59: Chapter 59 What I'm igniting isn't fire, it's the fate you've ordained.

The temperature at the bottom of the abyss felt as if it had been cast into a furnace. The work clothes on Chen Fan's back were already soaked with cold sweat, yet he still felt as if every inch of his skin was being scorched.

Su Shuang was burning with a fierce fever in his arms. Cyan-white flames flickered from the tip of her fox tail, spreading along the ends of her hair to the tips of her ears. Even the red mole at the corner of her eye shimmered with an eerie purple—a sign that the Fox Clan's Secret Art of Reverse Combustion had been activated.

"Using the wrath of others to burn my remnant soul... using the fists of a mortal to break the locks of destiny..." Su Shuang's voice suddenly became harsh and labored, sounding like marks scraped onto ancient beast bones. The beads of blood seeping from her seven orifices were baked into dark red scabs by the flames as soon as they fell.

Chen Fan's throat tightened. Only then did he notice the fox-shaped light pattern on the back of her hand, which was clutching the copper coin, flickering along with the flames. It grew deeper with every pulse. "Shuanger?" he called softly, his fingertips touching her burning cheek.

His response was the system's piercing alarm: [Warning: Critical hit energy has exceeded the bearing limit. Forced interruption in 30 seconds].

Veins bulged on Chen Fan's forehead. He could clearly perceive the link between their joined hands, woven from critical hit red light and Fox Clan bloodline, emitting a low hum. Every energy transmission triggered [Twin Critical Hit · Energy Stacking], stretching the delay from 1.5 seconds to 2.2 seconds, battering his consciousness like waves.

"Stop!"

A raspy roar mixed two familiar voices together.

Chen Fan jerked his head up and saw the heart nightmare's remnant core swell into Old Horse Head's hunched form, but the face instantly distorted into Jing Niang's likeness—these were the two elders he had saved in the Newbie Village, both of whom were later erased by the system after it judged their "missions failed." "Every critical hit you send is equal to extending her life by a second—but it's also equal to adding a brick to the Tower!" The hybrid heart nightmare's nails pierced the skin of Chen Fan's neck, and black-red energy burrowed in through the wound. "Look at the girl in your arms; her source was drained long ago!

Now, it's your life that's burning!"

The Blood Silk Vines suddenly erupted, cyan-black vines wrapping around Chen Fan's throat like living things.

His vision went dark, but he suddenly laughed. Before Old Horse Head died, he had stuffed two steamed buns into his hands; Jing Niang had secretly tucked sugar cubes into his water bottle. The system could erase memories, but it couldn't erase the fire in his chest. "A second is a second," he gritted his teeth, his left hand violently tearing open the fabric over his heart.

The red light beneath his skin suddenly exploded.

Chen Fan proactively tore through the "safety barrier" given to him by the system, letting the long-accumulated [Charged Critical Hit x3] pour into the link like a bursting dam.

Agonizing pain spread from his heart to his entire body. He heard the fine cracking of his bones, but when the red light, wrapped in Su Shuang's cyan flames, surged in their palms, the system prompt suddenly changed its tone: [Detected environmental self-destructive energy release. Judged as non-proactive violation. Link maintained]—Rule Critical Hit triggered!

Bang!

The Mirror Slave fragments suddenly emitted a crisp clashing sound.

The moment Chen Fan turned his head, the fragments that once cut him automatically assembled into a bronze mirror the height of a man. The mirror's surface was shrouded in mist, but it suddenly cleared as Su Shuang's cyan flames swept past.

In the images, a man in bronze armor pushed his lover away at the top of the Starlight Tower; a girl holding a golden longsword pressed her childhood friend's head into a furnace; and in the final scene, Chen Fan himself held a blood-covered Su Shuang, her fox tail limp on the ground, the light gone from her pupils.

He walked up the blood-stained steps, and with every step, a system prompt exploded overhead: [Sacrifice complete. Obtained Starlight Tower clearance qualification].

"So... what you want isn't the strong, but obedient executioners," Su Shuang suddenly spoke.

Chen Fan looked down to see her previously unfocused purple eyes regaining their clarity. The bloodstains at the corners of her mouth were scorched by the fire, yet her smile was sweeter than the tea brewed in the Teahouse. "Then today—I won't clear this stage!"

She pressed the copper coin into her own heart with a backhand motion.

The cyan-white flames instantly surged into a wall of fire ten feet high. Chen Fan was thrown back by the heat wave, but the moment he touched the ground, he felt something scalding pouring back into his body through the link.

That was Su Shuang's source power, wrapped in the flames of reverse combustion. It surged through his meridians along with his critical hit red light, finally merging into a ball of crimson-gold fire at his dantian.

"Ah!" Chen Fan roared, slamming both fists into the ground.

The crimson-gold fire burrowed into the earth's veins through his fists. He heard the sound of countless vines tearing—the Blood Silk Vines that had entangled them for three days and nights were self-combusting from their roots, their cyan-black sap sizzling on the ground.

The stone tablet engraved with the words "Decreed Fate" shattered with a boom in the fire, revealing the inscriptions on the back: "The sacrificer shall never return."

[Detected 'Fate-Reversing Energy Tide.' Bloodline level breakthrough: Fox Demon · Demi-God Realm (Temporary)]

By the time the system prompt sounded, Chen Fan had already crawled back to Su Shuang's side.

Her fox ears regained their pearly luster, and her body temperature returned to normal, though a bead of blood still hung from the corner of her mouth. "I wasn't saved by you..." she reached out to stroke his blood-stained face, "I was ignited by the word 'defiance'."

Before her voice faded, the Mirror of Fate suddenly rippled.

The image in the mirror shifted from the bloody sacrificial ground to the bottom floor of the Starlight Tower—the hidden door that all players had tried but failed to open was slowly creaking open. The seven characters on the lintel, "Critical Hit Source · Purge Protocol," shimmered with a cold light.

As the camera pulled back further, a figure clad in a black robe was descending the steps in the wind and snow outside the abyss. The blade in his hand was covered in "Critical Hit Prohibition" runes. With every step he took, Chen Fan felt a stabbing pain in his critical hit system, as if a needle were being driven into it.

"That is..." Chen Fan was about to speak when Su Shuang coughed lightly.

Only then did he realize the surrounding temperature was dropping. The ashes of the Blood Silk Vines were being swept into the sky by the wind, and the fragments of the Decreed Fate stone tablet were still smoking. Only that copper coin had risen from Su Shuang's palm at some point, spinning quietly between them, its red light brighter than ever.

(The embers at the bottom of the abyss have not yet dispersed, the Decreed Fate stone tablet has turned to dust, and only the copper coin floats quietly.)