Perhaps love was not the only thing capable of unleashing infinite power.
That old man himself was also a genius so astonishing that one could not help but marvel. Many of his theories, discoveries, and research results pointed directly toward essential truths that even Ian found immensely enlightening.
"As expected, gourmets are all hidden monsters among men, hmm, that line also happens to compliment myself."
Just as Ian thought the core of these notes revolved entirely around time magic, he discovered something in the latter half of a particularly thick notebook wrapped in black leather that caused his gaze to sharpen.
The title of that section was written in a dark crimson ink,
Hypothesis on the Tracing of Spiritual Origins and the Reconstruction of Life Imprints.
Yes, this was not research related to time at all.
The contents revealed by that title had clearly gone beyond the domain of time magic and touched upon the taboo territory of life and death!
"No way… he even researched this kind of thing?"
Ian's expression turned solemn.
He slowed down his reading pace and carefully examined the contents. Within these chapters, Musa discussed in great detail how one could use lingering emotional imprints, bloodline connections, or specific soul beacons to locate and "retrieve" the essential information of the deceased from the vast river of time or spiritual dimensions.
Musa proposed several theoretically possible methods to "revive" the dead.
One method involved searching for the extremely rare "Stone of the Other Shore," a legendary object said to be capable of carrying soul fragments. Combined with a powerful temporal anchor for positioning, it could supposedly reassemble dissipated souls and draw them back into the mortal world.
This was an illusory method rooted in mythological tales.
However, since the Three Deathly Hallows could truly exist, no one could say for certain whether objects mentioned in other legends were also real.
In the wizarding world,
everything was possible.
Precisely because of that, Ian would never make blind judgments.
"This thing seems deeply connected to the Twilight Zone… I wonder whether Musa ever found any clues about it."
Ian continued turning the pages.
He saw that Musa had indeed searched for it. However, after encountering others who were also searching for the same thing, he learned certain truths and ultimately chose to give up.
Beside it was an annotation written in trembling handwriting:
Price: What returns may no longer be human, but rather a twisted entity carrying the turbulence of time and the aura of death.
This was clearly nothing more than hearsay, a difficult-to-verify speculation.
Still, as someone who loved his wife and children more than anything, Musa naturally would not gamble recklessly.
After all, he firmly believed he could still find another path.
The rationality unique to Wizards and Alchemists continuously warned him, preventing him from sinking into the swamp of madness.
"Musa abandoned this route, yet he immediately found another one afterward."
Ian continued reading the notebook.
Another method involved using the flesh and soul of close relatives as both sacrifice and vessel to perform an ancient life-exchange ritual.
There was also an annotation beside it. The handwriting nearly pierced through the page itself, carrying overwhelming pain.
Rejected! How is this any different from murder? That is not the kind of life my wife and children would want to obtain. If revived in such a way, they would suffer even more than I suffer from losing them.
Ian flipped through the pages one by one, his mood growing somewhat heavy.
Musa had clearly, in the depths of despair, thoroughly researched the possibility of reviving the dead. His research could not be called shallow in the slightest. He had even proposed bold ideas that surprised Ian himself.
Yet behind every single method were sober and agonized annotations,
the cost was immense, the process cruel, the results unpredictable, and it might even desecrate the will of the deceased themselves.
Honestly speaking, Musa had considered things extraordinarily thoroughly.
After all, he was an Alchemy Master.
Unlike most stubborn Dark Wizards who ignored consequences entirely, Musa was not only thinking about resurrecting his wife and children, he was also considering how they would face life after returning.
And precisely because he considered everything so comprehensively, Musa could only reject such options.
In truth, this was also the fate of most available choices.
The reasoning was actually very simple.
Throughout history, most Wizards who pursued resurrection from death were Dark Wizards terrified of dying and unwilling to leave the mortal world. Naturally, the methods they developed were morally unforgivable.
As for white wizards, very few among them ever researched such things.
Most white wizards viewed death rather calmly.
Of course, there were still white wizards like Musa who wished to revive lost loved ones. Yet such people were ultimately rare, and among them, those capable of producing meaningful results were rarer still.
A Wizard who could not even protect their own family. Just thinking about it made it obvious that they were usually not especially powerful.
Truly powerful Wizards like Albus Dumbledore, whose destiny seemed fated to leave him isolated and bereft of family, could be counted on one hand throughout all of history.
For most Wizards, losing their family simply meant they had failed to protect them properly.
"I truly can't imagine it… While probing the mysteries of the time domain, he still had the energy to scour mountains and rivers in search of a way to resurrect the dead. That level of obsession must have surpassed decades of physical exhaustion."
The more Ian read through the notes, the more deeply he could feel Musa's profound love for his wife and children.
It truly was an obsession.
There was yet another, even more mysterious method recorded in the notebook. It involved searching for the legendary "Tender Branch of the World Tree" or the "Water from the Eternal Well," using the power of creation contained within them to reconstruct a body before implanting a perfectly preserved life imprint into it.
However, these were even more mythical objects.
Clearly, they were not things Musa could simply obtain through effort alone.
He spent many, many years searching for the items mentioned in this method.
In the end, he found nothing.
Finally, on the very last page of these resurrection studies, Musa wrote in sloppy and exhausted handwriting:
All roads seem to lead toward an even deeper abyss. Salvation, perhaps, was a false proposition from the very beginning. Forcefully reversing life and death may not bring reunion, but rather another form of tragedy, one even more eternal.
I… cannot do this. I cannot satisfy my longing by making them bear a fate that may be even more terrifying than death itself. Perhaps… the only thing I can do, and the only thing I should do, is simply… find an answer. So that they, and I myself, may finally rest in peace.
Upon reaching this point, Ian gently closed the notebook and let out a long breath.
Now he understood.
It was not that Musa lacked the ability to attempt dangerous resurrection rituals. Judging from the depth of knowledge displayed in these notes, as well as his understanding of time and souls, he might truly have been capable of creating something extraordinary.
But in the end, he chose to give up.
Because his love for his wife and children was so pure that he could not tolerate even the slightest desecration of them.
That love made him incapable of accepting any method that might stain their existence or force them to suffer, merely in exchange for an uncertain "reunion."
Thus, he devoted all of his energy toward what appeared to be a "simpler" path, though it was equally difficult in reality,
finding the truth, or discovering a way to save his wife and children within the past timeline itself.
This was not merely about seeking answers.
It was also a form of respect,
respect for the departed, and respect for the beautiful love and familial bonds they had once shared.
Ian carefully put away the notebook and turned his gaze toward the window.
The night sky above Africa was exceptionally brilliant with stars.
"A scholar worthy of admiration. A devoted husband and father." Ian murmured softly to himself.
"Rest assured, Mr. Musa. I'll help you find your answer. Not only for the sake of the commission, but also for the reverence and love for life that you managed to preserve even in the depths of despair."
He made up his mind.
He would deal with the matters in Africa as quickly as possible, and then set off for that frozen northern land, to explore the underground labyrinth that had devoured happiness itself, and fulfill this heavy yet solemn promise.
Ian stood beside the inn's window, his gaze directed outside.
Africa's night was thick as ink, yet unlike the darkness of cities carved apart by neon lights, the night of this land overflowed with primal vitality. In the distance, the vast primeval forest appeared beneath the moonlight as silent dark-blue outlines.
Like crouching giant beasts.
The cries of nocturnal animals, the buzzing of insects, and the rustling sound of plant leaves brushing against one another in the wind intertwined into an ancient and mysterious symphony.
The air was filled with the scent of damp soil and the rich sweetness of tropical flowers.
Everything stood in stark contrast to the deathly silence and icy cold of the Siberian Ice Plains he would soon be heading toward.
Yet Ian's thoughts were not fully immersed in this vibrant nightscape, one seemingly projected from some unknown magical source.
Instead, his mind drifted uncontrollably toward the boldest and most central sections recorded in Musa's notes… the theory of "deceiving time."
"Deceiving time…"
Ian silently repeated the phrase in his heart, a term filled with both temptation and danger.
Within the cognition of ordinary wizards, the Time Turner was already considered the absolute limit of tampering with temporal laws. It allowed the user to return to the past within a limited timeframe, but one had to strictly obey the unspoken rule of "not changing major events."
Otherwise, unpredictable paradoxes could occur, potentially even leading to the destruction of the time traveler themselves.
It was more akin to carefully "wading" along the edge of the river of time, rather than truly "deceiving" or "mastering" it.
But Musa's theories had clearly gone much further.
Far more… unconstrained and imaginative.
"Yes… This might actually be possible."
Ian recalled several crucial passages from the notes and cross-referenced them with various settings and legends regarding time that he already knew.
Within the worldview of Harry Potter, time itself seemed to possess a certain degree of "elasticity" and "self-repairing" capability.
When using a Time Turner to travel to the past, the act of "observation" itself might already have become part of history, for example, when Hermione and Harry saved Buckbeak and Sirius.
That storyline already implied that time was not a single irreversible straight line, but perhaps a far more complicated closed loop or web-like structure that allowed limited interaction.
Musa's theory was precisely an attempt to amplify this kind of "interaction" and find a method that would allow an individual to become, to a certain extent, "exempt" from the linear flow of time.
One of his core concepts, borrowed from ancient alchemical philosophy and was called:
Temporal Sensory Separation and Cognitive Anchoring.
Simply put, he believed that time's influence on humans was largely achieved through our physiological senses and cognitive systems.
We experience aging because our cells divide and decay under the rules of macroscopic time.
We remember the past because memories leave physical or magical imprints within the brain.
But if one could temporarily "deceive," or rather "block," the body and soul's direct perception of time's passage, while simultaneously using a powerful and stable "cognitive anchor", such as an overwhelmingly intense emotional obsession, or a complex self-referential magical contract, to define one's own "temporal coordinates," then theoretically, an individual might be able to free themselves from the influence of the external macroscopic time stream within a localized area.
The notebook contained a remarkably vivid analogy:
Time was like a great river flowing endlessly onward. Most living beings were like fish within the river, able only to drift downstream.
A Time Turner was like a tiny speedboat capable of moving against the current, but with limited fuel and unable to stray too far from the main channel.
What Musa wanted to achieve, however, was to allow the fish to leap temporarily out of the water, suspend itself in the air, and tie itself to a fixed point on the riverbank with a sturdy cable, thereby gaining a brief opportunity to observe the river, or even attempt movement in different directions, without fear of being swept away by the current.
"Isn't this basically trying to transcend the Three Realms and exist outside the Five Elements?"
Whenever Ian studied magic, he often incorporated theories and sayings from his homeland as well.
They had provided him considerable assistance during his magical studies.
After all, all paths ultimately led to the same destination.
And Musa's idea was strikingly similar to a certain Eastern concept.
It was so audacious that it bordered on madness.
After all, this was the equivalent of transcending the Three Realms and existing outside the Five Elements.
The last being capable of accomplishing such a feat, was an invincible monkey.
Beyond that concept, Musa had even more outrageous ideas.
Another absurd hypothesis involved the concept of "time copies" or "possibility branches."
He speculated that every choice might create a temporary parallel branch of the timeline.
The "past" reached through a Time Turner might not actually be the one and only true history, but rather the most probable "copy" projected based on the user's cognition and choices.
One of the goals of his research was figuring out how to stably enter a specific "copy" and conduct greater levels of exploration within it without causing catastrophic collapse to the primary timeline.
He even theorized that,
if he could locate the "possibility branch" created when his wife and children entered that underground structure, then perhaps he could observe what had happened to them without affecting the main timeline.
And through that, change it.
To Ian, these ideas were unquestionably insane and filled with danger.
To sever temporal perception?
One careless mistake could cause the caster to lose themselves completely within the turbulence of time and become an eternal wandering spirit.
To stabilize a temporal copy?
That involved interfering with the fundamental structure of reality itself.
Even Legendary Wizards could hardly predict the consequences.
"One slight misstep, and you could become trapped within some so-called abandoned fate… or end up entering the kind of erroneous spacetime and destiny-world that I myself once experienced."
Ian's cognition and experiences far surpassed Musa's.
And yet, even so, Ian had to admit that although Musa's theories were crude and filled with assumptions, the breadth of his thinking and his courage to ignore traditional limitations were truly astonishing.
Ian himself had not neglected pondering the deeper mysteries of time.
Dumbledore was the same.
At their level of wisdom and understanding, both of them had long surpassed the superficial mechanics of the Time Turner and touched upon certain essential truths of temporal laws.
They had realized long ago that time was not absolute.
It could be "deceived", or more accurately, "utilized" and "negotiated with."
Dumbledore himself had once skillfully taken advantage of prophecy and the delayed nature of information to arrange moves upon the chessboard of time.
Ian's own understanding of higher-dimensional magic had also shown him that, from a higher perspective, the boundaries between past, present, and future might not be as distinct as mortals perceived them to be.
Yet the research of the two of them, whether in depth or sheer boldness, still seemed inferior to Musa's almost obsessive madness.
And that, in turn, further confirmed the wizarding principle Ian had once summarized: "The most important thing for a Wizard is unrestrained imagination that defies convention."
(End of Chapter)
You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395