Chapter 291 The Secret Corridor in the Ice and Snow (2 in 1)

Fine ice shards floated up from the ground, making irregular movements in mid-air, and right at the moment when the basilisk locked its body tightly and then charged forward violently.

Jon's entire body abruptly rolled to the left!

Immediately after, a loud sound of heavy objects hitting each other resounded in the narrow passage, Jon pressed his body against the cold ice wall, and after stabilizing his body, he recited an incantation towards the place where the ice chips were dispersed!

"Sectumsempra!"

Almost the next second after saying the incantation, an invisible sharp blade appeared in the air, and the cold air flow seemed to be cut by a huge blade!

Soon, there was a sound of sharp objects cutting into flesh along with a hissing sound!

The fishy blood is like a puddle of sludge trampled out of the mud, splashing out, a lot of that sticky liquid even splashed on Jon's face, but the unbearable stench did not stop his next moment of dodging action.

The basilisk's soft abdomen was cut open by a large gash, and it frantically twisted its body, its steel-like tail left a clear trail on the surrounding ice.

The floating ice shards brought Jon's senses to the things around him, more direct than using his eyes to see.

So at the moment when the basilisk went berserk, Jon jumped like a monkey and moved away from his original position.

Then, he aimed his wand in the direction where he was just now and quickly recited an incantation without hesitation!

"Avada Kedavra!"

The deadly green light instantly illuminated the entire dark space, and the beam of light representing death shot out from the tip of the chestnut wood wand!

The basilisk obviously felt the breath of death, it hissed more frantically, trying to avoid the spell by twisting and turning its body, making its whole body cling to the rightmost ice surface.

However, the pain from the wound in its abdomen severely slowed down its reaction nerves!

When the command to dodge was given from its mind and the second half of its body had successfully redirected to the right, the spell struck the snake's huge head in a flash, spanning a distance of less than ten meters!

The deadly earth-brown basilisk eyes lost all signs of life and emotion after the spell hit, and then a "boom" sounded, and its large body fell helplessly against the ice, leaving only a mess on the ground.

Jon panted heavily, but he did not do anything reckless, instead, he continued to use the levitation charm to control more ice flakes in all directions, to help him clearly perceive the situation he could not see in front of him.

No matter where he observed from, even if he let part of the ice flakes float down in the basilisk's body, he didn't get any half-hearted feedback after that, Jon let out a long sigh of relief and took off the black cloth covering his eyes.

Now he can finally see the true appearance of the basilisk.

Its body is as big as the one that was at Hogwarts, which was about 30 to 40 feet long, and its scales were bright emerald green, and its abdomen had a wound about half an adult's size, and fishy blood was pouring out of it.

This snake did not have any semblance of malnutrition or had some strange mutation, which could let it resist the cold.

Such a discovery further made the doubts in Jon's mind even harder to understand, so why is there a basilisk in this labyrinth under the Arctic? Is Voldemort or someone else put this basilisk inside just recently?

However, he certainly did not have the extra energy or time to think about this issue, after calling out to Gabrielle, who was hiding inside the ice above, they began to look for Nick's body on the ground full of broken ice and blood.

Soon Gabrielle had found him in a corner.

Nick's whole face seemed to be frozen, his face still maintained the expression of horror he had upon seeing the basilisk, his originally illusory body was hard like a statue, no matter how Gabrielle called out to him, he was not able to make a half response.

The little girl wept sadly.

"Jon! Nick... he's dead!"

Jon walked over to her and patted her on the head.

"He was already dead, he can't be dead again. Don't worry, he's only temporary like this now, it won't be long before he'll be back to his old self once we get out and get the professors to configure an antidote using mandrake."

Jon did not deceive Gabrielle, it is indeed impossible for the ghost to be killed by something once more, even such a powerful instant death ability of basilisk's eyes will only make him fall into a petrified state, as for how long it will actually take them to leave this place so that Nick can get rid of such a condition, it is not something Jon can predict in advance.

Of course, they certainly will not simply leave Nick behind here.

It is estimated that no one can distinguish what kind of item the petrified ghost belongs to in the entire magical world, but the levitation charm that Jon is using has worked on Nick.

His originally sturdy body was lightened a lot, and then with the help of Gabrielle, Jon strapped Nick on his back.

This does not put much pressure on him, it just prevented him from being as flexible in his movements as before.

After that, Jon did not leave immediately, even though the battle just caused a lot of commotion, no one knows if it attracted the Death Eaters in the labyrinth, he still began to collect his loot from the basilisk's body.

After killing the monster, how could he not pick up the equipment?

He didn't have the means to take away anything too big, but he didn't miss a single thing that he could take away.

The two basilisk fangs that were still in good shape were picked up again, and through the opening broken by the Invisible Sword Curse, Jon fished out a fist-sized, urchin-like thing from the snake's belly. Then he dug out the two eyes of the basilisk, but its eyes are really too big, he tried all his pockets, but there is no suitable opening to stuff the two football-like eyes inside.

Since he could not take away, he simply used the Smashing spell to blast the eyes and all the other things he could not take away, and directly mangled the originally intact basilisk corpse into mush.

Such a bloody process, he naturally did not let Gabrielle see, when all the loose ends are cleaned up, Jon carried the petrified Nick and took Gabrielle to continue forward.

Without Nick's prior scouting, Jon advanced more cautiously.

After walking through a junction, they encountered a new fork in the path, he still let Gabrielle make a choice, while Jon left a shallow mark on the ice towards the side before leaving.

After travelling along the path Gabrielle chose for almost ten minutes, they then encountered a junction exactly the same as the last one, and it was obviously the same junction where Jon had just left the mark.

This discovery made Jon frown slightly.

But he did not say anything more, just took Gabrielle and changed the path, and continued forward together towards the middle of this three-way junction, but again after walking for ten minutes, they once again returned to that junction.

Gabrielle's face was filled with surprise.

"We've come to a dead end?"

Jon's brow furrowed a little tighter, he did not answer Gabrielle's words but led her down toward that last path that had not been walked yet.

But the result remained unchanged, still the same ten-minute walk, and eventually, they were back on this fork in the path.

This time there was no more path for them to try.

Gabrielle's face was full of wonder as she floated along this fork in the tunnel up and down and around the ice to wander around without making any discoveries.

Jon, on the other hand, took a few steps back thoughtfully, turned a corner, and sure enough, he saw the puddle of broken flesh that still remained scattered on the ground.

He just killed the basilisk as they walked along this path and reached this fork in the path, that is, if they want to walk to this fork, then they certainly would have passed through the body of the basilisk.

They just walked back along three different paths, but they did not see the basilisk's corpse, yet the body was seen when he wanted to go back to the path they took to this place.

This caused suspicion to rise in Jon's heart.

He grabbed Gabrielle's hand and stopped her from trying to cross the ice layer by trying to move inside the path, and then held his wand and tapped around the path.

Finally, Jon found some clues on the two ice walls that separated the three forks.

When his wand tapped on the ice, and the instant his wand tip and ice made contact, some inconspicuous bright gold points of light burst out.

These points of light are very faint and tiny, if Jon did not observe carefully enough, it might have been overlooked.

After seeing the problem, he let Gabrielle try to pass through the two ice walls, but there was no abnormal phenomenon occurred, Gabrielle floated past from one side, and then floated out from the other side.

However, Jon did not give up trying, he did not use his wand again but grabbed his ring in hand and used the general counter-spell.

After that, he reached out his left hand and carefully touched the wall of ice.

The expected, supposedly cold and hard touch did not come, Jon's hand actually went straight through the wall, but did not extend from another section of the wall like Gabrielle.

Rather, it was as if it had disappeared and was directly gone.

This made Gabrielle couldn't help but stare and also brought an unexpected expression on Jon's face.

He had just wanted to try it, but never thought it would actually work!

Jon not only didn't feel any coldness from the hand that disappeared, but also had a warm feeling.

He took a deep breath, his right hand grabbed Gabrielle's arm, holding her in his arms enclosing her in the general counter-spell, and then he made his way through the wall of ice.

As if walking forward normally, there was no sense of a semblance of obstruction, the next moment Jon disappeared into the ice, appearing in a long, narrow and warm corridor.

There is no more ice on four sides, there is an obvious brick wall on the left, and there are four or five rooms on the right side of the long corridor, the ceiling overhead is sealed, with a few kerosene lamps hanging down above, the lamps are lit with a blue flame, which illuminated the space.

Gabrielle looked around curiously, Jon was attracted by the ground that clearly had some kind of mark left by the scratching of crawling creatures.

He finally understood why a creature like a basilisk could live in this Arctic region.

It simply did not always spend time in the labyrinth carved out of ice, the vast majority of the time, it should have lived in this corridor!

After Jon came up with the answer to one of his many questions, he didn't stop but walked towards the nearest room which had its door left ajar.

There are a lot of things inside, but they have been destroyed; torn paper, tables, chairs and benches crushed by heavy objects, fragments of the remains of what looks like a teapot, rotting clothes and other things scattered everywhere.

Jon walked into the room, he tried to pick up a few pieces of parchments full of smudge from the floor, trying to understand some valuable information from it.

But these parchments not only have blurred handwriting, but it was also not written in English, Jon really has no way to identify the words that in his opinion somewhat seem like Russian.

After circling around the small room to make sure there was nothing valuable to find, he continued to walk toward the next room.

This is also an opened door, saying open is actually somewhat far-fetched because it is obvious through the tattered wood, the door was originally locked but was forcibly destroyed in half, with only the upper part of the rusty hinges connecting the door frame.

Jon arched his back to enter the interior, and a fishy smell hit his face, there was a lot of space in this room, and a bunch of things that originally looked like clothes were collected together in a mess.

There were many huge emerald-green snake skins scattered around!

After seeing these snake skins, Jon concluded in his mind that the basilisk he killed must not have been brought over by Voldemort.

Such a quantity of skin shedding, there is simply no way to complete it without a hundred years, this basilisk must have been living here for a long time, and this room was also taken by it as its own nest.

Enduring the stench, Jon searched this place as well and still found nothing worthwhile and valuable gain.

Without stopping, he continued to the next room.

The condition of the third room is more concise and clear, this is a broken room, the wall opposite the door in the room has been half collapsed, revealing a large layer of ice, and quite a lot of animals frozen in the middle of this solid ice.

Many of them are bears and wolves, along with some odd-looking creatures that are obviously extinct in the current world.

Most of this ice was violently chiselled away, these are certainly the achievement of the basilisk, the room is full of all kinds of bones, apparently, it is relying on the corpses of these animals in the ice as food to survive all along, this room is its canteen.

After gaining this information, Jon then proceeded to the last room on this long corridor.

The door of this room was not damaged and was also locked, just before entering, Jon saw the nameplate hanging on the door of the room, and his whole body was frozen.

[Adrian Fawkes' lab]

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