139: Chapter 139 The hammer is at the bottom of the abyss, even if I'm deaf, I'll still take it.

The biting cold wind cut like knives across the edge of the rift valley.

Chen Fan held Su Shuang, each step treading the line between life and death, as gravel tumbled from beneath his feet into the bottomless darkness.

His chest heaved violently, not from exhaustion, but because the body in his arms was growing colder and colder.

Black Crow's telepathic message was intermittent, torn to shreds by the gale, sounding like a ghostly murmur: “The... the depths of the Thunder Abyss... there are... terrifying fluctuations... and her bloodline frequency... they've... completely synchronized!”

Synchronized?

Chen Fan looked down, his heart sinking sharply.

On Su Shuang’s originally pale cheeks, several wisps of bizarre black energy appeared, like some living creature climbing upward along her blood vessels.

The tips of her fingers trembled almost imperceptibly, and a thread of black blood slowly seeped from the corner of her tightly clenched lips.

This was the sign that the Fox Demon Bloodline was being completely eroded by the system's poison!

If this continued, she would rot from the inside out, her soul utterly destroyed!

“Boss!” A hoarse voice came from a rock crevice ahead. Flash Skin crawled out using his hands and feet. Half his body was embedded in the rock, and the skin on his arm flickered with an unstable glimmer, as if it could extinguish at any moment. “We can’t go any further! Three miles ahead is the Lightning Fall Zone! Not even the wind can enter that place; a living person who goes in instantly turns to a puff of ash!”

Chen Fan’s steps finally halted. He looked at the faint Su Shuang in his arms; her face, which had once shown him a sly smile, now held only the dead silence of pain.

The last words Old Horse Head had spoken while gripping his hand with his dying strength boomed in his ears— “As long as you’re alive... there is hope, kid...”

Hope?

The last trace of hesitation in Chen Fan’s eyes was replaced by a frenzied resolve.

He ground his back molars, every word sounding like blood squeezed from his throat: “Then I’ll keep her alive! Even if the price is that I can’t hear or see, even if it costs me my life!”

He took another step, this time faster and steadier than before, like an arrow shot toward hell.

Three miles passed under Chen Fan’s feet in just a few breaths.

The true entrance to the Thunder Abyss suddenly appeared before him.

There was no lightning or thunder as imagined, only a massive, scorched bronze bell standing silently at the mouth of the abyss, like a dormant, ancient behemoth.

A stooped figure guarded behind the bell—the legendary Mute Bell Keeper.

Expressionless, every time he mechanically swung the bell hammer to strike the bronze bell, a bowl-thick bolt of thunder-fire would erupt in the valley without warning, precisely striking any creature attempting to trespass into charcoal.

Beside the bell, a child of about seven or eight squatted there. He wore ragged cloth, his eyes were vacant, devoid of any spirit, like a soulless puppet.

It was Thunder Child.

The moment Chen Fan approached, Thunder Child seemed pulled by invisible threads and suddenly lifted his head. Those empty eyes stared directly toward Chen Fan’s direction. His lips moved, emitting a dry, grating sound that was not like that of a living person: “After the seventh strike, the thunder stops for three breaths.”

“Don’t trust him!” Flash Skin caught up from behind, his voice filled with terror as he roared, “He is the sacrifice of the Thunder Abyss. Every time he speaks a prophecy, he trades it with his own life! Every time he speaks correctly, someone dies!”

Chen Fan’s gaze did not linger on Thunder Child’s empty face, but was fixed firmly on the small hand he was trembling as he raised—that skinny, bony finger was pointing at a slight eccentric axis on the bell hammer held by the Mute Bell Keeper!

That was not a prophetic guide!

That was the only mechanical blind spot during the process of vibration transmission!

It was the time difference that could delay the lightning activation when the bell body resonated!

That was the spot!

In a flash of lightning, Chen Fan had made his decision.

The blue flame fire seed within his body was pushed to the extreme, and a scorching power instantly poured into his right palm. His entire arm lit up with a faint blue glow.

“Flash Skin!” he commanded without looking back, “Light up for me for three seconds! Use your brightest light!”

“Boss!” Flash Skin roared, but showed no hesitation.

He violently tore the skin on his other arm. This time, it was not a faint glimmer, but blinding white light, like an electric welder, erupting forth and illuminating a hundred-meter radius as if it were daylight!

“Clang—!”

The sixth bell strike sounded, and a bolt of thunder-fire exploded where Chen Fan had just been standing, instantly turning the ground into glass.

The Mute Bell Keeper expressionlessly raised the bell hammer, preparing to strike the decisive seventh blow.

At that very moment, the dazzling white light made him instinctively narrow his eyes.

A faint blue afterimage, using this brief visual obstruction, rushed into the bell’s shadow like a phantom!

Chen Fan’s figure was incredibly fast. All his strength, all his hope, converged onto the right fist burning with blue flame!

The target was not the bronze bell, nor the Mute Bell Keeper, but the tiny eccentric axis pointed to by Thunder Child’s finger!

“Shift for me... sideways!”

He threw a punch! The air let out a mournful cry of being overloaded!

[Equipment Critical Hit × 3.7]

Blood-red text flashed across Chen Fan’s vision.

Just an instant before striking the bell body, the massive bell hammer was violently struck on the eccentric axis by an unreasonable, brute force!

“Clang—Ohm...”

The seventh bell strike was delayed by half a beat!

The sound became incredibly dull and distorted, like the death wail of a giant beast.

The entire bronze bell body violently deflected due to this critical hit force!

“Now!” Thunder Child let out a piercing shriek, using all his strength.

Chen Fan had already calculated this moment. Without even looking at the result, the instant the punch was thrown, he tightly embraced Su Shuang, curled his body into a ball, and violently tumbled into the abyss entrance!

The moment he rolled into the abyss, the half-beat-delayed thunder-fire finally arrived late, pouring down like an angry waterfall of thunder dragons, grazing his back and melting the rocks at the entrance into magma—it was a hair's breadth!

“My heavens...” Black Crow’s gasp sounded in Chen Fan’s mind, “You... you utilized the principle of pendulum resonance to forcibly create a time difference! But that Thunder Child... he wasn’t predicting; he was enduring the backlash of every lightning strike with his own soul to exchange for that tiny flaw!”

Before the words faded, at the entrance of the abyss, two streams of shocking blood tears flowed from Thunder Child’s empty eyes. His body went limp, and he fainted straight down.

The bottom of the abyss was another world.

There was no ground here, only massive thunder pillars soaring into the sky. They looked like the skeleton supporting heaven and earth, emitting terrifying purple electric light.

And in the center of all the thunder pillars, a hammer too magnificent for words hovered in the void.

The hammer body was ancient, yet it was entwined with purple lightning that seemed alive.

Every time that lightning flickered, every time it pulsed, Su Shuang in his arms would convulse violently, and the black blood at the corner of her lips would flow faster.

Chen Fan’s gaze sharpened. He found the only protruding stone platform nearby and carefully placed her upon it.

The blue flame fire seed in his body slowly sank into his Dantian, accumulating power.

Ling Wuchen’s words, filled with unwillingness and a sense of fate, resurfaced when he was defeated— “To obtain something, someone must sacrifice.”

Sacrifice?

Chen Fan looked at Su Shuang’s pained face and cracked a cold, ferocious smile: “I insist she lives; no one is taking her away from me!”

As his words fell, he firmly rooted his feet, sank his waist, and brought his fists down like hammers, smashing fiercely onto the stone platform beneath him!

“Heart Returning Blast!”

A concentrated burst of explosive force did not diffuse outward but was precisely channeled by him along the thunder veins connecting the stone platform to the thunder pillars, surging upward!

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Centered on him, the seven nearest thunder pillars seemed to detonate from within, shattering in response!

Violent lightning energy scattered everywhere, but it could no longer form effective resonance.

The giant hammer in the center seemed enraged; its spirit vibrated violently, emitting a roar capable of tearing souls apart!

An unprecedented, solid purple divine lightning bolt struck down straight from the sky, its target precisely Chen Fan!

Chen Fan didn't even have time to react before the divine lightning pierced through his body.

No pain, no burning, only an extreme sense of 'nothingness.'

In an instant, all sound in his world vanished.

The sound of the wind, the sound of thunder, the sound of his heartbeat... all returned to dead silence.

Chen Fan had gone deaf.

As the purple lightning dispersed, the suspended hammer of the thunder god seemed to lose all its power and slowly fell into his outstretched palm.

It felt cold in his hand, yet carried an overbearing will to control thunder.

It was at this moment that the dormant critical hit system suddenly vibrated violently:

[Detecting Divine Weapon Resonance, binding with Host Soul... Critical Hit Spirit Body—Condensation in progress...]

He blankly raised his head and looked down at Su Shuang on the stone platform.

A strange scene occurred: the blue flame fire seed protecting her heart meridian on her chest actually began to pulse synchronously and rhythmically with the faint thunder light flowing from the hammer in his palm.

Just then, an indescribable pressure, as if coming from the Primordial Desolation, slowly descended from the thunder clouds overhead.

A silent, massive shadow that obscured the heavens stepped out from the churning thunder clouds.

Thunder Mute!

Before his lips moved, a message like a heavenly thunderbolt exploded directly in the depths of Chen Fan’s mind: “Fire thief... your divine sense shall be incinerated!”

This voice directly attacked the soul!

Chen Fan’s body shook violently. Although he could hear nothing, the pain of having his soul torn apart was incredibly real.

However, just as his consciousness was about to dissipate, a line of blood-red notification abruptly appeared in his dead silent vision:

[critical hit system Preliminary Translation: High-energy lightning strike in front in three seconds.]

He slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, all the confusion and pain had faded, leaving only the abyss-like calm and madness.

He gripped the hammer of the thunder god tightly, feeling the power transmitted through his palm, and whispered to the silent giant shadow with lip movements only he could 'see':

“Deaf, so what?”

“My fist can hear.”

The blood-red notification began its final countdown.

[3...]

[2...]

Chen Fan’s muscles instantly tensed. The power of the blue flame fire seed and the hammer of the thunder god began to merge within him in an unprecedented manner. A destructive aura began to brew wildly in his silent world.

Above the sky, Thunder Mute seemed to sense this overconfident provocation. His massive body showed movement for the first time.

Thunder Mute spread his arms, and nine incomparably thick thunder chains roared out from behind him, weaving into a net in the sky. At every intersection of the thunder chains, terrifying energy capable of annihilating everything erupted.

The giant net locked onto the ant-like figure below, descending silently with the majesty to purify the world.

Although Chen Fan was deaf...