Chapter 144 Practical Lessons (2) - Nine-squares Jigsaw Puzzle

Penelope's face flushed as Percy grinned and smirked.

The Gryffindors were buzzing with excitement, a few male wizards from Ravenclaw looked at Percy with unkind eyes, as if he had taken a prized treasure from them, and a few girls whispered on the other side.

"Wood, what's this?" A Gryffindor student pointed at the small skeleton wobbling and struggling to get up from the ground; it certainly is not intimidating at all.

"A 'surprise' as Professor Hap calls it." Wood said, a little depressed that, he had been scared.

The freckled male wizard next to him added, "They don't have any offensive power, except the way they appear is a bit scary ..."

As he spoke, a Ravenclaw girl looked down and saw a ghastly white bony hand fondling her shoe, "Aaaaaah!" She let out an exaggerated scream as Wood stepped forward and crushed the bone with one foot, he shrugged and said to the rest, "Look, it's this sort of thing."

He then looked at the girl, "You're standing a little to the side, and that area doesn't seem to have been cleared."

The girl thanked him with a red face.

"Besides these funny little skeletons, did anyone else find something?" Someone asked.

"The tombstone," Percy said, playing it cool, "has a magic rune on it, which I think is an important clue."

Someone suggested, "Why don't we start by deciphering the magic rune here?"

"Good idea!"

A dozen young wizards spread out, each responsible for two or three tombstones, and they took out the parchment from their book bags and transcribed the magic rune on them.

During that period, the little skeletons buried in the dirt sensed the approach of the strangers and poked their hands out of the ground to try to intimidate them. But this time the students were already prepared and easily avoided their attacks.

A few bold ones simply let the little skeletons crawl out and let them scratch their thighs with their slender bones, while freely transcribing the magic rune on the tombstones.

During this process, every minute or two, a fiery red spark would rise in the distance.

Percy, Penelope, and the rest finished their tasks early, and they looked over each other's deciphered runes and compared them to the patterns on the tombstones.

"Look here--"

Penelope pointed to the numbers on the two black stone tombstones one after the other nearby, "These two are adjacent numbers, the first one says 'Visitors found that the safe room to be tightly protected by four enchanted barriers.' And this one reads, 'In the direction directly to the south, there exist numerous shadowy deceased.'"

She said enthusiastically, "The shadowy deceased would correspond to the cluster of tombstones we're in, and all we have to do is head north to find the safe room!"

"Penelope, you're always so smart." Percy complimented.

Penelope grunted, "It looks like Professor Hap has taken a whole story apart and put it on each tombstone, all we have to do is put it together."

"Hey, guys! Don't forget to copy the tombstone numbers, they're going to be of great use." Percy turned around and shouted.

Finally, a green spark appeared in the distance, halfway up in the air.

"We're going back the way we came, have you all copied it?" After receiving an affirmative response, they hurriedly headed back.

This time, it took them almost two minutes to return to their original location.

The male wizard who stayed behind looked a little pale, "You guys finally came back, I kept feeling someone blowing at my neck from behind ..."

"Tough job, Deles."

After another half minute, the Slytherin and Hufflepuff students returned, and the Slytherin grade head said condescendingly, "We found the safe room, and if it weren't for time constraints, we would have cracked the enchantment on it ..."

"We made an important discovery, too," Percy argued.

"But those are irrelevant, aren't they?"

Percy turned red and tried to say something, but Penelope pulled him back in a hurry, and Percy said angrily, "Look what he said!"

Wood pulled over a Hufflepuff student, "Grover, what's going on?"

Grover said, "It took us almost three minutes to find the safe room, but it is blocked by the magic at the door."

"What kind of magic?"

" Puzzle!" Grover said, "The Slytherin students were all wide-eyed and had absolutely no idea how to play."

So the group moved to the safe room -

It is a somewhat misshapen square house, the surface is painted dark brown, from a distance looks like a large stone, it is easy to be ignored.

The Gryffindor and the Ravenclaw wizards came forward, and on each of the four walls of the house, there were four nine-sheet grids, with the last spot being empty.

"If you tap on it with your wands, like this, the grid will move." Grover introduced to the others, "There is a magic rune in each grid, and it looks like we are told to form the proper order to connect it into a sentence."

"Wouldn't that be easy, it's just eight runes in total," Percy asked.

"No, Percy, see for yourself." The Hufflepuff student said.

Percy carefully discerned, and he suddenly found that he did not recognize any of them ...

For a moment, Percy somewhat dazed, who am I? Where am I? And I do not know the runes?

If you don't recognize one, it's okay, but you can't recognize all eight?

Wood next to him muttered: "It's just a guess, isn't it? Look at this word, I bet it has something to do with the meaning of 'light'."

Several of the top students in the room instantly snapped back, "That's right, the difficulty of this would have been beyond our ability, the professor is hoping we can identify and speculate on the meaning of the word."

Understanding the true intent of the puzzle, the students looked at each other, "One house is responsible for one wall?"

Percy glanced at the Slytherin grade head and said, "Sure."

Twenty minutes passed ...

The young wizards gathered together with ashen faces, "No way! It's too hard!"

"Cooperate, Geoffrey." Penelope said calmly, then she looked at the Slytherin head boy, "That's what the Professor intended."

The Slytherin head boy muttered something that no one else heard, and everyone pretended that he acquiesced.

The Four Houses students sat under a nine-grid puzzle, looked at the magic runes on it, and discussed it enthusiastically -

"Doesn't the first word look a bit like Perth?" said a male wizard.

"I do think the shape resembles Wyn, see the horns poking out of its edges?"

"Wait, I think I've seen a similar rune somewhere, very much like ..." said a Hufflepuff witch in a sharp voice: "Yes, it was mentioned in a reference book in a fourth-year textbook, and I happened to have brought the notes."

"Found it!" She quickly flipped through her notes, then looked up and spoke dramatically as everyone watched, "The word is quite old, and it's synonymous with 'wisdom'."

Even though they had only deciphered an eighth of the first ninth grid, they couldn't help but get excited.

Next, with a similar train of thought, eight runes were deciphered in succession -

Penelope snapped her fingers and said, "Wisdom, excellence without equal, equal or similar, extreme or ultimate, exaggerated, wealthy or plentiful, possessed or contained,"

She looked up, "What do you think it is?"