Back then, over a hundred cultivators had entered the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace ruins in the first wave.
Most possessed cultivations in the Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment stages.
They had assumed it was merely an ordinary ruin, never expecting that the interior of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace would be riddled with anomalies. Caught off guard, the cultivators suffered catastrophic casualties.
In the end, fewer than one in ten made it out alive.
And among them was a man named Sikong Yi.
This person had only middle Qi Condensation cultivation and appeared thoroughly unremarkable.
Everyone assumed he had merely survived by sheer luck.
None of them imagined that it was this utterly inconspicuous Sikong Yi who, upon returning to Wanxian Island, turned in the Cloud Water Chart and Talismans, completing that bounty task worth a staggering one hundred thousand contribution points.
After collecting his reward, Sikong Yi departed the Congyun Sea via an ultra-long-distance teleportation array, vanishing from everyone's sight.
From then on, Sikong Yi was never seen again.
"Search for information regarding anomalies and sect ruins," Li Fan said to the Heavenly Profound Mirror, slowly recalling what he had witnessed in his previous life.
In an instant, hundreds, thousands of entries popped up.
However, for the vast majority, only the first few sentences were visible; obtaining the complete information required paying a certain amount of contribution points.
Li Fan was not stingy and immediately spent 100 contribution points to purchase the most popular entry, *Survival Guide to Sect Ruins*.
The guide's author was named Qi Yuanzhou, who was also of rogue cultivator origin.
Having spent years exploring and scouring various ruins, he only joined the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals after cultivating all the way to the Golden Core realm.
To emerge unscathed time and again from sect ruins fraught with peril, Qi Yuanzhou naturally possessed extraordinary ability.
The *Survival Guide to Sect Ruins* he compiled was eagerly sought after by many cultivators and revered as a guiding beacon.
The Cloud Water Heavenly Palace ruins were treacherous and perilous; though Li Fan possessed foreknowledge, he did not dare take them lightly.
He immediately studied the text in detail.
When the ancient great catastrophe descended, countless sects were annihilated, leaving only dilapidated ruins behind in the world.
Some of these ruins had long since been explored countless times by cultivators over the years, picked clean with nothing of value remaining.
Others, due to being exceedingly perilous and vast, had yet to be fully explored to this day. Even now, many cultivators ventured inside every year, whether seeking cultivation methods or pursuing opportunities for a breakthrough.
Still others were sects that had long been concealed by blessed lands or grand arrays, hidden away from the world. Such sects were completely virgin territory, veritable troves of opportunities. Once they emerged into the world, cultivators in the vicinity would inevitably swarm toward them.
The accumulated wisdom within the *Survival Guide to Sect Ruins* was tailored toward these latter two categories.
The guide noted that in today's cultivation world, all sects of value worth exploring could further be divided into two main categories:
One had no anomalies.
The other contained anomalies.
If no anomalies were present, then as long as one carefully guarded against arrays and mechanisms, there was generally no immense danger.
However, if an anomaly existed, one had to be cautious in the extreme.
The so-called anomalies referred to various bizarre phenomena within ruins that could not be measured by common sense.
As though not belonging to this world, anomalies often had their own unique rules.
Anomaly rules also varied in strength.
By convention in the cultivation world, the strength of anomaly rules was graded.
Based on the highest cultivation realm of cultivator they could affect, they were correspondingly divided into Qi Condensation-tier anomalies, Foundation Establishment-tier anomalies, Golden Core-tier anomalies, and so forth.
Cultivators within an anomaly's area of coverage whose cultivation fell below the strength of its rules were obligated to follow those rules.
Should they violate them, death was inevitable.
If their cultivation exceeded the strength of the anomaly's rule, they might remain unaffected by it and escape death.
Yet no matter how high one's cultivation was, an anomaly could not be altered.
Even a supreme expert of the Dao Integration stage could not change a Qi Condensation-tier anomaly rule.
Much less could they rescue a cultivator who had violated the anomaly's rules.
Once a living being entered the range of an anomaly, it would be triggered.
Only after the death toll reached a certain number, or the anomaly's rules were deciphered, could the cultivators who entered be permitted to leave.
The guide cited an example.
One hundred and fifty years ago, on an unnamed island in the western Congyun Sea near the mainland, an immortal's cave dwelling suddenly appeared.
From the moment it emerged, rosy glow radiated from it, illuminating several hundred li of sky around it.
Attracted by the precious light, many cultivators ventured inside to explore.
After some investigation, the cultivators discovered that this cave dwelling had been built before the death of Master Hongzhi, a rogue cultivator of the Nascent Soul realm from ancient times.
Inside the dwelling were more than ten cultivation methods, and magic treasures beyond count.
Overjoyed, the cultivators began fighting over them.
Right then, something horrifying occurred.
Every cultivator who smiled after snatching a method or treasure inexplicably had their head fly off.
The smiles on their faces were frozen forever.
In a mere instant, more than half the cultivators present died.
The remaining cultivators were terrified out of their wits, assuming there were restrictions placed upon the methods and magic treasures.
Leaving the treasures strewn across the ground untouched, they fled the cave dwelling.
Once word spread, there were naturally cultivators who refused to believe it and came to test the waters.
When they took the treasures and no restrictions triggered after a long while, they likewise broke into smiles—either disdainful or delighted.
Immediately, their heads parted from their bodies, rolling across the floor.
Only one cultivator, who was born with facial paralysis, escaped unharmed.
Even so, he was scared out of his senses by the gruesome scene; he merely grabbed a magic treasure on his way and fled in terror.
The news of another group being wiped out terrified all the greedy cultivators in the area.
The stone-faced cultivator who had luckily escaped with his life and retrieved a treasure from the dwelling naturally drew everyone's attention.
Yet no matter how they interrogated him, he insisted that he had no idea how he had survived.
Later, an astute man pondered the matter for a long time before deciphering the mystery.
Smiling was forbidden in this cave dwelling.
Regardless of the reason, the moment one smiled, their head would roll.
Though this sounded utterly absurd, after the astute man strolled calmly into the cave dwelling, retrieved a cultivation method with an impassive expression, and walked back out unscathed, all the cultivators believed it.
Thereupon, they all followed suit, emptying the cave dwelling of all its treasures.
...
What had occurred in Master Hongzhi's cave dwelling was the most typical and simple sort of anomaly, containing only a single rule.
In reality, the anomalies within sect ruins were often composites of multiple rules.
Anomalies were naturally perilous beyond measure. Without understanding their rules, the slightest misstep meant death.
Yet once their rules were mastered, the risk of an anomaly dropped almost to zero.
Drawing from his personal experiences of surviving anomalies multiple times, Qi Yuanzhou had summarized dozens of practical tips.
First: Remain calm at all times.
Under the shroud of an anomaly, any manner of unfathomable thing could happen.
Second: Do not act rashly.
When one does not understand an anomaly's rules, the faster one moves, the faster one dies.
Chapter 66