Chapter 9: The Old Man Steals the Immortal Picture

“Senior—” Su Yun’s heart filled with joy, and he quickly walked towards the person on the bridge.

The figure on the bridge was surrounded by swirling mist, yet it seemed to be fixed in place, maintaining the posture of running and shouting without moving.

Su Yun felt a sense of unease, and before he knew it, he was getting closer to the figure. The mist also gradually dispersed, revealing more stone bridges.

Just as he had guessed, this stone bridge indeed connected to one of the Immortal Mountain Cloud Terraces.

And the figure on the bridge should have rushed down from that Immortal Mountain Cloud Terrace.

Su Yun’s steps became slower and slower as he cautiously stared at the figure on the stone bridge. He called out a few times, but the figure on the bridge remained unresponsive and did not move an inch!

The mist around the figure also gradually cleared. It wasn’t mist, but an unfurled scroll, surrounding him.

The scroll seemed to be made of a light screen, and only the two scroll shafts floating behind the person indicated that it was a painting.

And the mist surrounding the person was the reflection of the surrounding sea of clouds on the painting.

Even stranger, the person surrounded by the painting gave Su Yun a familiar feeling, as if he had seen them somewhere before.

And the closer he got, the stronger this sense of familiarity became!

It was an old man, hunched over, but he exuded an exceptionally tall and powerful aura!

“He looks like Uncle Qu, who lives in the first house in Tianmen Town…”

Su Yun walked closer and closer. He was naturally very familiar with the first house in Tianmen Town.

Six years ago, when he wasn’t blind, he often ran out to play, and whenever he rushed out of Tianmen, he would always encounter Uncle Qu, who lived in the first house.

He was a very kind old man, always holding a chisel and hammer, standing on a scaffold by the Tianmen, chiseling stones with a clinking sound. Every time he saw Su Yun, he would always joke with him.

After the incident, Su Yun couldn’t see, but every time he passed the first house in Tianmen Town, he would still greet Uncle Qu.

Uncle Qu, being in Tianmen Town, naturally couldn’t be here.

However, the person on the bridge did indeed resemble Uncle Qu greatly!

Su Yun steeled himself and walked forward step by step, silently thinking, “He can’t be Uncle Qu, because Uncle Qu has always stayed in Tianmen Town! This morning, Uncle Qu even greeted me…”

He couldn’t help but shiver, “The person on the bridge is definitely not Uncle Qu!”

The person on the stone bridge got closer and closer. Su Yun’s eyelids twitched, and he clearly saw the person’s face.

This hunchbacked old man on the bridge was indeed the Uncle Qu from his memory!

After Su Yun became blind, he made an effort to recall every detail of the people he knew, fearing he would forget them, and the hunchbacked old man on the bridge matched every detail of Uncle Qu in his memory!

Su Yun stopped. “If the person on the bridge is Uncle Qu, then who is Uncle Qu in Tianmen Town?”

Who exactly was the kind and amiable Uncle Qu who greeted him every morning?

He looked closely. In front of him, there was a rhomboid wound on Uncle Qu’s brow, and through this wound, he could see the scene behind his head.

This should be a sword wound.

A sword had pierced through his skull.

Su Yun closed his eyes. Seeing the wound on Uncle Qu’s brow, his own eyes suddenly began to ache, as if sword light was bursting from them.

The sound that had given him nightmares repeatedly involuntarily echoed in his mind again.

The sound of bells flying.

That was the sword cry of an immortal sword breaking through the air, countless bell sounds forming a single line.

Six years ago, he had looked up and seen the immortal sword emitting the sword cry, which caused his blindness!

“The one that pierced Uncle Qu’s skull was that great sword! But why is Uncle Qu’s wound so small?”

Su Yun endured the pain in his eyes, opened them, and murmured, “Uncle Qu, why did you die here? How long have you been dead? Was it six years ago? Then, who was the Uncle Qu who accompanied me for six years? Was he your spiritual essence…?”

Uncle Qu was still running before he died,

In a state of urgent shouting, what he was shouting was unknown, but his outstretched right hand, with fingers splayed, was holding up the painting, as if he intended to use it to block something.

The painting seemed to be composed of a light screen, reflecting the surrounding scenery, but there was no content within the painting itself.

It was more like an extremely thin, flexible, transparent mirror.

Su Yun reached out his hand and gently stroked the painting. Suddenly, the image rippled like a calm lake surface.

Su Yun quickly withdrew his hand.

In front of him, the painting changed.

The clouds in the painting gradually dissipated, replaced by a vast marsh, stretching for hundreds of miles.

Suddenly, lightning and thunder flashed and roared in the painting, and heavy rain poured down.

Su Yun stared blankly at this scene. The content of this painting was constantly changing, leaving him somewhat bewildered.

Suddenly, the marsh shook violently, and a bumpy, scaly divine crocodile soared amidst countless lightning bolts, shaking its head and tail, exhaling thunderclouds and lightning!

The sky was pitch black, with only the bright flashes from the lightning briefly illuminating the marsh.

And that divine crocodile, with its feet on the marsh, its tail stirring up monstrous mud waves, opened its huge mouth, seemingly intending to swallow the stars in the sky!

Its abdomen swelled and deflated, and vaguely, the sound of thunder, like the sky collapsing and the earth rending, instantly reached Su Yun’s ears!

That thunderous sound was the sound of the thunder tribulation when the crocodile dragon shed its skin to transform into a flood dragon, it was also the thunderous sound of the crocodile dragon’s breathing, it was also the thunderous sound of the crocodile transforming into a flood dragon, and it was also the dragon’s roar causing rivers and seas to overturn when it transformed into a flood dragon!

“Could it be that this painting can reflect what I’m thinking?” Su Yun was deeply shocked.

Just now, what he was thinking about was how to cultivate the Crocodile Dragon Roar to leave this place!

He had been preoccupied with the Crocodile Dragon Roar technique, contemplating how to construct the image of a crocodile dragon in his mind, complete the visualization, and then touch this painting, and a scene of a divine crocodile undergoing tribulation appeared in the painting!

There was a reason for this.

There must be a reason for this mysterious painting to undergo such changes. The reason for its changing imagery was highly likely due to Su Yun’s touch!

“If it’s what I’m thinking that causes this painting to change, then why is the Crocodile Dragon Roar it displays so much more profound than what Mr. Shuijing taught?” Su Yun wondered.

The latter part of the Forging Furnace Transformation Cultivation of Qi, the Crocodile Dragon Roar, requires visualizing a crocodile dragon and emitting thunderous sounds based on this visualization.

Qiu Shuijing had taken them to find a crocodile dragon, and Su Yun had heard the thunderous sounds emitted by the crocodile dragon, but it was nowhere near as shocking as the thunderous sounds emitted by the divine crocodile transforming into a flood dragon in the painting before him!

“Mr. Shuijing’s explanation of the Crocodile Dragon Roar’s essence mainly focused on the crocodile dragon’s thunderous sound, but the essence revealed by the divine crocodile transforming into a flood dragon in the painting seems, seems…”

Su Yun hesitated for a moment, “It seems to be more than what Mr. Shuijing explained!”

From this painting, he understood that the essence of the Crocodile Dragon Roar lay in four great thunderous sounds.

Thunder tribulation sound, breathing sound, transformation sound, and dragon’s roar!

The Crocodile Dragon Roar essence Su Yun comprehended from the painting had three more types than what Qiu Shuijing taught!

“Mr. Shuijing certainly wouldn’t make a mistake, and he had no need to conceal anything. The reason he didn’t mention it, could it be because he hadn’t comprehended it himself?”

Su Yun found it somewhat unbelievable. Mr. Shuijing was definitely a prominent figure. When he met other people in Tianmen Town and mentioned Mr. Shuijing, everyone in the town said Mr. Shuijing was very powerful.

Mr. Shuijing had an extraordinary demeanor, and he taught Su Yun the Forging Furnace Transformation Cultivation of Qi without expecting anything in return, so he wouldn’t hide anything.

There was only one possible reason why he didn’t teach Su Yun the other three essences.

That is, the Crocodile Dragon Roar only contained the breathing thunder sound, and did not include the thunder tribulation sound, the transformation sound, and the water dragon roar!

In other words, the Crocodile Dragon Roar displayed in the painting was much more complete than the Crocodile Dragon Roar known by Qiu Shuijing!

“Or, it could be said that this painting can complete the deficiencies of the Crocodile Dragon Roar!”

Su Yun thought of the key: “This painting can complete the Crocodile Dragon Roar, so can it complete other cultivation techniques? If it can even complete other cultivation techniques…”

His heart pounded wildly.

He understood why Uncle Qu had ventured so deep to steal the painting!

At this moment, the divine crocodile in the painting was transforming into a flood dragon amidst the thunder tribulation. The divine crocodile moved and changed, clearly demonstrating every move and stance of the Crocodile Dragon Roar.

Crocodile Dragon Emerging from the Abyss!

Crocodile Dragon Rolling!

Divine Crocodile Wagging its Tail!

Dragon Fighting in the Wild!

Crocodile Dragon on the Spine!

Dragon Swimming in the Winding Marsh!

Su Yun had learned these six stances from Qiu Shuijing, but because he hadn’t seen them firsthand, he had learned them imperfectly.

However, in the painting, although there were only six stances, under the divine crocodile’s practice in the painting, it was as if there were tens of thousands of stances, with no repetition!

Su Yun watched, captivated. The yellow bell floating above his head began to rotate again. He was breaking down each movement of the divine crocodile in the painting into individual steps according to the time required to complete the movement, thereby deepening his memory.

“To cultivate the Crocodile Dragon Roar, one needs to use the Forging Furnace Transformation as a foundation, integrating the four great thunder sounds into one within the furnace. To achieve this, one needs excellent coordination between body, consciousness, and vital energy.”

Just as Su Yun thought of this, the strange sword cry suddenly came again. The divine crocodile in the painting in front of Su Yun, which was undergoing tribulation, was suddenly cut by a sword light, its head separated from its body, and it died a violent death!

Su Yun was startled. That sword strike came out of nowhere, breaking through the six great stances of the Crocodile Dragon Roar with overwhelming force and slaying the divine crocodile.

The thunderclouds in the painting dissipated, and the great marsh also vanished without a trace.

“This painting is empty; it can only reflect its surroundings and refract what’s inside me. Just now, I wasn’t thinking about that immortal sword, yet the immortal sword appeared in the painting. Then there’s only one possibility!”

Cold sweat broke out on Su Yun’s forehead, and he immediately looked into the mist: “That immortal sword is nearby right now!”