"Look! A treasure chest!" Hermione's eyes sparkled with excitement. She felt a unique and indescribable emotion, something she had never experienced before. Perhaps this was what adventure felt like? She thought to herself, gradually understanding why the children in "Tom Sawyer's Adventures" loved adventures, even those like the privileged Becky Thatcher.
Hermione rushed to the treasure chest but suddenly stopped in her tracks, remembering something.
"This treasure was found based on the clues you discovered and the puzzle you completed... so, it's your treasure," she said, suppressing her curiosity.
Tom watched Hermione's attempt to hide her curiosity while failing miserably, finding it quite amusing.
"Okay, then don't look!" Hermione said.
"Oh," Hermione's expression turned disappointed.
"I was just kidding."
"Huh?"
"Never mind, this is a treasure we found together. Let's open it together." Tom placed his hand on the chest's lid and gestured for Hermione to do the same.
Hermione smiled happily and placed her hand on the chest.
"On the count of three!" Tom announced.
"One, two, three!"
Tom opened the treasure chest, and their smiles froze.
Underneath the chest's lid was yet another combination lock! However, there was a scroll next to the lock, so it wasn't entirely fruitless.
Although there was a suspicion of being fooled, Hermione didn't appear disappointed at all. On the contrary, she seemed rather excited. The series of puzzles had ignited her determination.
"Let's first see what's written on the scroll. Maybe it contains a hint," Hermione suggested as she observed the lock. It was a four-digit combination lock, and she understood that their next task was to find the code for the chest.
Tom unrolled the scroll, but he couldn't understand the text at all, even though it was written in English letters. They were arranged in a way that made it incomprehensible to him.
"This is Latin!" Hermione exclaimed, covering her mouth in surprise.
"Latin?" Tom was puzzled. Then, he realized another issue. "You actually know Latin?"
Hermione blushed slightly and smiled shyly. "My family thought I might need it in the future... Some academic journals, terminology, and such still use Latin. So, my father hired a Latin tutor for me when I was a child."
"Wow, you're quite something," Tom said with admiration. He handed the scroll to Hermione.
"This is yours," he said seriously.
"Okay." Tom took the scroll but then thought for a moment and stuck it onto Hermione's back.
Hermione:?
"I want to see if I can gain your intelligence..." Tom winked. Hermione rolled her eyes, thinking he might need to work on that aspect himself.
Tom also pondered seriously which magical creature to form a "Sacred Pact" with. Maybe a dragon? That way, he might gain powerful magical resistance, fire resistance, and if he was lucky, flight or fire-breathing abilities. A unicorn could also work, possibly granting him strong resistance to dark magic, but there was the risk of gaining the ability to judge if a girl was pure-hearted, which would be quite peculiar.
"Alright, let's focus on the code," Hermione said, bringing Tom back to reality. "I remember there were handles in those pools we saw earlier, and they might be related to the code."
Tom thought she had a point. They walked around the room, and indeed, they found that four out of five pools had handles. This confirmed their hypothesis.
So, they drained the water from the pools, selected one, grasped the handle, and pulled it hard. A trapdoor opened. The space below the trapdoor wasn't large, just a one-foot square compartment filled with sand, and in the center lay a brush.
As soon as the trapdoor opened, the brush started moving on its own in the sand, writing words despite no one holding it.
"Ouija board," Tom immediately thought.
Soon, a line of text appeared in front of Tom and Hermione: "欲罢不能去" (Translation: "Unable to stop wanting to leave").
"What is this?" Hermione was perplexed this time.
"Try another pool," Tom didn't respond immediately, but rather, he went to the other three pools and uncovered the trapdoors. Inside each pool, there was sand and a brush capable of writing on its own.
The remaining three lines of text were as follows:
("Burn incense and go behind the pearl curtain to divine")
("Difficult to speak a pure word after being stained with soap")
("Clearly a pair of good mandarin ducks, but cut apart by a knife")
Tom glanced at them and explained to Hermione, "The four numbers for the code should be four, one, seven, and eight, in the order we opened the pools."
Hermione:?
"Why? And what are these sentences?" She still didn't quite understand.
"These are four sentences, and each one hides a character." Tom wrote down the characters "罢" (stop), "下" (down), "皂" (soap), and "分" (separate) on a piece of sand, erasing the rest of the characters. "This is a common way to split characters in classical Chinese. The only challenge is finding someone who understands Chinese. It seems the predecessor who left the scroll not only knew Latin but also learned Chinese."
Hermione dusted herself off, not too surprised. "Magic exists in Europe, and there are likely equivalent mystical forces in the Far East. The predecessor probably learned Chinese to understand ancient Chinese sorcery."
Hermione's speculation seemed reasonable.
"But why do you understand this?" Hermione gave him a skeptical look.
Tom just smiled. "Let's open the chest!"
(End of this chapter)