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Chapter 795: The Hourglass
🕑 Added 2023-06-09 21:20:16 +0000 UTCUnder the tearing waves of the whirlpool, the golden-red magical barrier on the surface of Evan’s body had been shaking violently.
He did not use the power of the Philosopher’s Stone, but completely relied on the magical power in his body to withstand the surrounding damage.
Although it was hard work, he could still bite the bullet and persevere. Compared to other young wizards, Evan had already grown a lot.
If those great wizards could do it, he could do it as well!
He could feel the strong power surrounding him, the power of nature and the strange magic mixing together relentlessly as they surged. He followed the whirlpool, whirling down, not reaching the seabed, but crossing a channel to a new world …
Although Evan had seen it in the memory of Ravenclaw before, the scene in front of him still made him extremely shocked and amazed.
Above him was the entrance and exit formed by the whirlpool, and next to it was a wall of brown rocks, which seemed to be deep underground.
But it wasn't that simple. A large gap in the broken rock wall in the distance attracted Evan's attention.
He blinked in disbelief. From the gap, he saw that the ground was not rock or mud, but the universe!
Ribbons of light blue and dark purple magical energy extended far away, as though they were two galaxies.
At the gap, ever-changing auroras projected down, creating a magnificent sight.
The background behind the Milky Way was countless stars sparkling brightly like the stars in the night sky.
The sea water and gravel that entered this strange space with Evan seemed to have lost their gravity, floating quietly in the air, drifting past the gap in the rock wall, into the strange universe, moving slowly forward.
Then, in the changing scene, Evan saw something like ruins floating by quietly. It seemed to be a building of thousands of years ago, a bit of a Nordic Danish style. Then, he saw a huge planet whizzing by...
This was really incredible. Evan’s eyes were fixed there, and he was slowly descending to the ground.
The ground was full of silver quicksand. The particles were very delicate, soft and comfortable to step on...
A few minutes later, Evan's gaze reluctantly moved downward.
Below the gap, at the end of the underground cave, he saw an ancient monument, with a huge stone gate at the front, like the gate of the temple he had seen in the undersea city, with the sun, moon, stars and time carved on it, but it was more complete.
In awe, Evan walked toward it.
This was the Temple of Time. From its existing scale, one could imagine its former glory.
Through the stone gate and ambulatory, Evan spiraled down the high and deep corridor to an arched hall. There was a big hole in the ceiling and the changing auroras were coming down, illuminating the semicircular alcove, giving Evan a sense of time interleaving here.
The idol in the alcove had long been replaced by a complex and exquisite hourglass. It was so big and five times as tall as Evan.
It contained the same silver quicksand on the ground, which was slowly descending and accumulating in the lower chamber.
Next to the hourglass, there were also signs and protective magic left by the Italian Ministry of Magic. On a massive stone slab, the origins of this hourglass were described in Italian and English.
As Evan approached to investigate, he learned that the hourglass before him was called the "Zero-Time Wanderer," meaning "the one that wanders at zero-time." It was a powerful magical artifact where each grain of sand represented one second. When all the sand had fallen, it meant the end of a day.
At the stroke of midnight, it would automatically flip and begin counting again, marking the start of a new day.
History tells us that the Italian Ministry of Magic had once removed this magical prop to protect it and study its magical power and operating principle, but as soon as it left this place, it lost its function and became an ordinary hourglass, with its precise timing becoming inaccurate.
As a last resort, they had no choice but to send it back.
Apart from automatically calculating the time and being extremely accurate, no other uses had been found.
Leaving this place, it would no longer work properly, so even if no one was there to guard it, no one would think of tampering with it.
In fact, apart from wizards specializing in mysticism, natural vision and magic of time, there had been few wizards venturing into this cave in recent years. This space was full of strange magic and could not be entered through Apparition and Portkeys. The only entrance and exit was the whirlpool of Charybdis.
The frequency of the occurrence of the whirlpool was getting lower and lower, not to mention that passing through the whirlpool required powerful magic protection.
Furthermore, the cave held no valuable items, causing fewer and fewer people to visit.
Like many relics of ancient times, everything here had been removed, leaving behind only breathtaking natural scenery.
Evan looked quietly at the hourglass in front of him. It was nearly zero hour, and the upper chamber's sand would soon completely run out.
Before he came here, he had looked up a lot of information related to Charybdis and knew that when the hourglass in front of him was reset at zero, the whole relic would change, revealing the secret that had not yet been cracked by the wizarding world.
The transformation would last for twenty-four minutes before returning to normal.
Many wizards believed that really valuable information was hidden in this relic, but no one could decipher its mysterious magic.
Like all magical relics preserved from ancient times, it was not a spell that wizards of the present could comprehend.
After Evan inspected the entire site and confirmed that there was no harvest, he returned to gaze at the hourglass. Since the magic left by Ravenclaw made him come here with her diadem, and the tablet he got in the undersea city also told him to come to this place, then there must be something waiting for him...
Taking time as the benchmark, the quicksand fell one after another, and unwittingly it had come to an end.
Time reached zero, when the last grain of sand fell, and the hourglass gave off a dazzling golden light.
Two intersecting, complex magical runes flashed out, and all the quicksand flew up, and in the blink of an eye, the reset was complete.
At the same time, the dim light in the cave noticeably brightened up.
Evan raised his head and saw the sun in the gap in the upper rock wall as described in the documents.
The sun rose at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the brightness was getting stronger. In the next twenty-four minutes, the entire cave will undergo day and night changes, simulating a full twenty-four hours and the building where he was now would also change...
When Evan lowered his head, he was no longer in the ruins of boulders, and the scene in front of him had changed into an amazing temple.
