Return of Salazar Slytherin

The moment Rhys pointed at him, Riddle felt an ominous chill rising in his heart, as if the next second he would be torn apart by a howling spell.

He immediately dodged to the side, and the spot where he had just been standing erupted with a loud bang.

Riddle was certain that if that spell had hit him, while he wouldn't have died, he would definitely have been forced back into the diary to recuperate.

Why had the situation suddenly turned this way?

Riddle couldn't comprehend it.

Weren't he and Rhys having a pleasant conversation?

Why had Rhys suddenly unleashed a torrent of harsh words and then started attacking him?

Although Rhys's sudden attack surprised him, Riddle wasn't about to just stand there and serve as a target. In his view, he could still maneuver against Rhys and find an opportunity to escape.

Without hesitation, he used Ginny's wand to retaliate.

"Serpensortia!"

A torrent of magic burst forth as though it cost nothing, and Riddle unleashed all the power he had extracted from Ginny over the past months.

Regardless of the outcome of this fight, he knew he would need a good deal of time to recover—ideally, finding another young witch or wizard to drain for strength.

Dozens of black serpents poured from the tip of Ginny's wand, hissing and flicking their tongues as they slithered toward Rhys.

"That's enough. How dare you use a spell I invented against me?"

Rhys sneered.

Although his wand had been disarmed by Riddle's Expelliarmus, he still had a backup. However, little Riddle, in his current state, hardly warranted the use of a wand, especially not the spare one Rhys had—an artifact of Hufflepuff's, which he preferred to keep pristine.

Looking at the swarm of black snakes slithering toward him, Rhys merely snapped his fingers, and they dissolved into wisps of black smoke.

"Go~" Rhys commanded, sending the smoke drifting toward Riddle.

Though unsure what would happen if the smoke reached him, Riddle instinctively widened the distance between himself and the advancing haze.

With a wave of Ginny's wand, a gust of wind swept through the Chamber, dispersing the black smoke into fragmented wisps that quickly dissipated.

Riddle intended to seize the opportunity to counterattack, but Rhys's relentless spells came at him like an inescapable plague, giving him no room to breathe, let alone strike back.

It took everything Riddle had to barely fend off Rhys's assaults.

He utilized every trick in his arsenal, leveraging his quasi-spiritual form to its fullest. Several spells managed to hit him, but his ghost-like state allowed him to shrug off damage that would have incapacitated any normal mortal. As long as he had enough life force, he could endure these attacks.

Even worse, Riddle vaguely sensed that Rhys seemed to be holding back.

Several times, Rhys's spells could have caused far greater damage, yet he intentionally chose to go easy on him.

It felt as though Rhys was testing him!

Boom!

Riddle unleashed a massive blasting curse, reducing dozens of floor tiles to fine dust. Using the explosion as cover, the now semi-transparent Riddle swiftly reattached himself to Ginny's body and bolted in the direction farthest from Rhys.

What an overwhelming sense of oppression!

I-I need to..

Rhys merely stood there, casting spells barehanded, and Riddle felt like he was suffocating.

The last time he experienced this level of pressure was from Albus Dumbledore—no, even then it was different. When he first encountered Dumbledore, he had been an eleven-year-old orphan, reliant on instinctive magic to intimidate other children. Now, he was vastly more powerful, hundreds of times stronger than he had been back then. Yet within Rhys's line of sight, he felt as helpless as an infant in swaddling clothes.

Who on earth was this "boy"?

"Hey, stop destroying the floor tiles!"

Rhys's slightly annoyed voice rang out through the explosion's smoke. In the next moment, Ginny's body, now possessed by Riddle, slammed heavily to the ground—he suddenly found himself unable to move.

"Ugh—!"

A Petrification Charm?

When did he cast it?

Rhys ignored the sprawled Riddle and summoned Ginny's wand into his hand. Then, with calm efficiency, he began repairing the floor tiles Riddle had destroyed.

Fortunately, the damage wasn't irreparable.

With a simple Repairing Charm, Rhys restored the floor to its original state.

After fixing the floor tiles that Riddle had shattered, Rhys glanced toward the spot where Ginny had fallen. He locked eyes with her—or rather, with him.

In the next moment, Rhys found himself standing in a withered field of dandelions.

He immediately understood that Riddle had pulled him into Ginny's soulscape. That suited Rhys just fine; it saved him the trouble of doing it himself.

"This place should have been beautiful," Rhys said as he knelt to pluck a withered dandelion from the ground, watching as it crumbled into ash in his palm.

"What exactly are you?" came Riddle's voice, filled with shock, from a short distance away.

Rhys lifted his head lazily, and his gaze fell upon Riddle.

In the soulscape, Riddle appeared drastically different from his physical self.

While his face remained the same, his body was only half intact, as though it had been violently cleaved in two.

From the jagged opening of his body, hundreds of root-like tendrils extended, burrowing into the desolate flower field to absorb its nutrients.

"Tch Horcrux." Rhys sneered, his tone dripping with disdain. "How utterly grotesque..."

"You've got the nerve to say that to me?!" Riddle snapped, unable to keep his composure. To him, Rhys looked far more monstrous. At least half of Riddle still resembled a human. The figure standing before him, however, was a creature covered entirely in serpentine scales.

What made it worse was the strange face beneath those scales.

One half looked like a young man, while the other resembled an elderly man.

Along the "boundary" between the youthful and aged halves, the two sides appeared to be locked in a slow battle. Occasionally, one would gain the upper hand, forming a protrusion on the other side, only to be gradually overwhelmed and absorbed again.

"Tom, there is no such thing as a perfect path to immortality," Rhys said, glancing at his own appearance. With a shrug, he continued, "But I dare say my method comes the closest to perfection."

Riddle stared at him, incredulous: You're actually proud of this?

"A-And what are you, exactly?" he demanded for the second time, unable to suppress his curiosity.

Rhys cast him a sidelong glance and raised his hand. In the air, the name Rhys Chasara Lint appeared written in the ancient text, glowing faintly.

"Allow me to reintroduce myself," Rhys said softly, his voice steady. "I am Salazar Slytherin."

As Rhys spoke, the ancient letters forming the name Rhys Chasara Lint rapidly shifted, finally rearranging themselves into Salazar Slytherin and then got translated into the english of today's time.

Riddle felt as though his head had been struck heavily with a hammer.

"This—this, this is impossible!" he stammered, repeating the same phrase over and over like a madman.

"Why would it be impossible?"

Rhys replied with a chuckle.

"If a wretch like you can cling to life, it's only natural that I've managed to stick around for a few more years, don't you think?"

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