Adrian stared at the Horcrux diary for a while. A thousand thoughts flashed through his mind before he finally asked a question, pretending to be curious.
"Does this look like a book? Or notes? Is it useful?"
"I don't know. I only know this is indeed a dark magical item. If you want it, I can sell it to you at a low price," Lucius said vaguely.
Adrian rolled his eyes internally, feeling that the old Malfoy was being too careless with him as a little wizard, making up such a weak reason.
Even if this was someone's study notes, being able to answer questions automatically would be better than being completely blank, unable to answer even if you wanted it to.
However, what Adrian didn't know was that Lucius genuinely didn't know how the Horcrux diary should be used.
After all, this was something the Dark Lord personally handed over to him for safekeeping. Maybe there was something terrifying in it.
So after Lucius got it, he'd placed it in a secret location and never touched it again.
It wasn't until this year, when people from the Ministry wanted to thoroughly investigate the problem of dark magical items spreading, that he took this thing out and prepared to find a place to dispose of it. This way the Ministry wouldn't detect it and think he had some connection to the defeated Dark Lord.
"Do you want it or not?" Lucius said impatiently when Adrian looked at him with a strange expression.
"Since there's no way to confirm this thing's function, then it may be the most ordinary diary book. So how about one copper Knut?" Adrian calmed down, pondered for a long time, then took a copper Knut from his pocket and put it on the table.
Lucius almost laughed. One copper Knut?
Even buying a Muggle book cost more than that. This was a dark magical item!
"The Ministry of Magic is investigating dark magical items, Mr. Malfoy. I'm helping you deal with trouble."
Adrian pretended to be a calculating businessman, looking for the right timing to suppress the price. But because of his young age, the proposed price was naive and ridiculous, completely ruining the negotiation atmosphere.
But with such a performance, Lucius made a decision.
"Fine! One copper Knut then!" Lucius looked at Adrian deeply, put down the diary, picked up the copper Knut on the table, held his snake-headed cane, and turned to leave.
After going out, Lucius casually threw the Knut into the grass. This was definitely the stupidest deal he'd ever made in his life.
'One copper Knut for a dark magical item...'
However, thinking of the little wizard who was mature on the surface but childish at heart just now, Lucius's face wore a gloomy smile.
This was what the other party wanted to buy. If something happened, no one could blame him.
After Lucius walked away, Adrian also put away his act and lightly waved his wand.
"Accio Knut!"
A small coin with a little patina flew out of the grass not far away and fell straight into Adrian's hand.
Lucius hadn't concealed his action of throwing out the copper Knut much. It was just an expression of his disdain, but Adrian didn't have the habit of dismissing even one copper Knut.
No matter how small, it was still money!
"It seems you're not worth much money in Mr. Malfoy's heart," Adrian said, putting the copper coin on the table and spinning it around with a sigh.
Adrian was also hesitating about what attitude he should use when approaching this Horcrux diary.
Gentle approach?
'Dear Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle, I am your junior by more than fifty years. Have you ever done anything to the book collection at school?'
Or use a more direct method?
Adrian thought he might be able to ask Irene for a dark magical item that could release Fiendfyre to threaten the Horcrux.
'See this Fiendfyre? If you dare not tell the truth, you're dead!'
Adrian hesitated for a long time and threw these two extreme thoughts aside. After activating Occlumency, his left hand lightly touched the black cover.
[Magical Item: Tom Marvolo Riddle's Diary (Horcrux)]
[Magic Power: Strong]
[Description: This was originally a diary book used to record information during Voldemort's youth, but after accidentally acquiring profound knowledge of Horcruxes from the Restricted Section, Voldemort used a killing ritual to split his soul and integrate it into the diary, producing his first Horcrux.]
After picking it up, Adrian didn't feel any invasion of his thoughts, but he didn't relax his guard. Instead, he looked it up and down, trying to find something special in this diary, like some runes carved on it or something.
Unfortunately, Adrian didn't find anything, which showed the production principle of Horcruxes was different from what he'd expected. It wasn't driven by runes but more likely by part of the soul fragment itself.
Thinking of this, Adrian cautiously opened the diary. His Occlumency was running at almost full strength. The first page was written in blurry ink, T.M. Riddle.
[Ding!]
[After a certain amount of practice, your Occlumency proficiency has improved!]
Adrian looked at it. Finally, here it comes.
Tom Riddle's ability to use Legilimency was something he'd expected, but looking at the system's prompt, the level wasn't too high. Adrian thought it should be similar to his Occlumency level.
Both sides were evenly matched.
And unlike when facing Dumbledore, the prompts that came up were all "after a period of hard practice, Occlumency proficiency greatly improved."
In this case, even if he didn't consume grade points to purchase an experience card, he could still protect himself in front of the Horcrux diary. He could also train his Occlumency proficiency along the way.
Adrian grabbed the quill pen placed nearby and dipped it with ink. When he was hesitating about how to communicate, the ink from the nib was suddenly absorbed.
Hello, this is Tom Riddle.
Suddenly a sentence appeared in the empty diary. The faint ink marks spontaneously linked together and, after displaying for a few seconds, disappeared without a trace.
Adrian's mind stirred a little, and he wrote a bunch of questions.
Hello, you said your name is Tom Riddle? How old are you? Why can you talk to me? How were you made? Do you have any special abilities?
After Adrian finished writing, he waited quietly, preparing to see how the diary would fabricate its identity so he could decide what attitude to take to obtain information.
A series of questions overwhelmed Tom Riddle for a while. After a long pause, the handwriting Adrian left in the diary was shuffled and reorganized, then became a few lines of text.
I'm just a diary. The person who made me is called Tom Riddle. He stored some of his memories, so I can communicate with you...
Nothing new. Adrian rolled his eyes. 'After so long, you come up with such a clichéd identity?'
He'd thought Tom Riddle would pretend to be some legendary wizard and pull a ring-spirit-grandfather plot to fool him.