I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 395: Mental Degradation Possible

Victor stood at the edge of the Fractured Descent, where the Black Zone finally shed all pretense of being land. Ahead of him, space itself seemed to have been broken and reassembled incorrectly.

There was no ground nor sky... only a vast, yawning nothingness, punctuated by floating stone platforms of varying size and distance.

Some were cracked and ancient.

Some were pristine.

Some shimmered faintly, as though they weren’t fully real.

Beneath them was nothingness...

No mist. No darkness. No depth.

Just absence, as if the concept of "below" had been erased.

Victor exhaled slowly.

"So this is it," he muttered. "The Fractured Descent."

The map he carried had only one note scrawled over this region in faded ink: 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

> If you can still turn back, do it.

He stepped onto the first platform and it held.

The second platform trembled slightly when he landed but stabilized.

However, the third...

Phased halfway through his foot.

Victor instantly pulled back, letting the sole of his boot pass through the stone as if it were smoke.

"Fake," he said calmly.

He adjusted his rhythm, leaping only after letting his spiritual sense brush each platform first... testing resistance, density and intent.

After a couple of minutes, he noticed someone else up ahead.

A lone figure stood several platforms ahead, calm and unmoving.

It was a cultivator.

His robes were tattered and ancient with the edges frayed as if chewed by time itself. His posture was relaxed with hands clasped behind his back and feet planted firmly on the stone beneath him.

Victor narrowed his eyes.

"Senior," the figure said softly, his voice echoing strangely in the empty expanse. "I will guide you safely onward... on one condition."

Victor stopped.

He didn’t step closer.

He studied the man carefully.

There was no aura.

No cultivation pressure.

No qi fluctuation.

Nothing.

"You’ll guide me onward to safety?" Victor asked.

"Yes."

"What’s the condition?"

The figure paused, then smiled faintly.

"Come closer," he said, lifting one hand and beckoning Victor toward the platform he stood on.

That was enough to make Victor suspicious.

His gaze sharpened.

"No," he replied flatly. "I’ll get through myself."

The air twisted.

The cultivator’s expression shattered into fury.

"COME HERE!"

Black chains erupted from beneath his robes, forged of condensed curse-qi and spatial binding. They shot forward like serpents, wrapping around Victor’s torso, arms, and legs in an instant.

System warnings exploded into view.

> [WARNING!]

[Spatial Soul Binding Detected]

[Condition: Forced Position Exchange]

[Outcome: Target will replace entity and be bound permanently to platform]

"So that’s your game," Victor said coldly.

The chains yanked him forward, causing the platform to draw closer.

However, before he could reach it...

<[ Shadow Blink Activated ]>

Victor vanished.

The chains kept pulling an empty space while Victor reappeared several platforms ahead... past the cultivator.

He turned his head slightly.

"Nice try."

The cultivator screamed in rage as his form distorted repeatedly.

"YOU’LL BE BACK—YOU ALL COME BACK—"

Victor didn’t look again, he kept moving forward.

The platforms ahead grew more treacherous.

Some were real but hostile.

He leapt toward one only for it to suddenly slide backward, drifting away at impossible speed. The next nearest platform was more than a hundred feet away and Victor began falling after missing the platform that suddenly shifted while he was in mid air.

However, Victor suddenly activated Wind Glide.

A compressed platform of wind formed beneath his foot. He kicked off it hard, launching himself forward and landing on the next platform in a crouch.

Unfortunately, as soon as he landed on the next platform, it began to rotate violently.

The platform spun and shot backward, racing toward the beginning of the region like it had been flung from a sling.

"Tch."

Shadow Blink.

Victor vanished again, reappearing safely on another platform farther ahead.

"This place really hates visitors," he muttered.

The closer he got to the far end of the Fractured Descent, the worse it became.

Platforms vanished mid-leap.

Others inverted gravity.

Some emitted blasts that caused spatial vertigo, making distance impossible to judge.

Fortunately for Victor, having the Void Emperor had saved him from a lot of sticky situations in this region.

After another one hour of crossing through the region, he spotted lights.

Tiny dots were scattered through the air ahead. Pale, shimmering motes that hovered without pattern or rhythm. They looked harmless... almost beautiful.

Victor slowed. The last time he let his guard down around something that looked cute, he paid the price. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake.

He stepped forward, avoiding the first few easily.

However, just after darting past a bunch, one suddenly moved.

It darted forward like a living thought and latched onto his back. It was so sudden and incredibly quick that it took Victor by surprise.

The instant it made contact with him, an afterimage peeled off Victor’s body.

A perfect copy, half a second delayed was now tethered to his form.

Victor jumped forward.

The afterimage jumped too... but misjudged the distance. It missed the platform Victor landed on by a few centimers and began to fall.

Victor felt a violent yank... an unseen force dragged him off the platform like he was directly linked to the falling afterimage by an invisible chain.

"What—?!"

Shadow Blink!

He vanished just in time, reappearing safely on another platform with the afterimage.

"The hell?"

Victor decided to test it...

He took a step forward and the afterimage mirrored him imperfectly... he jumped and the afterimage jumped too but not as high as he did.

It turned out that whatever he did, the afterimage would copy but it would be off by a notch. And whatever happened to the afterimage will happen to him.

If it fell, he would fall too even if he was standing on a solid platform.

"Great," Victor muttered. "Sympathetic spatial parasites."

He avoided the lights more carefully now, sensing that he would most likely have more afterimages if he made contact with more.

Unfortunately, the deeper he went... the more there were.

Soon, they filled the air like stars in a broken sky.

There was no clear path forward without brushing against them.

And worse... Shadow Blink was on cooldown.

He had used it too many times.

Victor exhaled slowly, narrowing his eyes.

"Alright."

He focused and activated his Void Emperor Bloodline.

Arrow like markings appeared all over his skin and neck as his body glowed faintly like the moonlight. His hair floated upwards as space rippled around him.

He focused his mind on what lay up ahead... far and deep into the distance unseen...

After a few more seconds...

<[ Dimensional Warp Activated ]>

Silver markings exploded across the air beneath his feet, forming a complex sigil that warped reality inward.

Victor vanished instantlyly and reappeared... elsewhere.

Pale ash fog surrounded him in every direction. It clung to his skin, muted sound, swallowed light.

He tried to extend his spiritual sense but it proved difficult... even taking a step forward felt forced... there was a lot of resistance.

"...Where the hell am I?"

The answer appeared uninvited.

> [System Notification]

[You have entered: Bloodshade Hunting Grounds – No Man Zone]

Victor stared at the message and then laughed quietly.

"...Of course... very smart Victor... using a spatial technique to get yourself out of the frying pan and right into the middle of a fucking volcano..."

This was No Man Zone...

Where maps ended...

Where cultivators vanished...

Where even Void Tribulation Realm experts refused to tread...

Even breathing hurt in this region...

Victor staggered forward through the pale ash fog feeling like he was dragging his body through thick, invisible mud. His thoughts came slower than they should. His limbs reacted a fraction of a second late. Even the flow of qi through his meridians felt delayed, as though the world itself had imposed a tax on motion.

Time was wrong here.

Each heartbeat felt stretched. Each breath echoed longer than it should have.

Whispers crawled into his ears.

—Another arrogant fool...

—They always come thinking they’re different...

—This place eats kings and leaves bones...

Victor clenched his jaw and kept moving.

His spiritual senses were useless... what little he could extend was bent, folded, and reflected back at him. In the distance, shapes shifted within the fog. Silhouettes that couldn’t decide what they were. One moment vaguely humanoid, the next warped into something beastlike, then dissolving again into formless shadows.

None approached yet...

They seemed to be watching.

What unsettled him most was not the hostility but the familiarity in those whispers. As though they had once been people.

Up ahead, something glowed.

Victor fixed his gaze on it and pushed forward.

Another system message bled into view, its letters faint and distorted.

> [Warning: Prolonged exposure detected]

[Mental Integrity Degradation Possible]

[Symptoms: Hallucinations, Temporal Drift, Identity Dissolution]

"Yeah," Victor muttered hoarsely. "I have no intentions of staying."

The only reason Victor had spent more than a second here was because he was struggling to circulate his qi well enough to activate Dimensional Warp again.

He felt the thickness reduce a bit as he got a little closer to whatever was glowing.