The first group to enter the ruins of Cloudwater Palace consisted of over a hundred cultivators, mostly in the Qi Refinement and Foundation Establishment realms.
They had believed it to be an ordinary relic site, but Cloudwater Palace was infested with Oddities.
Caught off guard, the group suffered heavy casualties. And in the end, less than one-tenth emerged alive.
Among the survivors was a man named Sikong Yi.
This man was only at the late-stage Qi Refinement realm and seemed utterly unremarkable. Everyone assumed he had merely survived by sheer luck.
No one could have anticipated that, after returning to Myriad Immortals Island, this very Sikong Yi would hand over the Cloudwater Model and complete that bounty mission worth a staggering one hundred thousand contribution points.
After collecting his reward, Sikong Yi used a long-distance teleportation array to leave the Congyun Sea, vanishing from everyone’s sight.
He was never seen again after that.
“Search for information related to Oddities and sect ruins,” Li Fan slowly made his request to the Tianxuan Mirror as he recalled the knowledge from a past life.
Instantly, hundreds of results were displayed.
However, for the vast majority, only the initial few lines were visible. Accessing the complete information required spending a certain number of contribution points.
Li Fan did not hesitate, immediately spending 100 contribution points to purchase the most popular Survival Guide to Exploring Sect Ruins .
The author of this guide was a man named Qi Yuanzhou, who started out as a rogue cultivator.
He spent years exploring various ruins, only joining the Myriad Immortals Alliance after reaching the Golden Core realm.
To emerge unscathed time and again from numerous dangerous sect ruins, Qi Yuanzhou naturally possessed exceptional skills.
The Survival Guide to Exploring Sect Ruins he compiled was highly praised by many cultivators and regarded as an authoritative text.
The Cloudwater Palace ruins were treacherous and fraught with Oddities. Though Li Fan had foreknowledge, he dared not be careless.
He began to study the guide intently.
When the Great Reformation struck, it shattered countless sects, leaving behind nothing but ruins.
Some of these ruins had already been explored countless times by cultivators over the years, and were picked clean of anything valuable.
Others, due to their extreme danger and immense size, remained partially unexplored. Even now, many cultivators ventured into them each year, seeking techniques or a chance to break through.
Then there were those sects that lay hidden away in grotto-heavens or were concealed by arrays, remaining secluded from the world all this time. These sects were completely untouched places brimming with opportunities. Once revealed, they would inevitably attract swarms of nearby cultivators.
The various experiences detailed in the Survival Guide to Exploring Sect Ruins pertained to these latter two categories.
The guide mentioned that all sects worth exploring in the current cultivation world could be divided into two major types:
One type had no Oddities present. The other type had Oddities present.
If no Oddities were present, then as long as one was cautious of array traps and mechanical traps, there was generally no particularly grave danger involved.
But if Oddities were present, extreme caution was required.
So-called Oddities referred to the various strange phenomena within ruins that fell outside the bounds of conventional understanding.
Oddities seemed not to belong to this world, each often possessing its own unique rules.
The strength of an Oddity’s rules also varied. Within the cultivation world, it was conventionally accepted to classify the strength of Oddities based on the highest realm of cultivation they could affect, correspondingly categorized as Qi Refinement-level Oddities, Foundation Establishment-level Oddities, Golden Core-level Oddities, and so on.
Any cultivator who entered the range of an Oddity and whose cultivation fell below the Oddity’s rule level would be forced to obey that rule.
To violate it was to die, without exception.
Those whose cultivation exceeded the Oddity’s rule level might remain unaffected and could leave safely.
However, no matter how high one’s cultivation, the Oddity itself could not be altered.
Even a Dao Unity powerhouse could not change the rules of a Qi Refinement-level Oddity, nor could they rescue someone who had already violated an Oddity’s rule.
Once living beings entered an Oddity’s range, its rules would automatically be triggered. Only when a certain number of deaths had occurred, or when the Oddity’s rules were deciphered, could the cultivators inside leave.
The guide provided an example:
One hundred and fifty years ago, a cave dwelling suddenly appeared on a nameless island in the western part of the Congyun Sea, near the continent.
From the moment it manifested, radiant light spilled forth from within, illuminating the sky for hundreds of li in every direction.
Many cultivators, drawn by the glow, entered to explore.
After some investigation, the cultivators discovered that this cave dwelling had been constructed in ancient times by a rogue Nascent Soul cultivator, Eminence Hongzhi, at the end of his life.
The cave dwelling contained over a dozen techniques and countless artifacts.
Overjoyed, the cultivators began scrambling to seize them.
It was at that moment that something terrifying happened.
The moment any cultivator managed to snatch a technique or artifact and grinned in triumph, their head suddenly and inexplicably flew from their shoulders.
The smiles on their faces froze permanently.
In an instant, more than half of the cultivators present were dead.
The remaining cultivators were terrified. Assuming the techniques and artifacts were booby-trapped with some deadly restriction, they left the treasures scattered across the ground untouched and fled the cave dwelling.
After the news spread, some skeptical cultivators came to investigate. After they took treasures and nothing happened for a while, they too eventually broke into smiles—some of disdain, some of joy.
Immediately, their heads were separated from their bodies, and their skulls tumbled to the ground.
Only one cultivator, who suffered from facial paralysis since birth, survived unscathed.
But even he was scared out of his wits by the horrifying scene; he only grabbed a single artifact on his way out and fled as if his life depended on it.
The news of this second group’s annihilation deterred all the cultivators in the surrounding area from trying their luck.
Naturally, the expressionless survivor who had not only escaped but also obtained a treasure from the cave dwelling attracted everyone’s attention.
But no matter how they pressed him, the stone-faced cultivator insisted he had no idea how he had survived.
It wasn’t until a clever individual pondered the matter at length that the mystery was finally unraveled: this cave dwelling forbade one from smiling.
Regardless of the reason, the moment anyone showed a smile, their head would fall.
It sounded utterly absurd. But after that clever man walked calmly into the cave dwelling, retrieved a technique with a perfectly straight face, and emerged completely unharmed, all the cultivators were convinced.
They proceeded to imitate his method and retrieved all the treasures from the cave dwelling.
What occurred in Master Hongzhi’s cave dwelling was the most classic and simplest type of Oddity, containing only a single rule.
In reality, the Oddities found within the ruins of sects often consisted of multiple rules combined.
Oddities were, naturally, extremely dangerous. Without understanding their rules, a single moment of carelessness could mean death.
Once one understood an Oddity’s rules, however, the risk became almost negligible.
Based on his multiple personal experiences surviving encounters with Oddities, Qi Yuanzhou had summarized dozens of principles in his guide.
First: Remain calm at all times. Under the influence of an Oddity, anything, no matter how unimaginable, could happen.
Second: Do not act recklessly. Without understanding the Oddity’s rules, the faster you move, the quicker you die.