Mystique Soul: A Cultivator's Flame

The group stood at the edge of the eerie mist, its swirling tendrils seeming almost alive as they stretched toward the travelers like hungry claws. The oppressive silence made the air feel heavy, and even the bravest among them shifted uneasily.

Various talents both magic and Qi tries to come up with ways to get across. After all, this is an excort mission, if they fail half way, then they all came here for nothing, their pay might be cut or in worse case scenario, not go through as this would be considered a failed mission.

Others tries to soar high, some trying to see a way through, an opening while the rest are mulling over the mist trying to analyze and understand what it is exactly.

Feng Jiao Xue isn't idle either as she also stood before the mist in contemplation.

"We can't stay here," Li Mei said, her tone sharp and impatient. "If we linger, the mist might consume us before we even step in."

"Do you always have to state the obvious?" snapped one of the cultivators, a burly man with a greatsword strapped to his back. "Unless you've got a plan, keep quiet."

The tension between the groups were palpable, but it dissipated as Han Qing stepped forward. His calm, icy demeanor cut through the rising panic.

"The mist is not natural" He said, his voice even. "It reacts to movement and sound, but it doesn't advance beyond a certain point." She pointed to the faint line on the ground, marking the mist's boundary. Perhaps previous adventurer has marked that before.

"Why don't we just try to go around it?" someone suggested, his voice trembling.

"Foolish," muttered a mage with a staff glowing faintly in his hand. "This isn't ordinary fog. It's enchanted. It could go around the entire mountaint for all we know and we'd be dead by beast attacks before we could go over it entirely."

The mage, an older man with a weathered face, stepped closer to the mist. He murmured a few incantations, the words weaving intricate sigils in the air. The mist recoiled slightly, as if disturbed, but surged back almost immediately.

"It's not sentient yet acts as if it's alive. It senses others nearing it." he mage said grimly. "And there's a stronger force at its core, assuming it is it's corporal core as it means we have a physical target."

"By that notion, to pass through, we'll need a barrier strong enough to repel it." A brown haird magician suggested.

"Oh?" The first mage speaker raised his brow wanting to understand his thought process.

This also earned the attention of the different groups nearby as it is plausable.

The brown haird mage summoned a blue small bird and created a round spear acting as a barrier towards it. The bird tried to escape, falpping it's small wings and slamming its tiny body against the barrier to no avail.

"Chiii! Chiiipp! Chip!!! Chirp!!!!" The bird flied more frantically, trying to escape it's round confines even more as it got nearer to the mist.

It cried, desperate to get out while the groups watch to see what would happen.

"Ngou..." Yin Xiao whined, burrying his face on Feng Jiao Xue unable to stomach the sight.

Feng Jiao Xue hugged the head of her white companion while her eyes focused on the small orb encasing the bird.

The small bird pitifully cried agitating the mist and yet, as the small round barrier entered the mist and floated out of their sight, it's sharp chirps the only confirmation it still lives.

The mage kept it there for a while before taking it out, unscath, relieving everyone while the bird immediately flew away once the barrier dissapeared.

"A barrier works?" Liang Feng uncertainly asked, skeptical. "But how do you propose we maintain that?"

The mage glanced at the others in his profession. "If we combine our powers, we can create a temporary shield. But it will drain us. If anyone disrupts our focus, the barrier will fail."

Everyone packed up, to save room, all the contractual beats went back inside their owners.

All the mages formed a circle around the cultivators, staffs, wands and different conduits being used to make sure that their magic is stabilized. Magic is innate to magicians, their very cores able to store it and their training enables them to utilize it but artifacts like staffs, wands and other objects can serve to aid the magicians either by amplifying their magic or helping them with their output of it to make it easier for them to wield.

Slowly, everyone threaded carefully towards the mist with bated breath. Their vission's slowly being clouded by nothing but white moving mists, pulsing, waiting. It has no eyes but they felt watched. The scent of decay sorrounding them as if they had entered not that of the mist, but the breath of death itself.

Dread churned on the stomach but they had no choice but to keep moving forward.

Even Feng Jiao Xue felt unsettled, her palms feeling moist while her hand never left her blade.

The corpses appeared slowly at first-one, then another, and soon dozens. Without a doubt, the mist hides more than what they can see.

Scattered across the ground like discarded puppets, their hollow eye sockets seemed to watch the group as they passed. The air was thick with a metallic scent, and the silence was suffocating.

"Young master, stay beside me" Han Qing urged, ready to strike at any moment. No matter what, his eyes remained firm, dedicated to ensuring that his master will not come to harm. Not while his alive.

The rest of his people also stayed around him. Xu Bo and Zang Shi particularly by his side just in case the magicians fails to hold the barrier.

"These people were powerful," muttered one of the cultivators, his voice barely above a whisper. "Look at their robes-sect leaders, rogue warriors... even noble clans"

"Dead, just like the rest,"'Han Qing said curtly. His cold tone offered no comfort, but the warning was clear 'their strength hadn't saved them from this place.'

Feng Jiao Xue's gaze swept over the scene. Unlike the others, she wasn't unnerved by the sight of death. She focused instead on the strange patterns carved into the ground around the bodies-marks of struggle or something far more sinister? Her sharp eyes missed nothing and yet, just like how she felt most of the time in this world, a fish out of water. Her fist clenched around the hilt it was holding, her knuckles turning white from the grip. She's out of her depth.

A firm hand squeezed her shoulder snapping her out of it and slowly, she released a breath.

"It's fine" Liang Feng assured her softly "I'll protect you" he promised and for some reason, that was enough for Feng Jiao Xue.

Unbeknownst to her, a talisman riddled with runes glowed beneath the prince's palm, dissapearing