Ding Hao had been cultivating martial arts, inscriptions, elixir skills, and craftsmanship, so he barely had time to rest. He spent almost the whole day and night to boringly cultivate, except for sleeping two or four hours a day. If he had a small breakthrough or a bottleneck, he would go out and kill powerful demons to verify his understanding of cultivation.
He was living the life of an ascetic monk.
Fortunately, the Sword Master had imparted him the Enhancing Spirit Method, so he could restore energy after cultivating some time. Because of this, Ding Hao could get through the difficulty.
In the blink of an eye, another night had passed.
When Evil Moon woke up, he saw Ding Hao sitting next to the bonfire and watching a yellowed leather painting scroll.
“Meow! Do you really believe the old man’s words and think that there is something shocking in the broken picture?” Evil Moon ground his teeth and looked noble and cold. He had his tail up and walked out of the cave.
Wang Feng, the bald man, followed him closely.
The cat was accustomed to clearing up his bowels after he got up every morning. After he finished that, the bald man had to endure the smell, to find the Demonic Crystals in the bowels, clean them up, and save them.
Ding Hao looked at the master and the servant, smiling and shaking his head. Then he looked back on the yellow leather scroll.
That scroll was given to Ding Hao by the elder Gao Lin of the Valley Village before.
“This ancient scroll, which has been passed down from generation to generation by our Gao family, has a long history. There are rumors in our family that there is an earth-shattering opportunity hidden in this scroll. If someone can decode it, he can quickly become a peerless expert…
“…It’s been over hundreds of years and it’s a pity that no one has ever decoded the mysteries. Gradually, many people began to disbelieve that secret. Maybe our ancestors tricked us. As the elders of the previous generation handed me this scroll, he said to me, ‘We’ve kept this scroll in our Gao family for such a long time, but we have not gotten the chance. It turns out that we don’t have that opportunity! When you meet a good person, you’d better give the scroll to him, and maybe that will be a good chance for our family!’”
“… I originally wanted to give it to Guo Nu, but unfortunately, his talent was not high, his qualifications were limited, and he has already… Alas! Now being blessed by you, our Gao Family can enter Peaceful City and stop having to be on tenterhooks all day long. You should have this scroll as our thanks to you!”
Those were the words Gao Lin said when he offered the painting.
Ding Hao refused at first, but it was hard to turn down the warm-hearted gesture, so Ding Hao eventually accepted it.
To be honest, Ding Hao did not take it seriously in the beginning.
The Gao family of the Valley Village was very weak. It could not even afford a guardian, and it was said that the Valley Village appeared in the Snow Province just a hundred years ago. It was not an ancient family or a fallen big family. How would it have any secrets?
However, the two old monsters, the Saber Master and the Sword Master, were extremely interested in that scroll.
The Saber Master said that yellowed scroll seemed normal, but it at least had a history of 10,000 years, and it was made of rare leather-like and metal-like material. Even she was not sure what the material was. Maybe there was really something good in it.
In that way, Ding Hao began to study it.
Ding Hao was not a man who daydreamed about making money without working, but if it was really a hidden treasure map, it was worth studying.
Once he decoded that scroll, he would have more chances to defeat Mu Tianyang during the battle to be held three years later.
It was just that the scroll looked ordinary, and it was not an usual treasure map. On its yellowed material, there were three peaks that were very close to each other, as if they were three people walking side by side. In terms of a painting, it was bad. But the meaning of it was very vivid and real. The three peaks looked extremely steep and lofty.
There were two huge silver waterfalls flowing from the mountains between the three peaks. They were as if the Milky Way were on the ground; beautiful, fantastic, and strangely unreal.
That painting gave Ding Hao a very strange feeling.
The ratio of the peaks and the waterfalls was a bit exaggerated. The waterfalls were so wide that they were like silver bridges hanging upside down in the mountains. It was hard to believe that there were such magnificent waterfalls in such high mountains. The endless source of water of the waterfalls, where did it come from?
In addition, the most eye-catching place on the scroll was at the half-mountain position—where there was a red circle deliberately marked in the middle of the waterfall. There was no text to indicate it. Ding Hao did not know what it meant.
“According to Gao Lin, the elder of the valley village, the position showed on the scroll was in this snowy mountain, but in the past month or so, I’ve gone to the 72 peaks of the Snow Dragon Mountain, and could not find the three peaks that are depicted in the scrolls, and neither the waterfalls… The secret of this picture is really hard to decode!”
Ding Hao thought for a lot of days and didn’t figure it out.
“Meow! Are you still thinking about the secret of this crap painting?” Evil Moon stepped inside from the outside of the ice room. “If there is a secret, the Gao family would not be so weak today. In my opinion, this scroll must be a joke made by the ancestor of the Gao Family!”
“Maybe you are right.” Ding Hao closed the scroll as he couldn’t understand it.
“Meow! The Demonic Crystal of that Thorn Back Demon Pig is really big. I almost can’t shi*t it out. I almost suffered hematochezia.” The demon cat pouted and changed the topic of the conversation. He said seriously and authenticly, “Maybe I shall be careful with my food. I can’t swallow those big guys in one go.”
Ding Hao, “…”
At that time, the bald man, Wang Feng, ran from the outside joyfully, holding a palm-sized pale yellow crystal in his hand. He shouted, “Master Ding, Lord Cat, this is a big one! It’s a top-class demon crystal and it’s worth at least 500,000 gold!”
That was the demon crystal of the Thorn Back Demon Pig.
“Don’t come over… Just put it away.” Ding Hao swayed his nose and waved his hand.
Wang Feng quickly stopped and sneered, and put that huge demon crystal into a special animal skin bag.
That bag contained the demon crystals that Ding Hao had collected during that month. There were at least hundreds of them, and the sizes and the qualities were different. Most of them were of good quality. They were worth at least 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 taels of gold.
