The black-haired young man had recognised Helga as soon as she entered the snakes' territory.
Now that he had emerged from underground and met her face to face, he was completely certain of her identity, so he took the initiative to approach her.
"I can't understand you. Speak normally," Helga said succinctly.
"All... right!" Rhys shrugged and replied in halting English.
"I... haven't spoken English... for a long time. Not used to it."
Rhys forced the words out one by one. Helga had some difficulty listening, but she could still understand what he meant.
"People say no two snowflakes in the world are exactly alike, yet a living counterexample is standing right in front of me. Even so, I'm still confused. Are you really still that Salazar Slytherin?"
Faced with Helga's question, the black-haired young man fell silent.
A long while later, he finally answered in a stammering voice.
"Salazar Slytherin... really did die. You ask me... whether I am him. I think... I am."
He was telling the truth.
Loki might have been somewhat lacking in strength, but he was still capable of determining whether someone had truly died.
Salazar Slytherin had indeed died completely that night.
The black-haired young man before Helga now possessed an entirely new body and soul. Theoretically, he should have had nothing to do with the previous Salazar Slytherin.
That was one of the fundamental laws governing the world.
But there was often a vast gap between theory and reality.
Some people could forcefully discover loopholes even within seemingly perfect rules and then exploit them.
Rhys Chasla Lint, or rather Salazar Slytherin, was one of the best at doing exactly that.
If a pure new soul inherited all of his memories, then in Rhys's view, that soul was an incarnation of himself.
Helga looked thoughtfully at this younger version of Salazar.
She had to admit, the old snake had truly found countless ways to prolong his life.
His original method of achieving immortality through shedding his body had already been one of the highest-level forms of life-extension magic.
Now he had even successfully opened up the path of reincarnation.
At this point, Salazar had truly become an expert in the field.
And judging by the current situation, the path he had developed seemed to have no side effects whatsoever.
It was terrifying.
Having successfully reincarnated, Salazar could now genuinely claim to be undying and immortal.
After chatting with Helga for a while, Rhys's speech gradually became fluent again.
"To be honest, starting over and studying magic from the beginning has been rather exhausting. I do have to thank Rowena for one thing, though. The world-core fragments of this alchemical world are extremely beneficial for cultivating domains."
Naturally, Rhys had lost his domain after reincarnating.
But unlike truly penniless young wizards who had to begin from nothing, Rhys did not need to start from the flow of magic and slowly comprehend a domain step by step.
For ordinary young wizards, studying domains was like entering an extremely complicated escape room for the first time, where they had to follow clues and gradually work their way forward.
Rhys, on the other hand, was a player on his second playthrough.
He could clear the entire process again in the shortest possible time.
And the world-core fragments of the alchemical world were like a pair of roller skates, allowing him to shorten an already highly compressed completion time even further.
"It's rare for her to actually do something good," Helga said with a laugh. "How much of your strength have you recovered?"
"About the same as before I reincarnated. The best part is that the hidden problem with my soul is gone."
Rhys stretched and yawned. The sunlight outside was a little too harsh, and shining directly on his face made him feel sleepy.
The potion he had taken before had caused some mutations in his soul.
There had been no obvious effects in the short term, but once he grew old or entered hibernation for a second shedding, those hidden problems would probably have erupted.
Rhys himself had never been able to say what might happen if the form of his soul completely transformed into that of a snake.
Now he no longer had to worry about that.
His soul was currently in a completely human form.
"Share your experience with me later."
After thinking for a moment, Helga decided to simply take advantage of Salazar's advanced experience.
There was nothing shameful about borrowing a proven method in matters like this. Ignoring the best path when it was already available would be the truly foolish choice.
"Sure, no problem."
Rhys was quite generous about this.
"Wait, Rowena can't use this method, can she..." Helga suddenly realised that Rowena's current state seemed incompatible with the method Salazar had developed.
"That's right. She's already a ghost, so she can't take the path of reincarnation. But her current state is already pretty good, isn't it?" Rhys felt that Rowena could make do with what she had.
In a sense, Rowena had also achieved immortality.
Once the body she currently possessed grew old, she could simply find another body to possess. Or Rhys and Helga could cultivate a new body for her. Both options were entirely feasible.
As a ghost, the most she had to worry about was contamination of her soul, but even that was not without a solution.
As long as they found a Horcrux, all those problems could be resolved.
When Helga learned that Rowena could not use the same method as Salazar, she genuinely felt somewhat sorry for her.
However, once the conversation turned to Rowena, Helga remembered the question she had asked earlier.
"Salazar, if Rowena claims to be omniscient and omnipotent within the alchemical world, then why did the alchemical world go out of control in the first place?"
Rhys gave Helga a strange look, wondering why she would ask such a simple question.
"She lost control of it. What else could it be?"
Rhys suspected that Rowena had gone too far while exploring the upper limits of alchemical life.
The four gods he had encountered not long ago were evidence of that.
Those four beings fought in ways very similar to the four Founders, giving Rhys reason to suspect that Rowena had created them.
That was probably the fundamental reason she had lost control of the alchemical world.
"All right. Since you've already recovered your strength and memories, why don't we head back? The excuse we came up with doesn't seem to fool your two little apprentices. They've been worried about you this whole time."
Helga had been cornered in her office by Daphne and Astoria several times.
The excuse Dumbledore had come up with was simply too poor.
It might have fooled the other students, but deceiving those two was completely impossible.
Every time they asked about Rhys's whereabouts, Helga had to find some way to brush them off.
Those two little girls had given her quite a headache.
So the moment she saw that Salazar had recovered, she became eager to bring him back to Hogwarts and restore some peace to her life.
Rhys did not immediately respond to Helga's invitation.
Instead, he asked her a question.
"What time is it outside now?"
"We've already reached the final stage of the tournament. The contestants are going to draw lots and fight one-on-one duels. I think it's happening within the next couple of days?"
"Oh?"
Rhys narrowed his eyes.
If that was the case, there was no need to hurry back just yet.
He still needed to keep Helga here.
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12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI