After Barty finished speaking, the atmosphere instantly turned cold.
A chilly night breeze blew between them, and the three masked Death Eaters felt their hair stand on end, as if they were being stared at by something terrifying.
They swallowed hard and cautiously scanned their surroundings, unable to believe that such a dangerous feeling could come from the young Wizard opposite them, who was only in his twenties.
The smile on Sherlock's face faded, and he stared expressionlessly at Barty, who had no wand in his hand yet remained unperturbed.
Under the moonlight, the hair on his forehead gently blew in the wind. His emerald eyes were devoid of emotion, yet they seemed to hide a mountain-shaking storm that had yet to erupt.
"Hmm, the woman you mentioned, is her name Sally Forrest?"
His voice was calm, as if he were asking about a trivial matter.
Barty's smile grew even wider, and his pale face twisted into a maniacal laugh, as if he had remembered something incredibly funny.
"Hahaha... Sally Forrest, that's right! Sally Forrest, that is her name! You certainly remember that clearly."
He widened his eyes, locking gazes with Sherlock, his expression full of provocation and mockery.
"I didn't expect that even after that woman ended up like that, she would still leave a child behind in this world. Do you resent that madwoman? You must have hated her immensely when you were a child, right?"
The tips of the countless wands floating behind them, which had long been aimed at them, flickered for a moment, but ultimately, the light of the spells faded, and they did not fire.
"You've seen her? And you know why she became like that?" Sherlock asked calmly, but those who knew him understood that when he spoke in this tone, he was actually cold to the extreme.
Barty seemed to be recalling something wonderful. He spread his hands like an orator delivering a passionate speech from a high platform and said with great pleasure and emotion,
"I hadn't graduated from Hogwarts back then, but I had already been exposed to our Master's great ambition. One night, when the Master gathered us like-minded people for a meeting, I watched the entire process of how your mother—Sally Forrest, that stubborn woman who tried to stop the Master's great cause—turned from a normal person into a lunatic!"
He narrowed his cold, faintly gleaming eyes, cast an imperceptible glance behind him, and then continued in a tone of awe, worship and madness.
"I had never seen the Master that angry before. Clearly, that woman had made a mistake, an unforgivable mistake. He made Bella punish her with the most cruel methods in front of all his servants—punishments worse than death! In the end, he drove her completely insane and threw her back to Dumbledore!"
"Haha, I never imagined that after she went back, there would still be someone willing to mate with such a lunatic and waste, and give birth to a little half-breed like you! Let me guess, who is your desperate father? How could he bring himself to do it with such a madwoman?"
After he finished speaking, there was silence all around, and the air seemed to have frozen.
The three masked Death Eaters guarding Barty were sweating profusely, their palms tightly gripping their wands.
Standing opposite them, the young man who had become a Hogwarts Professor at such a young age and risen to fame had an expression that remained unchanged, yet it seemed to have undergone a heaven-and-earth transformation.
The night wind blew the hem of Sherlock's robe, making a "fluttering" sound.
"She had already anticipated it before she went." He spoke softly, not communicating with anyone, just talking to himself. "Erasing memories, not being discovered, bearing all the retaliation after failure alone..."
Barty did not hear clearly what Sherlock was saying at this moment; his true attention was not on this, but rather on covertly making gestures with his hand hidden behind his back, signalling to the three Death Eaters behind him.
"No wonder you look so familiar; you really look just like that madwoman." Barty sneered. "So you walked right into our trap tonight. Do you also want to experience the torture your great mother endured?"
Sherlock did not speak again; he only slowly raised his head, stared indifferently at Barty, and gently raised his empty left hand.
The moment he raised his hand, Barty suddenly roared, "Cast spells!"
The voices of the three Death Eaters and Sherlock chanting spells rang out almost simultaneously!
"Reducto."
"Protego Totalum!" × 3.(TN: A bit too harmless of a spell, no? Should be a more dangerous spell.)
A blinding white light and a blue light shield, like a large bowl turned upside down on the ground, appeared at the exact same moment!
"Boom!"
The massive roar made the ground shake violently!
Countless surrounding trees were snapped in half by the powerful shockwave and crashed to the ground.
Moist soil splashed everywhere, tearing through the air like bullets from a chamber, creating a "whooshing" sound.
But Sherlock did not stop his movements; he expressionlessly raised his hand and continued to chant the next spell.
"Avada Kedavra!"(TN: He casts more dangerous spells than them but I am happy to see him being willing to kill.)
The wands dancing all over the sky were like disciplined soldiers that had received orders, uniformly pointing their tips straight down at the huge mud pit blasted out by hundreds of Explosion Charms.
Dark green light flickered at the tips of the wands, dense and numerous, like countless green eyes opening in the dark night. The next second, the green light filled with death illuminated the entire grove!
When Barty heard Sherlock chant that Unforgivable Curse, he felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar, his eyes filled with despair and dead ash.
He had noticed the unusual wands behind him from the very beginning and realised that Sherlock was extraordinary.
That was why he had tried to provoke him with words, so he wouldn't have time to use any bizarre methods to report to the Ministry of Magic, while simultaneously giving a hint to the other three Death Eaters to make them prepare.
No matter how peculiar the methods, what kind of strange magic hadn't he seen in the Wizarding World?
Although he always believed that under the Master, everyone except him was a group of useless sacks of wine and rice, for an average Wizard, those who could become Death Eaters were already rare and skilled fighters; otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to entangle and fight against the Aurors for so many years.
Sherlock's youthful appearance made Barty believe that he did not have the strength to take on three.
However, the moment those hundreds of Explosion Charms lit up, Barty knew he had guessed wrong!
According to his expectations, the variant Shield Charm used by the three adult Wizards together should have been able to defend against Sherlock's first wave of attacks. After blocking the first wave, they could have organised a counterattack.
But the result was that the very first wave of Explosion Charms blasted directly through the variant Shield Charm used by the three of them.
And just when the four of them, including Barty, were dazed and had not yet crawled out of the pit, Sherlock's next spell was already prepared.
Barty was naturally extremely familiar with the Killing Curse; he couldn't count on one hand the number of people he had killed using this spell, which could be called the ultimate darkness.
Staring at the countless green eyes opening in the sky, he felt no hope of survival!
"No!!!" Having just regained his freedom, Barty screamed in despair as he faced death once again.
But his actions could not stop the blossoming of those death rays!
The dense barrage of spells poured down like heavy rain, and the dark green raindrops fell mercilessly from mid-air, landing in the large pit where the four of them, including Barty, were located!
The dense barrage of spells, and such a small target area, meant there was no way for them to avoid these Killing Curses. Each of them was hit by at least dozens of Killing Curses.
But to the surprise of Barty and the other three, those Killing Curses that landed on them did not cause immediate death. Their ears, noses, mouths and eyes—all seven orifices—were bleeding, and their consciousness was very hazy, but they did not die immediately!
Barty, who had encountered a death trap but had regained hope of living, was ecstatic!
He snatched the wand from a Death Eater beside him, cast spells in the direction of Sherlock, and fled without hesitation!
The other three in the pit reacted half a beat slower than Barty, but after they came to their senses, they also immediately crawled out of the pit without hesitation and fled for their lives.
No one had any intention of continuing to resist Sherlock. A person whose methods were worth hundreds allowed him to maintain a numerical advantage even when facing four Wizards alone.
Including Barty, they were now only thinking about escaping alive.
Sherlock certainly would not give them this opportunity.
His wand waved gently in the air; no spell was chanted, but the surrounding environment underwent a heaven-and-earth change.
The appearance of the trees that had been blasted to the ground changed drastically, and countless vines, like slithering snakes, spread all around, quickly entangling the two Death Eaters who were trailing behind.
The vines wrapped around their bodies, just like a python constricting its prey, covering them completely, leaving only four legs still struggling constantly.
Sherlock's expression was cold; he showed no hesitation or doubt and gently snapped his fingers at the air.
Instantly, countless steel-like thorns grew out on those vines, piercing through the two entangled Death Eaters!
The four legs that had been struggling violently suddenly went stiff, and then hung limply on the ground.
Sticky, scarlet blood dripped onto the ground, quickly gathering into a puddle. The thick vines slowly returned to their original state, leaving only two broken, ruined corpses lying limply on the ground.
Sherlock turned a blind eye to this, not looking at the Death Eaters fleeing in the other direction, but instead began to walk expressionlessly in Barty's direction.