I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 359: That Shouldn’t Be Possible

Bai Feng tilted his head as though trying to decode a language he only half-understood.

"Oh... you mean our world," he said at last. Then he called it by a title Victor had never heard in his life.

Victor’s mouth fell open.

"...What world?"

Bai Feng repeated the name, unfazed.

Victor stared with a blank look. "That’s not a map. That’s not a region. That’s not even a patch update. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

The confusion that flooded him was different from ordinary confusion. This was deep and cold. A creeping dread that slithered beneath his skin and whispered that something impossible was unfolding.

Was Bai Feng seriously claiming that he was born in that world?

That he wasn’t born here?

That he came from there?

Impossible.

Absolutely, objectively impossible.

Because that would mean Bai Feng was what? A data construct? An NPC? A chunk of programming given life? No—no, no, no. That was insane. Only NPCs originated inside the game world.

Real players logged in from outside and so far, Bai Feng had claimed not to be a player. He even had an eastern name not an English name like him.

Unless...

Unless Ascendant Realms wasn’t fake.

Unless it was a real world.

Unless—

Victor shut the thought down so violently that his brain practically threw it out a window. No way. Zero percent probability. That kind of nonsense belonged in conspiracy forums, not real life.

He rubbed his temples, exhaling sharply. "Okay, you... you gotta slow down, man. Because none of this is adding up. And if you’re trying to troll me, congratulations—you’re succeeding."

But Bai Feng looked just as confused as Victor.

"I do not understand your meaning," he said sincerely. "Ascendant Realms? Market release? These are not terms of my world. Fang Chen, I speak only truth. We met years ago. Many battles. Many journeys. You saved my life. You and Tarkos both."

Victor stiffened at the name but Tarkos wasn’t real. He was an NPC.

Not like this man was claiming to be real.

Victor opened his mouth to question further but Bai Feng suddenly coughed.

And it wasn’t a normal cough.

It was a wet, hollow rasp that scraped the chamber walls like metal dragging across stone.

Rhozan, who had been standing at a respectful distance this whole time, finally moved. "Water," he muttered before summoning a vial and rushing forward.

Bai Feng took it with hands trembling but the moment the liquid touched his lips, his body convulsed.

His body jolted intensely as blood erupted from his mouth, splattering across his hands.

"Whoa—HEY!" Victor lunged immediately, catching him by the shoulders. "What’s happening?! I just healed you!"

But the blood didn’t stop.

Thick crimson ran from Bai Feng’s mouth.

Then from his nostrils.

Then from his ears.

Victor’s heart dropped. "No, no—WHAT is this?! I removed all the corruption!"

Bai Feng’s breathing hitched. His throat constricted. And when he spoke, his voice was strained like something inside him was tearing him apart from the inside.

"It... reignited..." he coughed as a trail of black dripped from the corner of his lip. "The corruption... came back..."

Victor’s blood ran cold.

"That’s not possible!" he shouted as qi flared instinctively around his hands. White Dragon scales flashed across his skin as he activated his healing techniques again. "Hold still—I’ll force it out again!"

He channeled qi and a golden glow burst forth.

However, nothing happened.

Absolutely nothing.

Bai Feng’s condition worsened instead causing dark veins to spread across his skin like ink bleeding into cloth.

Rhozan stepped forward urgently. "Iruhun—we must return him to the light beam. Now. Before the corruption fully claims him—"

"No..." Bai Feng croaked.

Both Victor and Rhozan froze.

Bai Feng met their stunned eyes with a look so resolved, so painfully human, that it cut deeper than any blade.

"I will not... go back... into that prison," he whispered. "Living inside that beam... is not living at all. Five years... five years conscious but frozen... unable to move... unable to speak... Please... do not put me back."

Rhozan faltered, clearly torn.

Victor felt his chest tighten. He didn’t know Bai Feng, not really, but watching someone choose death felt wrong. Everything in him rebelled against it.

"Don’t be stupid," Victor growled, trembling despite his anger. "You can recover if we just—"

"No." Bai Feng smiled weakly. Blood ran from the corner of his eye like a black tear. "My fight... ended a long time ago. But yours... Fang Chen... yours is still far from over."

Victor gripped his shoulders tighter. "Stop calling me that. My name is Victor."

Bai Feng’s gaze softened.

"Not to me."

Victor opened his mouth but a violent shudder tore through Bai Feng’s body.

He was dying fast and no healing technique was working.

It seemed as though the reignited corruption had adapted to Victor’s earlier involvement, making it impossible for the same type of healing technique to work twice.

Rhozan looked away, unable to bear the sight.

Bai Feng reached out suddenly, brushing Victor’s forehead with his fingers. Victor almost recoiled from instinct but something in Bai Feng’s expression stopped him.

A final plea.

"I don’t know... what happened to your memory... Fang Chen..." Bai Feng whispered with a low tone. "But maybe... this will help..."

His fingers traced a symbol on Victor’s head and a rune ignited.

Light spread from Bai Feng’s hand and burrowed into Victor’s mind like a shooting star falling through a storm.

Victor gasped as the world tilted.

He felt something some vastness press against the edges of his consciousness.

A foreign presence.

A whisper of another life.

A seed of memories that weren’t his.

DING.

A crisp audio cue echoed inside Victor’s mind.

Undeniably systemic.

[Memory Fragment Transfer: Successful]

Victor’s eyes flew open.

"What the hell—?!" 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

But before he could finish, Bai Feng collapsed.

Completely.

His body slumped forward with his eyes half-open and his pupils unfocused. The black corruption stilled as his breathing stopped.

Rhozan inhaled sharply.

Victor remained kneeling with Bai Feng’s lifeless weight resting against his arms.

Silence swallowed the chamber.

The man who knew Fang Chen from another world...

...was gone.

And inside Victor’s mind...

Something new had awakened.

Something waiting.

Something sealed.

Something his heart did not recognize—but his soul flinched from instinctively.

Fragments of a life he never knew he lived.

Bai Feng’s body had barely gone cold when a strange heaviness settled in Victor’s chest.

A deep pressure that he didn’t understand stirred inside of him.

He didn’t even fully understand the man who had just died in his arms. They had exchanged barely a single hour of conversation. By all logic, Bai Feng was a stranger, someone he had no reason to mourn.

And yet...

He felt something.

A hollow ache, a quiet resonance like a plucked string vibrating faintly inside him. As if some part of him recognized Bai Feng even while the rest of him screamed that it was impossible.

Victor rubbed his chest slowly, frowning.

’Why do I feel like this? Why does it hurt?’

He didn’t know the man. He didn’t know if anything he’d said was true. Bai Feng could’ve been delusional. Could’ve been corrupted. Could’ve been manipulating him. Could’ve been anyone.

But the man had died calling him "Fang Chen."

He had died smiling at him... with familiarity.

Victor exhaled shakily.

With the memory fragment transfer verified by the system notification resting quietly in the back of his mind, Victor knew the truth wouldn’t stay hidden.

When he eventually unlocked that memory... he would know whether all this madness was real.

The thought terrified him.

Because if Bai Feng was telling the truth...

Then everything Victor believed about Ascendant Realms, everything that grounded him... would crumble into dust.

It wouldn’t be a game.

It wouldn’t be fiction.

It wouldn’t be data.

NPCs wouldn’t be lines of code.

They would be people.

Living, thinking, feeling people in a real world he’d dismissed as fantasy.

His breath escaped him.

No. Impossible. It can’t be.

It shouldn’t be.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to unlock the fragment anymore.

He stared down at Bai Feng’s lifeless form. The corruption had stopped spreading, and his body was stabilizing into death. But his qi... that was another story.

Victor blinked and then froze in place.

Qi was leaking out of the corpse like escaping steam. Not ordinary qi. A density so compact and refined that it made the air around them tremble.

.

Victor’s eyes widened as he whispered with a stunned look. "His cultivation level..."

Victor swallowed because what he was sensing...

It wasn’t Soul Transformation.

It was above it.

"Void Tribulation Realm..." Victor muttered under his breath. "He was at Void Tribulation...?"

In Ascendant Realms, that was the level of those who could casually split mountains with their bare hands. Only two steps below ascension. One of the most terrifying peaks a mortal could reach.

And Bai Feng was way, way above Victor—by two entire great realms. Victor himself was only at Nascent Soul Realm.

The gap was astronomical.

Victor’s mind spun as his throat tightened. ’And I... the me he knew... saved this guy?’

That shouldn’t be possible.