one could call it a practice piece. He opened the Chamber of Secrets and killed Moaning Myrtle, then framed Hagrid. It's just a pity that I was only an ordinary Transfiguration professor at the time and couldn't find enough evidence; I could only watch him to prevent him from committing further crimes."

"Now the diary is kept in the Torchwood Society," Harry's tone carried a hint of confusion. "However, the reason I ignored the diary many times is that it didn't show any malice or any conspiracy; on the contrary, it provided us with quite a bit of help..."

"Because what is inside is the soul of the sixteen-year-old Tang Mu Riddle." Dumbledore said. "Voldemort at that age might not have had the ambition to rule the world; he was still stuck on vanity, and his eyes were only on Hogwarts. Perhaps for him at that time, he just wanted to prove his own excellence; he didn't necessarily need to kill too many people."

"I even felt at that time that this child had the possibility of being saved." He added this sentence, and Harry suspected this was Dumbledore's explanation for why he didn't kill Voldemort directly fifty years ago.

"With the diadem also being a Horcrux, we have already mastered at least two Horcruxes." Harry said somewhat optimistically. "Plus the ring that has already been destroyed, if Voldemort really only intended to make seven Horcruxes, we have already quietly gained a great advantage."

"But it is more likely that Voldemort actually intends to make nine Horcruxes." Dumbledore calculated. "On the basis of the original seven, add the diary as a practice piece and you, Harry, as an unintentional creation. Master Xuanjun said that nine is also a number with magic, but Voldemort might not understand Chinese culture; he might be more superstitious about twelve or thirteen..."

"In other words, besides the four relics that can be traced and the three Hallows—even though Voldemort hasn't collected them all," Harry couldn't help but feel a hint of pessimism, "he is very likely to continue creating other Horcruxes."

"Not necessarily." Dumbledore comforted him. "Voldemort attaches extreme importance to a sense of ritual; he will not turn ordinary objects into Horcruxes. This is a major flaw in his character; otherwise, if he had just found any random stone to make into a Horcrux and thrown it into the Thames, we would have had absolutely no way to deal with him."

"But we should still prioritize sealing him." Harry didn't rush to talk about the Stasis Spell and the painting; this required Sirius to finish his experiments and reach a conclusion before a plan could be formulated. "As long as Voldemort is permanently imprisoned, then no matter how many Horcruxes he has made, it will all be in vain."

"Now the plan has become clearer; I will discuss it further with Snape." Dumbledore stood up. "You can go watch the World Cup; I'm afraid this old man getting involved would spoil your fun."

"Please don't say that..." Harry felt a bit embarrassed.

"But I really must go; I think I have found some clues about where he hid the locket." Dumbledore took a deep breath. "I must go find it first."

"Don't be under too much pressure, Harry." Before leaving, Dumbledore patted his head. "I still have three years."

Dumbledore walked out of the manor's gate, and then, after a crisp sound, this strongest person in the Wizarding World left Harry's side.

Although when mentioning Voldemort, Harry would somewhat hope for Dumbledore to be by his side, objectively speaking, children and a headmaster being in the same room is always somewhat uncomfortable.

The next morning, after Harry finished reading the various anecdotes in the Daily Prophet, he saw the "Morning Star" newspaper stacked underneath. Out of curiosity, he picked it up and read it casually.

There was an exclusive interview with Yanayev in the paper, in which he mentioned, "Some Western countries are making decisions for humanity with a kind of self-righteous arrogance, especially since they always try to impose a certain set of values on everyone." Yanayev harshly criticized the Voyager 1 and 2 launched by NASA, believing that they might provoke an alien invasion; after all, the universe is not necessarily full of friendliness, and perhaps it is a dark forest, who knows.

Harry was not particularly interested in science fiction stories about aliens; his worldview had completely taken the shape of magic. So he scanned the text at a glance, and suddenly his pupils shrank; a not-so-good guess surged into his mind.

The article mentioned that Yanayev had instructed the Space Administration to develop a new probe, whose mission was to chase and destroy the Voyager probes launched by NASA, with plans to launch at least twelve by '97. Yanayev revealed in the interview that the preliminary model name for this probe was—Cadmus.

Harry hurried back to the study with the newspaper, comparing it letter by letter, and finally he determined that what the Muggle world called the most cutting-edge spacecraft was actually named after Cadmus Peverell, a legendary figure in the medieval European Wizarding World, the second brother in the Tale of the Three Brothers, and an ancestor of Voldemort.