I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 393: Black Zone

If he had come here when he was still at the Peak Core Formation realm, it would most likely have been over a 100% for him.

That alone would have crushed him instantly.

He took a step.

The ground beneath his foot absorbed qi, siphoning it like a leech. Every movement demanded twice the cost for half the effect.

Victor adjusted instantly, shifting his circulation pattern, drawing deeper from his foundation rather than external qi flow.

Even then, the zone fought him.

He could feel eyes on him.

Awareness without form.

Victor recalled the rumors about creatures that did not hunt flesh but souls.

Dark mediums that lingered between existence and nonexistence, feeding on regret, fear, or curiosity. Beings trapped by ancient formations or broken realms, unable to leave... desperate enough to trick intruders into exchanging places.

The Black Zone wasn’t a single environment... it was layered.

As he moved forward, he noticed subtle changes. There were areas where the ground grew unnaturally smooth, like something had erased texture entirely. Regions where the air warped, distorting distance and direction. Pockets of absolute silence so profound that even his own footsteps made no sound.

One of the reasons Victor had come this far into the Bloodshade Hunting Grounds was to see how far he could go.

He could have hunted any spirit beast in the red zone or even the yellow zone and completed the objective easily but he didn’t.

This was because from the moment he had another reason for coming this far.

From the moment Victor saw the objective, he decided that he would hunt a specific spirit beast...

And this specific spirit beast was one that was said to lurk in the black zone.

A very rare spirit beast...

"Map," Victor murmured to himself and a map from his storage appeared in his grasp.

It was not ancient enough to crumble, but old enough that the parchment had taken on a faint yellow hue with the ink slightly faded in places. This was a Bloodshade Hunting Grounds map, one that he had acquired long ago.

He unfolded it carefully.

The Outskirts were cleanly marked.

The Yellow Zone was detailed with sub-territories and danger ratings.

The Red Zone had warnings etched directly into the parchment with blood-red symbols meant to deter the reckless.

Then came the Black Zone.

Victor’s eyes narrowed.

Unlike the others, the Black Zone was only partially mapped. Large swathes of it were left blank, with only a few regions outlined and named in rough strokes, as though whoever attempted to chart it had either fled midway... or died.

And beyond that was the No Man Zone.

Only its starting boundary was marked.

Nothing beyond.

No terrain.

No regions.

No warnings.

Just an ominous note written in cramped script at the edge:

> "Here, maps end."

Victor folded the map slightly and let out a breath through his nose.

"Figures."

Still, he wasn’t here blindly.

The spirit beast he intended to hunt, lived in a region known as—

The Corrupt Triangle.

Victor traced the path with his finger.

To reach it, he would need to pass through three regions within the Black Zone:

1. The Weeping Stone Expanse

2. The Silent Vein Marsh

3. The Fractured Descent

Only after crossing all three would he reach the Corrupt Triangle.

Victor rolled the map up and stored it.

"Let’s get moving."

---

The land transformed subtly as Victor crossed into the first region.

At first glance, it looked deceptively simple.

An open stretch of grey-black rock, uneven and cracked, extending as far as the dim visibility allowed. No plants. No beasts. No structures.

It was too quiet.

Victor took a step forward and stopped.

The faint sound of crying reached his ears.

Victor frowned slightly.

The sound didn’t come from any one direction. It seeped through the stone itself, vibrating through the soles of his boots and into his bones.

He knelt and placed a hand on the ground, feeling the vibration.

All of a sudden, the ground shifted.

Victor sprang backward as the ground where he had just knelt bulged upward. A massive slab of rock tore itself free, cracking and splitting as a grotesque face emerged from its surface.

It had no body.

Just a colossal stone head fused into the terrain with hollow eyes and leaking dark spiritual fluid like tears.

The crying intensified.

> [Warning: Hostile Terrain Entity Detected — Mourning Stone Warden]

The stone face opened its mouth and a sonic wail erupted.

The sound wasn’t merely noise, it was a soul vibration, designed to rattle consciousness itself. Lesser cultivators would have had their souls shaken loose from their bodies instantly.

Victor felt the impact but his eyes remained calm.

He stepped forward instead.

The pressure of his Soul Transformation Realm aura rolled outward.

The wail faltered.

Cracks spread across the stone face as if reality itself was pressing down on it.

Victor raised his hand and clenched his fist.

The stone entity shattered into dozens of massive chunks, collapsing back into inert rubble.

The crying stopped and Victor exhaled.

"Still not much of a challenge..."

He continued onward, encountering more of them with some half-buried and some disguised as harmless terrain. Each attempted to ambush him with sonic attacks, soul pressure, or sudden gravitational shifts.

None succeeded.

By the time Victor exited the Weeping Stone Expanse, the ground behind him was littered with broken, lifeless stone faces.

---

The transition into the next region was immediate and unsettling.

The ground softened beneath Victor’s feet, turning from cracked stone to dark, viscous mud streaked with faintly glowing veins of red and violet qi.

A marsh.

But not of water.

Of qi-saturated sludge.

The air here carried a metallic scent that reminded Victor faintly of blood and rust.

The silence was absolute that even his breathing seemed muted. Not to mention that his spiritual senses seemed a bit dulled.

Victor frowned and took a step forward.

The mud pulled at him and his qi reserves ticked downward with each step.

> [Warning: Qi Drain Detected]

Victor adjusted his circulation, reinforcing his meridians internally rather than allowing qi to leak outward.

He moved carefully while scanning the terrain.

Minutes into transversing the region, he spotted something.

It sat atop a half-submerged rock near the edge of a shallow pool of sludge, no larger than a house cat. Its fur—or what passed for fur—was pale grey with faint silvery streaks, its body round and compact. Two large, glossy eyes blinked slowly as it tilted its head, watching him with what looked suspiciously like curiosity.

Victor stopped.

"...Huh."

This looked like a creature that shouldn’t be here.

It didn’t fit the environment.

Nothing small survived in the Silent Vein Marsh. Everything here fed on qi, corruption, or souls.

And yet—

This thing looked harmless.

Cute, even.

It let out a soft, uncertain chirp.

Victor raised a brow, then chuckled quietly.

"Well now," he voiced while crouching slightly. "What’s a cute little thing like you doing in a place like this?"

The creature didn’t flee.

It just blinked again.

Victor reached out and gently scooped it up with one hand.

It was warm and light.

Its tiny paws rested against his wrist, and its body trembled faintly, as though frightened.

"You seem lost," Victor added casually, lifting it up to eye level. "Either that, or you’re very confident."

For a brief moment, everything seemed okay and then the creature’s eyes changed.

The glossy black irises split, flooding with crimson light as its body shuddered violently.

Victor’s brow furrowed.

"...Oh."

The small frame expanded.

Bone cracked. Flesh warped. Limbs elongated grotesquely as the creature grew from two feet to five feet to ten feet and then, fifteen.

It’s s cute rounded body tore itself apart and reformed into something utterly nightmarish.

Spines erupted along its back.

Its mouth split open vertically, revealing rows of spiky teeth that spiraled inward.

By the time the transformation ended, the thing stood seventeen feet tall. Its body had become a twisted mass of muscle and dark hide with glowing veins of corrupted qi crawling beneath its skin.

And Victor was still holding it.

His hands were wrapped around its torso region, still holding it up in surprise, despite its massive size.

He stared at it in silence.

"...That explains it."

The creature roared and a shockwave of compressed qi detonated point-blank.

Victor was blasted backward with his boots skidding across the marsh as sludge erupted around him.

He twisted mid-air, landing smoothly with his robes fluttering as his eyes sharpened.

The beast didn’t hesitate.

Its chest expanded, and from its open maw it spat a spiraling lance of corrupted qi.

It spat out and the lance tore through the air.

Victor swerved sideways, turning into a blur but the qi lance curved.

His eyes widened a fraction.

He ducked just as it grazed past him, the ground behind exploding as the marsh was vaporized down to bedrock.

"Tch."

The creature slammed its fists together, generating a shock pulse that rippled outward. Victor leapt, but the pulse bent unpredictably, clipping him mid-air and sending him spinning.