The other side of the portal was unlike anything Xuhan had ever seen. It was daytime on the other side.
It definitely wasn't underground despite their jump down a hole in the ground just now. Han Xuhan could see the sky above, coloured stark blue with fog covering the majority of it from their sight. The fog itself was an oddity.

The fog looked very substantial, almost like floating powder. There was a constant light breeze blowing toward their direction, making the fog close in on them inch by inch like a living creature.

Han Xuhan also noticed the floating balls of light vaguely glowing from within the depths of the fog. With a rough glance, he realized that the balls of light could be categorized into a few levels. The biggest balls of light looked quite close to the outer layers of the fog, in other words, close to the two of them. All of these orbs were red coloured, emitting a glow like miniature suns.

Further within the fog, there were smaller orbs, glowing with an emerald light that was vaguely noticeable from where he stood.

The smallest, and rarest balls of light were floating far away from them, deep within the fog, emitting intense violet colour that resembled specks of starlight shining in the unfathomable distance.

The oddest thing wasn't these details either. Han Xuhan and Mu Ran could hear vague sounds of human voices shouting and see figures moving within the fog. All of the voices sounded hurried, the figures seemed to be running around very fast, faster than normal people at least. And the one common detail about all of them was that they all had their backs toward Han Xuhan and Mu Ran. All of them were moving further inside the depths of this foggy world.

Han Xuhan found this situation familiar.
Was this a mysterious world where some sort of ancient treasure was hidden by a powerhouse eons ago as a test?
After all, if there was anything all ancient cultivators had in common, it was making up all sorts of fucked up tests with high mortality rate in order to choose somebody who could inherit their legacy after they perished on the path of pursuing the great dao.

It was tempting, but Han Xuhan had never been a particularly greedy person. Right now, he had his hands full with the cultivation techniques he had been practicing. Risking his life to find a super cool technique invented by an old man thousands of years ago with unknown purposes... Han Xuhan couldn't find the appeal here. He preferred to rely on his own techniques. Granted, if he was willing to suffer a bit, with some luck, he might bag an awesome technique. But such techniques always came with added conditions and requirements most people couldn't meet. Han Xuhan himself had always run low on luck. He wasn't willing to bet his life on this.

"Boss, you said something is wrong with the fog, right?"

Mu Ran nodded in affirmation.
With tentative steps, he went closer to the fog and pulled out a small bottle from his robe. Swiftly pushing the bottle toward the fog, he used his qi to wrap it up and made the bottle move around in the fog by manipulating the qi. After a few seconds, the qi carried the bottle back to him, now filled with the oddly substantial fog.

"Hand me one of the spiritual herbs we bought on the sect's exchange market; one of those with healing properties."

Xuhan searched inside the numerous pockets of his robe and pulled out a pouch of herbs after a while.

Mu Ran picked one of the leafy ones from the packet and squeezed out a bit of greenish liquid from the stems, which he dropped inside the foggy bottle.

A hissing sound came from inside. As soon as the dark green juice came in contact with that fog, it started to vaporize. Within a few seconds, the green liquid was completely vaporized while the fog inside the bottle slowly changed its colour from white to pale blue.

It didn't take a professional healer to understand what happened inside the bottle. The green liquid had healing properties which had been neutralized and vaporized by the fog. The fog had to be some kind of extremely poisonous gas.

Han Xuhan and Mu Ran exchanged a puzzled glance and looked back at the approaching fog. If the fog was so poisonous, how were the people inside it moving around so vigorously?

Confused, both young men walked around the edge of the foggy area. Behind them was a cliff with no bottom in sight. There was no other side of the cliff, only more fog clouding their sight. So the direction the portal had been pointing them toward was definitely ahead alongside their predecessors inside the fog. They could still return back to the woods since the portal was right behind them at the edge of the cliff. But this was the only clue they had uncovered related to their mission.

Unable to figure out any way to investigate what was happening inside the foggy area, they sat down and decided to chew on some dry food to replenish energy. Xuhan's back was still aching from smacking into the tree. The skin there had turned red. But surprisingly, the perks of being in the second layer of physique transformation realm was showing slowly. The joints that should have dislocated were just slightly painful, the skin that should have ripped was already recovering without shedding a drop of blood. Xuhan could roughly estimate that his body would recover on its own within a few hours.

After a few hours of rest, both of of them were starting to get impatient. Sitting here wasn't exactly without risks. If Shen Kai was really a demonic cultivator, then the chances of him returning with reinforcements weren't low. Then the two would be caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to move in either direction.

Mu Ran had dozed off for a while despite the tense situation, something that struck Xuhan as suspicious. After waking up, he had clearly gotten more impatient than before, which was apparent from his constant prowling at the edge of the fog.

Suddenly, they saw a figure rushing toward them from within the fog. Mu Ran immediately backed up and touched the handle of the spear on his back while Xuhan clutched one of his axes.

The fog tumbled crazily around the him as the man ran out of the foggy area and rushed past Xuhan and Mu Ran like an unstoppable arrow, heading toward the bottomless cliff without showing any signs of stopping.

Both of them were taken aback at first, but they reacted fast enough to stop the running man in time by clutching his flailing arms.

But the man seemed to have lost his senses. Ignoring them entirely, he screamed incessantly and tried to crawl his way toward the cliff despite the two of them trying to hold him down. Xuhan noted that the man wasn't really very strong physically, almost no different from a mortal who hadn't cultivated...

Soon, Xuhan made the connection in his mind and figured out the possible identity of this man.

"Hey, heyhey- stop screaming. PINE TOWN! You're from Pine town, right?"

That got the crazy man's attention. But his struggle only slowed down a notch. Still twisting under their grip, he heckled out a few broken sentence between his screams.

"Kill me...hurts...Kill me... made me go first...painful! So painful! I swear...didn't want to kill that kid..."

Some parts of his garbled speech could be understood by linking them with clues they already had gathered. The demonic cultivators must have used the kidnapped people as cannon fodder to explore the foggy areas in front of them. The poison must have seeped in his body and slowly killing him from within.

However , what was that about killing a kid? Han Xuhan's mind drew a blank at that part.

But before they could do anything to remedy the man's situation, he let out one final tragic scream and his body shrivelled up as if mummified. Han Xuhan dropped the man in shock and disgust while Mu Ran jumped away from the corpse and cast a string of qi to push the mummified corpse away from them as fast as possible.

Han Xuhan's chest beat like a drum. This was the first time he had come in contact with a corpse, not to mention it was such a terrifying one at that. Mu Ran didn't look very well either. But he seemed to be handling the shock better than Xuhan.

"I'm not going inside the fog, no way in hell am I doing it before we find a legit way to neutralise the fog's poison. "

Mu Ran didn't refute Xuhan's words this time. But Han Xuhan could see it in his eyes; Mu Ran was absolutely determined to find a way into the fog for some reason.

Right then, Han Xuhan heard a gurgling sound coming from the 'corpse'.