"Besides, it's not like I want to keep it a secret forever."
Harry looked at Hermione and explained earnestly, "I'm looking up information. I want to at least figure out the basic principles of this thing before deciding how to handle it."
"Think about it. If we go to the Professors now, Snape will definitely get involved."
"Given his attitude toward me, he would immediately confiscate the chest and throw it into the dungeons for a so-called 'security check.'"
"If the person on the other side desperately needs help at that exact moment, while the chest is locked in a cabinet gathering dust..."
Harry didn't finish the sentence, but the implication was clear.
"Fine."
Hermione looked at Harry's stubborn expression and finally sighed helplessly, compromising. "But if you notice anything else unusual, you must immediately hand it ov—"
Before she could finish, the chest suddenly gave a violent jolt!
"It's glowing! It's glowing again!" Ron cried out.
Harry's heart pounded as he quickly flipped open the lid.
He saw a faint, unstable silver light flickering at the bottom of the chest, like an old light bulb with a bad connection.
"Hello? Can you hear me?"
Harry shouted at the chest, while urgently pointing at the supplies he had prepared inside. "Who are you?! There's food and medicine here! Can you take them?!"
"Zzz... crackle..."
However, the only response was a burst of noisy static.
The connection seemed extremely fragile. Just as Harry reached in to confirm or find something else to throw in as a test—
Puff.
A soft sound.
The silver light in the chest vanished instantly, like a candle blown out by the wind.
This was followed by a loud thud!
The lid seemed to lose its support and slammed shut automatically, nearly catching Harry's fingers.
Everything returned to silence, save for the bubbling sound coming from the cauldron.
The group looked at each other, hearts racing, unsure for a moment what had just happened.
A few seconds later, Harry refused to give up and unlatched the chest again.
The items inside were mostly still there, except for the two Pumpkin Pasties on the very top, which had vanished into thin air.
But at that moment, everyone was clearly too preoccupied to worry about the missing food.
Because on top of the messy pile of wrapping paper, there was now a small pinch of grayish-white powder that smelled strongly of char.
"This is..."
Recalling the person's previous cry for help, a terrifying suspicion rose in Harry's heart, and his face turned pale.
"This isn't... ashes, is it?!"
Harry's voice was trembling. "Did that person get caught in a fire?"
"Merlin's pants!"
Ron let out a terrified cry. "The person on the other side was burned to death?!"
"Don't scare yourselves!" Although Hermione was also quite frightened, her logic allowed her to suppress her fear enough to lean in for a closer look.
"It shouldn't be human ashes..."
She carefully observed the texture of the ash. "This looks... more like paper? Or some kind of fiber residue."
This sentence caused the other two to let out a collective sigh of relief.
"Paper?"
Ron recovered from his panic. "Could it be that the person couldn't talk easily, so they wrote what they wanted to say on paper and sent it to us? It just... got damaged?"
The other two found this very plausible.
Hermione drew her wand and tentatively incanted at the ash: "Reparo!"
There was no reaction.
The ash remained ash.
"It's too fragmented," Hermione shook her head. "It can't be restored."
...Meanwhile, in the other world.
Louis frowned, poking at the two blackened, oddly charred lumps at the bottom of the chest.
He reached out, pinched a bit of the residue, and brought it to his nose to sniff. His expression immediately became strange.
This sickly sweet burnt smell... it was like burnt sugar, or some kind of pastry?
"The people on the other side wouldn't be bored enough to specifically send me two pieces of charcoal."
Louis brushed the black ash off his hand, having reached a conclusion. "It was likely supposed to be food or supplies, but it was destroyed during the transmission process..."
"It seems this chest isn't just a 'gold-swallowing beast' that charges a premium; it's also an 'incinerator' with no after-sales service."
He closed the chest with some disappointment, leaned against the headboard, and began to review the reasons for this failure.
"Was it simply insufficient energy?"
Louis rubbed his chin, his thoughts racing. "No... though the light was dim this time, it did light up. That means the 'door' actually opened."
Since the door opened, why couldn't things pass through, or why were they destroyed upon arrival?
A flash of inspiration hit Louis as he suddenly remembered another key condition mentioned in the riddle on the chest, a sincere prayer.
"Could it be that these two conditions are truly indispensable?"
The more Louis thought about it, the more reasonable this deduction seemed.
"embers of destruction" were like batteries, providing the energy to open the passage.
While "sincere prayer" was like a signal tower, maintaining the stability of the passage and the quality of the transmission.
This time, he had barely scraped together enough "embers" to force the door open a crack.
But perhaps due to the lack of a strong enough "prayer," the connection was extremely unstable.
It was like a circuit with unstable voltage; although the power was on, a sudden surge of high voltage fried all the transmitted data.
"I can't just focus on blindly hoarding fuel from now on."
Louis sighed, lost in thought. "These two conditions must reach some kind of balance."
Now that he understood the mechanism, he couldn't afford to be so casual about opening the chest.
He couldn't just rush to squander his resources as soon as he had a little stock; he had to wait for a moment when both "energy" and "signal" were relatively mature.
Otherwise, if the "embers" were insufficient, the line would cut off before he could even finish speaking; if the "prayer" was insufficient, the items he needed wouldn't come through.
If either side was lacking, it was a waste of precious resources.
"Still need to keep working hard."
Louis shook his head. Although some letters were lost this time, at least he had figured out some of the rules, so it wasn't a total loss.
He stuffed the chest back into the depths of his backpack under the bed.
"Next time, I must find a suitable opportunity."
...Over the next two days, the farm became busy once again.
Although everyone was reluctant to leave the peace here, after dealing with the bandits from Philadelphia and rescuing their companions, Rick made the decision—the whole group would move to the prison.
Hershel's family was also added to the migrating group this time.
Originally, the old man had been somewhat stubborn, unwilling to leave the farm he had run for many years.
But after the shock of the barn incident and the repeated persuasion from Rick, Maggie, and the others, Hershel was finally convinced.
However, beneath this seemingly hopeful surface of activity, an undercurrent was quietly surging.
That undercurrent was Shane.
In the original story, this was the moment just before Shane's psychological defenses completely collapsed.
Lori's coldness, Otis's death, and the upcoming issue of the "Child" were all pushing this powerful man step by step into the abyss of madness.
Now, because of Louis's intervention, many tragedies hadn't happened. However, Louis could feel that Shane's recent state was still somewhat off; it was possible he already knew about Lori's pregnancy.
The child in Lori's womb, and the messy relationships between them, were like a time bomb constantly hanging over the team's head.
In the original story, this bomb eventually shattered the bond between the two best friends and pushed Shane toward his death.
"I have to find a way to defuse this fuse," Louis thought to himself.
And now, just as he wished, a perfect opportunity had presented itself.