I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 392: Thirty Percent

The words landed heavier than any technique.

The leader’s head snapped up, eyes bloodshot and wide.

The others froze as terror washed over their faces in a way no illusion could replicate.

"No—no, senior!" one of the half-buried men screamed, coughing violently. "Please! Please spare us!"

"We were wrong! We were blind!" another shouted with a croaking voice. "We didn’t know! We swear!"

Victor’s aura pressed harder.

The ground around them sank another inch.

"How many others," Victor asked quietly, "begged you like this?"

His gaze moved from face to face.

"How many of them did you listen to?"

Silence~

"You’re begging now," Victor continued, "because I am strong—and you are weak."

His aura expanded just a fraction more.

"If it were the other way around," he said, "I’d be at your mercy."

He leaned forward slightly and his eyes locked onto the leader’s.

"And you wouldn’t show me any."

The leader’s lips trembled. Sweat poured down his face in rivulets, soaking into the ground beneath him.

Something broke.

"I—I know!" the leader cried hoarsely. "I know we were wrong! Senior, please! We won’t do it again! I swear on my cultivation, on my dao—!"

Victor exhaled softly.

At that moment, he stopped suppressing.

The disguise shattered.

A wave of true pressure erupted outward.

It was absolute.

The air warped... Qi howled... and the very space around Victor seemed to bend in acknowledgment.

The four men felt it instantly.

This wasn’t Nascent Soul Realm.

This was far beyond what they had imagined.

"S–Soul Transformation Realm..." the early Nascent Soul cultivator whispered in horror.

The others stared at Victor like mortals looking upon a god.

They shook harder.

"Senior!" they cried in unison now. "We won’t do it again! We swear! We’ll leave the Bloodshade forever! We’ll change!"

Victor nodded once.

"Oh, I know you won’t," he said calmly.

"I’ll make sure of it."

Their faces drained of all color.

This was it.

Death.

They could feel it in their bones.

But Victor didn’t raise his sword.

He didn’t summon qi into his palms.

Instead, he extended his hand and twisted.

A sharp, invisible force surged into all four bodies at once.

Meridians ruptured instantly.

The leader screamed like a raw animal as his internal pathways collapsed one after another. Qi that had flowed through him for up to a century vanished in an instant, leaking uselessly into the air.

The others followed.

One by one, their cultivation foundations shattered.

The mid Nascent Soul cultivator let out a broken sob as his nascent soul destabilized and dissolved. His realm collapsed back into nothingness.

It was worse than death.

They were alive but empty.

When Victor released his aura, they collapsed like puppets with cut strings.

Utterly powerless.

The pressure of the Yellow Zone would have killed them within seconds but Victor spread his spiritual intent over them like a canopy.

And then, he proceeded to grabbed them.

Arrow like markings appeared on his skin as his body emitted a moon like translucent glow.

In the next instant he activated Dimensional Warp.

<[ Dimensional Warp Activated ]>

A silver marking appeared beneath his feet and then the world folded.

---

They reappeared in a place filled with noise, shouting, footsteps and commerce.

This was Blueflame city square.

Cultivators and players alike froze as four bodies slammed onto the stone pavement in the center of the square, rolling helplessly to a stop.

Gasps rang out.

"Who are they?"

"What happened?"

"Did they just—fall from nowhere?"

The four men cried openly now.

"My cultivation... my cultivation is gone!"

"I can’t feel my qi!"

"How am I supposed to live like this?!"

Victor appeared an instant later, standing above them.

His presence alone caused people to instinctively stepped back. How many Soul Transformation Realm Cultivators existed in this city? And the realm after it was one that only elders in sects had reached.

Victor looked down at the broken men.

"At least now," he said evenly, "you can live honestly."

The leader looked up at him with hollow eyes.

"Senior... our lives are over..."

Victor met his gaze.

"No," he said. "They’re just starting."

He turned away.

Before anyone could ask questions, before guards could even react, Victor activated Dimensional Warp again.

Space folded and he reappeared exactly where he intended to be.

The edge of the Red Zone.

The air here was heavier and saturated with danger. The land itself seemed hostile as Victor stepped forward.

A familiar notification appeared.

> [You have entered: Bloodshade Hunting Grounds — Red Zone]

[Proceed with Caution]

[Spiritual Pressure Increased by 0.0001%]

Victor stared at it for a moment and then he laughed quietly.

"Last time," he muttered, "it was forty-five percent."

He remembered it vividly.

Every breath a struggle.

Every step like climbing a mountain with weights chained to his soul.

The way the Red Zone had crushed him until survival itself felt like defiance.

But now he couldn’t even feel it.

Victor took another step...

And then another...

The Red Zone welcomed him like an old enemy forced to acknowledge defeat.

He didn’t rush.

He didn’t teleport.

He walked.

Because this time, he wanted to feel it.

To understand just how far he had truly come.

With each step deeper into the Red Zone, the world thinned out socially. Cultivators became fewer. Groups disappeared entirely. The noise of clashing techniques, shouted commands, and desperate battles faded into distant echoes until there was nothing but the wind and the ominous sound of qi-saturated land.

This was how it had always been.

The deeper one went, the more the Bloodshade Hunting Grounds revealed its true nature—not as a hunting ground, but as a filter.

Only the strong endured.

Only the prepared advanced.

Only the foolish went further without understanding why no one else did.

Victor walked with his hands behind his back with unhurried footsteps. The Red Zone pressed against him with a spiritual weight that would have crushed most early Nascent Soul cultivators flat within minutes.

For him, it felt like walking through shallow water.

Eventually, the terrain began to slope upward.

A ridge emerged.

Victor recognized it immediately.

The Serpent’s Hollow.

He stopped at the crest and looked down.

The ridge lay beyond an elevated, crescent-shaped ledge carved naturally along the side of a massive ravine. The drop below was impossible to measure with the naked eye. Mist poured endlessly from its depths like breath escaping a slumbering titan, thick, silver-grey, and heavy with condensed spiritual energy.

A strange chill radiated upward as Victor leaned forward slightly and peered into the abyss.

There was a lot of movement below.

Massive, coiling shadows slid through the fog below. They were serpents layered upon serpents with scales as thick as armor plates, bodies as wide as tree trunks. Occasional glints of moonlight reflected off slit pupils as some glowed faintly.

This was where he had acquired the Mythical Shadow-Eyed Moon Serpents.

Back then, just surviving this place had been a miracle.

Victor let out a quiet chuckle.

"If I had this strength then," he muttered, "I could’ve walked down and picked one out."

He remembered the desperation.

The days trapped.

The constant brink between death and survival.

Now the ravine felt... tame.

Victor straightened and continued on.

He wasn’t here for serpents.

The Red Zone stretched far wider than the Yellow Zone ever had with its geography fractured into multiple sub-regions.

Some were scorched black by ancient battles while others were riddled with crystalline growths that drained qi on contact, and still others filled with toxic spiritual fog that whispered faint hallucinations into the mind.

Victor passed through them all.

A forest of blood-red stone trees whose branches pulsed like veins.

A valley where gravity warped subtly, pulling at the soul instead of the body.

A canyon filled with echoing roars from unseen beasts that never revealed themselves.

He encountered danger but none of it slowed him.

Eventually, the land changed again.

The air grew even heavier than before and the ground darkened. The sky dimmed as if light itself was being swallowed. Even sound seemed reluctant to travel far.

Victor stopped and ahead of him was an invisible boundary.

No marker.

No sign.

Just a sense.

This was it.

The Black Zone.

There were no cultivators here.

None at all.

Not a single footprint disturbed the ground ahead. No qi residue. No signs of recent battles. It was as though the world itself discouraged memory beyond this point.

Victor took a breath.

"Let’s see," he murmured, "what everyone’s been so afraid of."

He stepped forward.

---

The moment he crossed the threshold, the world changed.

It wasn’t dramatic.

There was no explosion of light or surge of sound.

Instead, everything... dropped.

Visibility collapsed instantly, reduced to barely a dozen meters. Colors dulled, drained into muted greys and blacks, as if someone had leached vibrancy out of reality itself.

Victor felt his qi circulation slow down by a few notches as a series of notifications appeared in rapid succession.

> [You have entered: Bloodshade Hunting Grounds — Black Zone]

[Warning: Extreme Risk Area]

[Spiritual Pressure Increased: 30%]

[Qi Expenditure Increased: x2]

[Movement Efficiency Reduced: 10%]

[Caution: You may be stalked by spirit beasts, dark mediums, or bound entities]

Victor exhaled slowly.

"Thirty percent," he noted.