"You're right, Tom. That Nokto Gaunt really was a bit naïve," Wade agreed with Tom's remark.
Even if the real Salazar Slytherin wasn't as fanatical as people said, even if he never preached pure-blood supremacy, so what? For a thousand years, those fanatical pure-blood families had long since carved that ideology into their very bones.
Even if the family's so-called inheritance was a distortion of Slytherin's true beliefs, they would never change it.
Still, for such an extremist pure-blood family as the Gaunts, having a mber like that was rare indeed.
Aside from his senior's close friend, she was the second such exception Wade had ever heard of.
"All right, let's keep going. Honestly, I'm getting curious about what the real Salazar Slytherin was like. I wonder if that naïve Gaunt ever found the answer she was looking for," Wade said with a small smile.
Tom gave a cold snort. "Whether she found her answer or not, her efforts were wasted. No one knows better than I do whether the Gaunt family changed because of her investigations."
"So in that case, perhaps Slytherin really was as obsessed as the legends claim. Once that Gaunt discovered the truth wasn't what she imagined, she would've found it even harder to change her family's thinking," Wade said with interest. "Co on, I hope we'll find more of her ssages ahead."
With that, the two continued forward.
However, their smooth path suddenly ca to an abrupt end.
Wade and Tom were forced to stop in front of an iron gate.
Unlike the ones before, this one was locked. And just like the others, there were two strange symbols carved into its surface.
"Looks like we'll have to solve a puzzle before we can open it," Wade said, rubbing his chin.
"That doesn't make sense. None of the previous ones needed solving. Why this one? Could it be that the people who ca before us only made it this far? Or… did we take the wrong path?" Tom frowned, puzzled.
The earlier gates had all been opened already, so for this one to remain sealed was indeed strange.
"Maybe the chanism here is different. It could reset itself after so ti," Wade said while examining the surroundings carefully.
"Possibly… but do we really need to solve it? It's just an iron gate. Maybe all we need is a simple Bombarda…" Tom eyed the thin, rusty iron bars.
Honestly, this rickety old gate—forget Wade, even if Anne were here, she could blast it open easily.
"Oh? Then may I ask, my clever Mr. Riddle, why didn't anyone blast open the earlier gates and instead took the trouble to solve each one properly?"
Wade's Snape-like tone, with its deliberate drawl and rhythm, made Tom's scalp prickle.
"Could you not talk like that? It's incredibly irritating! Even if you do have a point…"
Wade chuckled but didn't stop. He found that Snape-like tone quite amusing.
"These iron gates may look fragile, but they're surrounded by dense traces of magic. Clearly, they're well protected. A few Bombarda spells won't be enough to blow them open."
Suddenly, Wade raised his wand and carefully examined the white mist coiling around it.
"Wait… I think I found sothing." Holding up his wand, he walked toward a nearby passage branching off to the side.
Tom followed closely behind.
In a strange place like this, it was definitely safer to stick with Wade.
This side passage wasn't as smooth as the previous corridors.
Many of the floor tiles were uneven and bulging upward, creating a bumpy surface.
Crossing it on foot would've been a hassle, requiring plenty of climbing and ducking.
Of course, that wasn't a problem for Wade and Tom—because they didn't walk.
"Whoosh…" Both of them used the Flight Charm, lifting effortlessly into the air and gliding over the uneven floor.
In no ti, they reached the end of the passage.
After landing, Tom gave Wade a strange look. "Why was your mist white when you flew? Shouldn't it be black?"
"Black looks too evil. It doesn't fit my image, so I made a small adjustnt and turned it into the righteous white," Wade said matter-of-factly.
Tom snorted but didn't reply.
In his eyes, the color black suited Wade perfectly.
The man was darker than a cauldron's bottom, yet he always acted like so pure-hearted saint. Didn't that contradiction bother him at all?
"Look, there's a serpent carving over there. It might be the chanism for the iron gate," Wade said, pointing to a stone sculpture on the wall ahead.
At the ntion of a serpent, Tom imdiately walked forward.
However, just as he was about to speak Parseltongue to open it, he noticed that the base of the stone carving was made of two rotating disks.
Along the edges of the disks were strange symbols, and so were hidden behind the stone, invisible from the front.
"It seems we need to rotate the disks and align the correct symbols to open the gate… these markings must have special anings," Tom muttered. "But how am I supposed to know which combination is right? I've never seen these symbols before… could it be so knowledge passed down through the Gaunt family?"
It was no wonder Tom thought that way. All the previous descendants of Slytherin had managed to solve the puzzles, yet he had no clue at all.
Most likely, it was because he had grown up outside and never inherited certain knowledge that a true heir of Slytherin was ant to possess.
"Doesn't matter, let's just try them all! There are only two symbols to match—sooner or later, we'll get it right!" Tom said as he reached out to spin the disks.
"Wait—" Wade tried to stop him, but it was already too late.
Tom had already started turning them.
By the ti he heard Wade's warning and froze, the two symbols on the disks had already been shifted.
He hadn't even finished saying, "What's wrong," when—Hiss~~
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