The Power of Death

Chapter 59 The Power of Death

"For the first time, we have observed irrefutable evidence for the three-tiered theory of the soul and thoroughly verified the Vokanova hypothesis—that life force is indeed part of the soul. In our experimental results, the soul is clearly divided into three parts: 'life force,' 'spiritual force,' and 'soul origin.' Life force acts as the link between the illusory soul and the real body, allowing the mind to control the body; spiritual force is responsible for thinking, memory, and emotions, and is influenced by bodily organs (such as hormones and nerve signals) due to the two-way connection effect of life force..."

"The origin of the soul is currently the most unknown aspect, with almost no magical means effective against it. Furthermore, the effects of Horcrux magic are too simplistic, making it difficult to obtain diverse samples for research. At present, we can only confirm that the origin of the soul is the true 'self' of an intelligent life form, and the source of self-awareness… This is also the incompleteness of this paper, and we hope that future researchers can fill in the gaps in this area…"

"..."

Avada fell silent as he looked at the article that came into view.

What's with this overly academic style? Could this really be something a mad, dark wizard would write? Shouldn't their manuscripts be filled with distorted graffiti and insane ramblings?

He suppressed his urge to complain and continued reading.

"Ever since the wizard Morgana of Merlin's time proposed the hypothesis of soul layering, discussions about the structure of the soul have continued uninterrupted to this day, occupying a very high and important position in the history of magic..."

"With the successive proposals of the 'Helpo two-layer hypothesis' and the 'Vokano three-layer hypothesis,' and the provision of reproducible experimental results, the controversy surrounding the structure of the soul has been reduced to only two points of contention: whether life force is part of the soul, and..."

"Our team (this thing even has a team?) is based on the 'Vokanova Tripartite Hypothesis' and designed controlled experiments using three Unforgivable Curses and multiple live samples of different genders, ages, and health levels to prove the correctness of the tripartite hypothesis, and..."

"In this process, we successfully overcame the problem of the Cruciatus Curse interfering with the surface of spiritual energy and generating irregular noise on the observation instruments. Our solution was to have a Dementor use 'Dementor's Kiss' on the sample, and to do so while the sample's spiritual energy was being extracted..."

"Through the methods described above, after losing twenty-one samples, we finally obtained the Heart-Rending Curse—a surface-level mental energy fluctuation pattern without any interference, as shown in the image below..."

"..."

Avada took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down, but his face remained terrifyingly gloomy.

He tried to find the most offensive words he knew to curse the author of the article in front of him, but after searching for a long time, he couldn't find any—these guys should be cursed with the Crucifixion Curse ten thousand times and then thrown into Fiendfyre to be burned to ashes!

No wonder Professor Baker reminded him of the authors' fates and told him to read with "reverence for life and sorrow for the deceased," and no wonder Professor Baker fought so relentlessly against the dark wizard...

He resisted the urge to tear the book and continued reading.

The following content was mostly about the specific experimental process, the explanation of the ideas, and the results data. The large number of unfamiliar professional terms, symbols, and charts left him completely confused. At the moment, he was filled with bad emotions and could not concentrate on analyzing the data. So he simply skipped this part for the time being and went straight to the results.

"Ultimately, we fully confirmed the three-tiered structure of the soul: 'vitality—spiritual power—soul origin,' as well as the functions of the first two tiers."

"Life force is used to connect the mind and the body, enabling the mind to influence the body's condition, and is also affected by some spells, potions, and transfigurations. Furthermore, we speculate that the so-called 'wizard bloodline' is also a manifestation of the life force structure; a life force with a special structure can, in turn, influence the mind, making it more likely to generate traits that can affect magic..."

"Mental energy is used for thinking, generating emotions, and storing memories. Wizards also use mental energy to influence external magical forces when casting spells..."

"As for the origin of the soul, we have only confirmed the existence of this phenomenon, but we are almost unable to explore it at all..."

References: ...

"All right."

Avada pulled a water bottle from his cloak and gulped down a large mouthful of water, almost drinking the whole bottle in one go.

"At least I know what that magical void in my magical senses is—it must be the so-called 'essence of the soul,' a substance that almost transcends magic. And my abilities are not yet sufficient to observe it..."

"But if the soul truly transcends magic, then what about Horcruxes?"

He rubbed his eyes and continued reading the second article—

The Discovery of a New Natural Phenomenon – Tentatively Titled: The Power of Death

"grim Reaper?"

Avada frowned—the meaning of this word was quite unusual.

"First of all, I would like to give special thanks to the researchers in Brazil. Without their confirmation of the three-layered structure of the soul, this research would not have been possible."

"After learning about the layered phenomenon of the soul, I had a question: How does 'death' occur? Does it act on vitality, spiritual power, or the so-called 'origin of the soul'?"

"I began my research in this area using instruments that my friend in Greece lent me."

"First, I attacked a living being with the Killing Curse. As expected, his life force was instantly destroyed by the Killing Curse, and then his mental structure immediately began to collapse..."

……

"After the fourteenth sample had its life force destroyed by the Killing Curse, its mental energy underwent an abnormal change, allowing it to remain in the magical environment without dissipating. Yes, this is the appearance of a ghost..."

"It is now confirmed that vitality has the function of protecting spiritual power. It can recover on its own after being damaged to a certain extent, but its upper limit is constantly decreasing—the essence of biological aging is actually the process of the upper limit of vitality decreasing. When vitality completely disappears, spiritual power will also dissipate, and it is generally considered that this life is completely dead..."

"But what about the origin of the soul? What is the most important element of the soul doing in this process?"

"To figure out this problem, I designed a series of extremely complex experiments, the ideas and principles of which are as follows..."

……

"Ultimately, I observed a shocking result: in the instant the spiritual power completely dissipated, the soul's essence, now unprotected, vanished directly from the world!"

"Note that it is not dissipation, but disappearance, without warning or trace, disappearing even more silently than an object struck by a vanishing charm... To be honest, I felt a little scared after observing this phenomenon."

"Is the soul, the true self of an intelligent being, also capable of vanishing into thin air?"

"I tried to continue the search, but simply observing the destination of the soul's origin through countless complicated methods had already exhausted my intellect. I simply cannot imagine how to investigate the soul after it has disappeared..."

……

"At the suggestion of one of my students, I decided to try experimenting with Horcrux creation to see if I could obtain any data..."

Avada flipped through the pages rapidly, skipping over all the brutal experimental procedures and going straight to the results.

"...Ultimately, all the observed phenomena and data pointed to one conclusion: there was a power from a higher level that extracted the essence of the soul from this world—or at least this dimension—the moment the spiritual power disappeared."

"The source and nature of this power are unknown. What we can confirm at present is that it does not permeate space like gravity. Instead, it only appears when a soul loses its spiritual power and is directly exposed to a magical environment. It then extracts that soul, like the legendary Grim Reaper, and guides the soul of the deceased to the underworld..."

"Therefore, I decided to name this power 'The Power of Death'."

(End of this chapter)