Chapter 19: Solving the mystery (Edited)

"Look! A treasure chest!". Hermione's eyes flashed and an inexplicable thrill she had never felt before crept into her mind, a novelty that sent shivers of excitement down her spine. Maybe this was an adventure? She thought to herself, and slowly understood why all the children in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" loved adventure, even Becky Thatcher, who came from a wealthy background.

Hermione ran towards the treasure chest and suddenly remembered something and stopped dead in her tracks.

"This is the treasure you found based on the clues you discovered, and the puzzle you completed...so, this is your treasure," Hermione gritted her teeth and suppressed her inner curiosity.

Looking at Hermione, who was trying to hide the curious look on her face but couldn't quite hide it, Tom felt super amused, so he said, "Okay, don't look then!"

"Oh," Hermione moped.

"I lied to you," Tom said, looking at Hermione and stifling his laughter.

"Huh?" exclaimed Hermione.

"Come on, it's a treasure we found together, let's open it together." Tom put his hand on the lid of the chest and gestured for Hermione to put her hand on it as well.

Hermione smiled happily and held out her hand.

"1, 2, 3!"

Tom lifted the chest and both their smiles froze.

There was a combination lock under the lid of the chest! But the only consolation was that there was a scroll next to the lock, so it wasn't a futile effort.

Despite the suspicion that she had been tricked, Hermione did not seem disappointed at all. On the contrary, she was very pleased and was motivated by the succession of puzzles.

"Let's see what's on the parchment first, maybe there's a clue inside." Hermione looked at the lock and saw that it was a four-digit combination lock, and realized that her next task was to find the combination to the treasure chest.

Tom opened the parchment, but couldn't make out anything that was written inside, it was all in English letters, but arranged in such a way that he couldn't understand it.

"It's Latin!" exclaimed Hermione, covering her mouth.

"Latin?", Tom was confused, but soon realized something else, "Do you really know Latin?".

Hermione smiled shyly, "My family thought I might use it in the future...some academic journals, nouns and the like still use Latin, so Dad got me a Latin teacher when I was a kid."

"Major, please!" Tom handed her the parchment, and Hermione's cheeks flushed at the compliment, she took it with a smile and read it, translating it into English softly as she read.

There wasn't much on the parchment, and she read it quickly, saying, "This is folk Latin, from the Middle Ages..."

Latin, the official and standard language of the Roman Empire, was similar to the Chinese "Yayan" of spring and autumn. Latin is divided into Classical Latin, which flourished from the 1st century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D., and Popular Latin, which emerged only in the Middle Ages. Today, the word Latin is understood by default as "classical Latin," and modern Latin textbooks almost exclusively teach classical Latin. But it was clear that Mr. Granger hired a responsible teacher, and Hermione was a good learner, dabbling in both languages.

From the writing on the parchment, Hermione could tell it had been left by someone in the Middle Ages. The message was simple and straightforward: find a magical creature, stick the scroll to it, and you'll get some of its properties.

Hermione rolled up the scroll and handed it back to Tom.

"It's yours." He said earnestly.

"Very well." Tom took the parchment, then thought better of it and taped it to Hermione's back.

Hermione: "???"

"I wanted to see if I could gain your wisdom..." said Tom.

Hermione shot him an expressionless look, "For something like that, you sure could use a brain boost."

Tom also thought seriously about the magical creature he would make a "sacred pact" with, but couldn't work it out, Maybe a fire dragon? That would give you high magical resistance, fire resistance and, if lucky, perhaps the ability to fly or breathe fire. A unicorn could also work, it could give you strong resistance to dark magic, but it would be too much to ask to gain the ability to tell if a girl is pure or not....

"Come on, think of the password." Hermione brought Tom's thoughts back to reality, "I remember those handles in those puddles, they might have something to do with the password."

Tom thought she was right. The two of them went around the room and found that only four of the five puddles had handles, which confirmed their suspicions.

So they emptied the puddles, picked one, grabbed the handle and, with a strong tug, a flap door was lifted. The space under the door was not large, but a small compartment about thirty inches square, with a layer of fine sand at the bottom and a brush in the center.

When the door opened, the brush rose shakily, without anyone pinching it, but wrote in the sand by itself.

The first thing that came to Tom's mind was the word "amazing."

Soon the words appeared before Tom and Hermione's eyes.

"What do you mean?" This time it was Hermione's turn to gape.

"Let's switch pools." Tom didn't answer Hermione right away, but walked over to the other three pools and opened the flaps, which were arranged identically, all with a piece of sand and a writing brush.

The three brushes wrote words in the sand.

Tom looked at the words and said to Hermione, "The four numbers in the code should be four, one, seven and eight, in the order of the pool."

Hermione: "???"

"Why? what are these lines?" she didn't quite understand.

"They are four poems, each with a hidden word," Tom explained, "They are ancient Chinese words, a very common way of dividing words, the only difficulty I'm afraid is finding someone who knows Chinese. It seems that the person who left the scrolls not only knew Latin, but Chinese as well."

Hermione dusted herself off and wasn't too surprised. "There is magic in Europe, there must be something just like it in China, the person who left the mechanism probably went to learn Chinese to understand ancient Chinese sorcery."

Hermione's speculation was quite plausible.

"But why do you understand this?" Hermione shot him a suspicious look.

Tom merely smiled, "Let's open the treasure chest first!"