Beelzebub sank even deeper into the sofa, her posture the definition of lethargy.
She didn’t even bother to stand up. Instead, she simply shifted the bucket of popcorn in her arms to free up one hand, waving it dismissively toward the door.
“Good evening, my friend,” she said, her voice muffled yet cheerful as she crunched on a kernel coated in caramel. “Lilith.”
The figure at the door stood motionless.
She wore a magnificent gown. The silk dress was a deep crimson, the color of congealed blood, with complex patterns embroidered in dark gold thread along the hem. Those patterns seemed to writhe slightly in the dim light, appearing almost like living things. A matching gauze shawl rested on her shoulders, its edges adorned with tiny black crystals.
She didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she lowered her gaze to the pair of ladies’ slippers prepared for her by the door.
The slippers were made of deep purple velvet, with a silver-threaded iris blooming in an eerie, exotic fashion across the top.
Lilith stared at the slippers for 2 seconds. Then, she lifted her foot and stepped into them.
Wearing those tainted slippers, she walked to the side of the sofa and looked down at Beelzebub, who was buried in the soft cushions.
“Do you intend to sabotage my King Selection Ceremony?”
Lilith’s voice was beautiful. It wasn’t the lazy, playful melody of Beelzebub’s voice, but something colder and clearer. Beelzebub stuffed another handful of popcorn into her mouth, the sound of her chewing echoing with a sharp *crunch*.
“How could I?” She swallowed and blinked innocently. “I am merely giving my King… a little bit of help.”
She intentionally emphasized the words “my King,” her smile blindingly bright.
“Help?” Lilith repeated, her red lips curving into a cold arc. “Taking a Glimmer Rank Beyonder — who was supposed to sink into the Dream Labyrinth and serve as perfect kindling for the ceremony — and sending him directly to the Dream Core? You call that a little bit of help?”
Beelzebub shrugged and took a sip of lemon soda.
“Details don’t matter, dear. It’s the result that counts.” She rattled her glass, the ice cubes clinking together. “Besides, haven’t you been complaining that the candidates are too boring? Didn’t I just find you an interesting variable?”
Lilith fell silent.
The air in the room grew heavy and viscous.
Two distinct types of “desire” clashed invisibly in the space between them.
“Or rather,” Beelzebub suddenly spoke, breaking the silence with a hint of cunning malice in her smile, “are you afraid?”
Lilith’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Afraid of a Glimmer Rank Beyonder?” Beelzebub finished the sentence for her before bursting into laughter. She leaned back so far she nearly tipped over the popcorn bucket. “Please, Lilith, we’re Angels. Even if he were to promote to Divine Revelation this very instant, in front of us, he would still only be — “
She paused, holding up her pinky finger to indicate something insignificant.
” — this big.”
Lilith didn’t laugh.
She watched Beelzebub’s performance in silence. Only when the laughter died down did she speak slowly.
“I am not afraid of any individual.” Her voice was as steady as the surface of a frozen lake. “I simply loathe variables outside of the plan.”
“Variables are what make things fun.” Beelzebub set down her soda glass and leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees. Her face lit up with the excitement of someone who had just come up with a brilliant idea. “How about this — “
She snapped her fingers.
Across the room, the television screen flickered to life with a burst of static.
At first, the screen was a mess of white noise, but a clear image soon emerged.
It was the Amusement Park.
The carousel glowed with warm lights against the night sky, and the roller coaster tracks wound through the air like a luminous giant python. The ferris wheel cabins climbed slowly, each one emitting a faint, hazy light.
At the center of the image was Elvia.
Elvia was standing in front of a cotton candy stall, watching the vendor spin a growing cloud of pink sugar threads.
“Look,” Beelzebub said, pointing at the screen. “One of your candidates, Mammon’s little Cleaner, is standing at the crossroads of destiny.”
She turned her head to look at Lilith, her red eyes dancing with mischievous flames.
“Shall we make a bet?”
Lilith’s gaze fell upon the screen, resting on Elvia’s face, which was filled with longing.
“On what?”
“Let’s bet…” Beelzebub dragged out the words. “On what happens when Jiang Ming emerges from that dream and places the Philosopher’s Stone — or as you call it, that little Wishing Machine toy — in front of Elvia…”
She paused, her smile deepening.
“Will she choose to accept the stone and use that power to grant any wish, allowing herself to become a flesh-and-blood human again…”
“Or — “
“Will she reject the gift and choose to remain a pair of Scissors, a Spirit Body, an accessory that will forever depend on her sister’s shadow?”
Lilith watched the screen in silence.
The noisy atmosphere of the Amusement Park filtered through the television’s low-quality speakers. It was a cacophony of children’s laughter, rhythmic music, and the low hum of the cotton candy machine.
In this room saturated with the presence of Angels, those sounds seemed exceptionally absurd, yet exceptionally real.
“What right does he have,” Lilith finally asked, her voice tinged with blatant contempt, “to intervene in our bet?”
Beelzebub blinked in surprise.
Then, she laughed.
Her laughter was a mix of nostalgia and anticipation.
She leaned back into the depths of the sofa and pulled the popcorn bucket into her lap, stuffing a massive handful into her mouth.
In the moment their gazes met, Lilith suddenly felt it — deep within the eyes of this hedonistic creature who was always laughing and playing, something was waking up.
Something ancient, heavy, and equal in weight to the Divine Crown of Gluttony.
Then, Beelzebub spoke.
“Because,”
“His name is Jiang Ming.”
“And he is my chosen one.”
Lilith remained silent for a moment before finally nodding with a hint of helplessness.
“Fine. It is your territory, after all.”
—
The weightless sensation of falling hadn’t fully dissipated before his feet touched solid ground.
Jiang Ming opened his eyes to find himself standing once again before that familiar door.
He looked down at his hand.
The red marks on his wrist were still there, proof of how hard Lillian had gripped him before the dream shattered. The sensation of falling together in the sea of clouds still lingered on his skin — her trembling, the warmth of her tears, and the feeling of her fingernails digging into his clothes as she clung to his back.
It felt so real.
Jiang Ming looked up at the door.
Beelzebub had indeed helped him.
But he couldn’t bring himself to be happy about it.
An Angel’s help was never a gift. It was a commodity with a price tag already attached.
He sighed. ‘The price is something I cannot refuse.’
Then, he pushed the door open.
Warm light spilled out, accompanied by the sweet scent of popcorn. Everything in the room was exactly as it was when he left — the comfortable sofa, the soft floor lamp, and the unfinished glass of lemon soda on the coffee table with bubbles slowly rising to the surface.
Except there was one more person.
Jiang Ming’s gaze landed on the other end of the sofa.
It was a woman.
A long, crimson dress wrapped around her slender frame, the dark gold patterns at the hem seeming to writhe slowly in the light. She reclined in the sofa with one leg elegantly crossed over the other, revealing a sliver of pale skin at her ankle.
She didn’t look at Jiang Ming.
She didn’t even grant him a glance from the corner of her eye, as if the person who had entered was nothing more than a stray breeze.
“Yo, you’re back?” Beelzebub looked up from her popcorn bucket and waved at Jiang Ming with a grin, like she was greeting a younger brother coming home from school. “Come, come, have a seat. We were just missing one more.”
Jiang Ming didn’t move.
His eyes shifted between Beelzebub and the other woman, eventually settling on the empty armchair across from the coffee table. It was a seat reserved for him.
“Her name is Lilith,” Beelzebub said, noticing Jiang Ming’s hesitation. She didn’t mind, continuing to stuff popcorn into her mouth as she gave a muffled introduction. “Or as you lot usually call her… the Witch of Pleasure. It’s a bit of a tacky name, isn’t it? But she’s used it for so many years, so just go with it.”
“Let’s begin,” Lilith said, sounding slightly impatient.
Beelzebub shrugged and set the popcorn bucket aside. She leaned forward and pointed toward the other side of the room.
The old cathode-ray tube television was still on.
On the screen, the night scene of the Amusement Park was still vibrant and noisy. The carousel, the roller coaster, the ferris wheel… and in the center of all that dazzling light, Elvia was standing before the cotton candy stall.
“As you can see,” Beelzebub’s voice rang out, “your little friend is currently staying in the park. And hidden within that park is a Philosopher’s Stone.”
Jiang Ming’s pupils contracted slightly.
“That’s impossible.” The words left his mouth almost instinctively. “The Philosopher’s Stone is the ultimate paradox of Alchemy. Equivalent Exchange is the cornerstone of Alchemy, and the property of granting any wish fundamentally violates that foundation. It cannot exist.”
The room fell silent for a moment.
Beelzebub and Lilith looked at him simultaneously.
“Well said.” Beelzebub clapped her hands lightly. “As expected of… well, anyway, you’re right. From the perspective of existence, the Philosopher’s Stone is indeed a false proposition.”
She paused, her smile turning profound.
“But what if we looked at it from a different angle?”
Lilith took over. Her voice remained steady, but every word felt like an ice pick, slowly and precisely pinning the air in place.
“What if that stone doesn’t grant wishes?”
“What if it is simply… displacement?”
Beelzebub pointed at Elvia on the television screen.
“Suppose we place the stone in front of her now. We tell her that as long as she wishes to become human again, the stone will answer.”
“The stone won’t simply conjure a body of flesh and blood out of thin air. Instead, it will extract an equivalent essence of existence from the source to perform an exchange.”
She traced a circle in the air with her finger.
“For example… the desires of every single person in the Lower City tonight. Every living, breathing person walking through the smog in a mask, everyone repeating mechanical motions on an assembly line, everyone drinking themselves into a stupor in a cheap tavern, or struggling to survive in a dark alleyway…”
“The desires of everyone.”
“Take their accumulated cravings, greed, resentment, anger, humble hopes, and broken dreams from the last 100 years — all that boiling, murky, unfulfilled wanting. Extract it, refine it, compress it, and forge it.”
Beelzebub’s voice was very soft.
“Then, use that heavy fuel to ignite the fire of Alchemy. On the scales of Equivalent Exchange, place the collective desires of the entire Lower City on one side, and on the other…”
She looked at Elvia’s longing face on the screen.
“…place a human body.”
“The scales will balance,” she said with a smile. “The cornerstone of Alchemy will not be violated. The stone didn’t create anything. It simply… completed a displacement on a slightly larger scale.”
Jiang Ming felt his blood run cold.
“And what about her?” he heard himself ask, his voice terrifyingly calm. “What would happen to the Elvia who accepted that displacement?”
This time, Lilith answered.
She set down her glass and leaned forward slightly, her crimson dress sliding across the sofa like a flowing trail of blood.
“She would become a vessel,” Lilith said, her voice carrying a cruel objectivity. “A living vessel filled with a 100-year supply of the Lower City’s desires.”
“Those desires wouldn’t vanish. They would stay inside her, fermenting and expanding until they finally… reshaped her.”
She looked up at Jiang Ming. In those beautiful eyes, a ripple of emotion finally appeared. Jiang Ming recognized it as a look of wicked amusement.
“She would become a new Angel.”
“Not an original like us, but a secondary one born from human desire, yet possessing a Divine Crown nonetheless…”
Lilith’s red lips parted slightly as she uttered two words:
“Grey Mist.”
The room was deathly silent.
Only the hollow, upbeat music of the Amusement Park continued to play tirelessly from the television’s speakers.
Jiang Ming stood there, feeling his own breathing grow shallow.
“What if…” he began slowly, each word requiring effort. “What if she refuses?”
Beelzebub sighed.
That sigh contained a genuine sense of pity.
“Then it will be Elvira’s turn,” she said. “Because Elvia… my little Cleaner, she made a deal with Mammon too early and too completely.”
“Mammon took all of her possibilities. He gave her the Scissors, gave her strength, gave her the ability to protect her sister, but he also left a mark.”
Beelzebub pointed to her own temple.
“Her desires are like an open book. Too clear, too easy to understand, and too easy… to be guided, magnified, and trapped.”
She looked at the screen, her gaze becoming complicated.
“And right now, in this park designed specifically for her…”
“She has already…”
“…sunk into it.”
The moment the words fell, the image on the television screen suddenly shifted.
It was no longer Elvia standing at the cotton candy stall.
Instead, it was the carousel at the center of the park, spinning at a slow pace. And there, sitting upon a bright yellow wooden horse…
…was Elvira.
She was wearing her dark navy velvet dress, her black hair flowing loose as her hands gripped the metal pole of the horse tightly. Her eyes were wide, but they held no focus — only a void of emptiness and confusion.
The carousel went around, and around, and around.
Never-ending.
“Now then, we want to play a game with you.”
“Let’s see if your little friend accepts the Philosopher’s Stone, and what kind of wish she chooses.”