“Are we there?”
I tugged at Lu Xiu’s clothes and looked ahead, but there was still nothing but a vast expanse of white snow.
Where exactly were we?
Lu Xiu looked back at me. “Hold onto the rope. Don’t get lost.”
“Oh, okay.”
As I spoke, he took one step forward and instantly vanished right before my eyes.
My eyes widened in shock.
‘What’s going on?’
Then, I felt a tug at my wrist. The red rope tightened, dragging me forward.
I thought about it for a moment and then took a large stride forward as well. It felt as if I were passing through a layer of water. After a brief moment of suffocation, I was met with extreme cold.
A blizzard had arrived as promised, sweeping across the land.
‘Where am I…?’
I looked behind me, but there was only a heavy gray fog.
“Lu Xiu? Lu Xiu!”
I shouted toward the front, but the only response was the howling wind and snow, along with the pull of the red rope on my wrist. It was leading me in a specific direction.
“What’s the point of this…?”
‘To keep me from losing you.’
Remembering Lu Xiu’s earlier words, I pursed my lips and followed the red rope forward, one step at a time. I should have worn several more layers of clothes.
Snowflakes fell thick and fast, landing on my hair and condensing on the large horns at the back of my head, obscuring my vision.
‘Fine… it seems this kind of weather really isn’t suitable for a snowfight.’
I huffed and puffed into my hands to warm my palms. Suddenly, I slapped my forehead.
‘I’m so stupid! Don’t I have white bone?!’
After I had eaten that creature back then, it seemed I had gained its abilities.
I reached out my hand. The snowbank in front of me suddenly began to bulge and squirm.
Pressing through the snow, a hand bone reached out and crawled from beneath the ground, bringing with it an interlaced, sitting bone nest from behind.
“Heave-ho!”
I jumped onto it. Layers of white bone wrapped around me, sheltering me from the wind and snow. Only one small opening remained to allow the red rope to guide the way.
“Go!”
With my command, the bone nest wobbled forward after the red rope, leaving a trail of palm prints in the snow.
‘This is much more fun than some slime demon.’
Besides, if I got bored, I could gnaw on the bones to grind my teeth.
‘Hehe.’
I don’t know how much time passed as I lay in the cradle of bone hands.
I was yawning and just about to fall asleep when the feeling of suffocation returned. Then, a ray of bright light shone through the small opening.
*Ding-ling—*
A faint bell chimed, waking me from my drowsy state.
“You certainly know how to enjoy yourself.”
The bone shell was knocked on, and Lu Xiu’s voice drifted in from the outside, sounding muffled.
I dispersed the hand bones that had cocooned me and saw Lu Xiu standing there, covered in white. He looked exactly like a snowman.
“Wow! A snowman!”
“It’s Lu Xiu…”
He sighed and brushed the snow off his body. “I wasted my time worrying about you.”
“Worrying about me? Why were you worried about me?”
“I was afraid you would get lost.”
“Don’t we have the rope?”
“…Should I call you innocent or just plain stupid? Ropes can break.”
He lifted his hand, and I realized that the red rope tied to our wrists had turned a grayish-white. With a poke of my finger, it snapped.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s fine. We don’t need it anymore anyway.”
He turned around, and I finally noticed that we had reached the base of that sky-piercing rocket at some unknown point. Before us was a long tunnel leading into the deep darkness.
Lu Xiu walked to the entrance of the tunnel and opened his black box. Inside were a mirror, a folding stool, and various other miscellaneous trinkets.
First, he unfolded the stool and set it aside. Then, he placed the mirror underneath it.
After finishing that, he stood up and pulled out a clinking bag of coins. He took out several bronze coins and arranged them in a circle around the stool.
Next, he pulled a small bottle of silver liquid with a metallic luster from his pocket.
He opened the bottle, poured it out, and began to chant under his breath, “Lord of the impartial scales, witness of flowing value, I inquire about a trade. Please value my desire.”
*Drip, drop—*
The mercury dripped down, turning burning hot on the mirror. Lu Xiu covered his nose.
“Lord of the impartial scales, witness of flowing value, I inquire about a trade. Please value my desire.”
The boiling mercury gradually cooled, slowly solidifying until it covered the entire mirror.
I stood to the side, holding my breath as I watched Lu Xiu perform his ritual.
Suddenly, a feather drifted past my face. I couldn’t help but follow it with my eyes. Just as I was about to reach out for it, a raspy, dark voice echoed.
“Oh ho ho… let us see who it is… Ah… so it is you, the warrior favored by death.”
I turned my head and saw a human figure woven entirely from flowing mercury sitting on the previously empty folding stool. Its eyes and mouth were nothing but pitch-black voids, looking eerie and terrifying.
“Are you here seeking a trade?”
Lu Xiu recapped the bottle and waved his hand to clear the pungent smell from his nose.
“Stop the nonsense, Faust. I want to see Mephisto.”
“Hmm… is this a trade?”
“No, it is a demand.”
“Hahaha…” The silver old man laughed until he was out of breath, sounding like a pair of torn bellows — *whoosh, whoosh* — leaking air. “I am but a slave to trade; I have no authority to act on my master’s behalf.”
“I want to deal with the death demon.”
The old man, who had been smiling slightly, paused. “What?”
Lu Xiu repeated himself impatiently, “I said, I want to deal with the death demon.”
“Have you finally gone mad?”
“I am perfectly sane. I have never been more sane in my life.”
‘Wow, Lu Xiu seems really impressive.’
That white thing clearly didn’t have as much presence as Lu Xiu.
“So, call your master out. Doesn’t he have a grudge against the death demon?”
Faust lowered his head and suddenly began to retch.
A large mass of black substance was vomited out. I scrambled back several steps in fright, terrified that it might splash on me.
‘That thing… is so strange. It doesn’t seem alive, yet it doesn’t seem dead… Looking at it, I suddenly feel like I’m actually an ant with horns, being eaten by a black cat inside a candy house.’
I immediately shook my head, discarding that bizarre thought.
“Heh… heh…”
The creature’s hollow eye sockets tilted upward. It threw its head back, its hands clawing at the air as if struggling in the moments before death by suffocation. The struggle was terminated by a black hand reaching out from its mouth.
A hand emerging from its wide, bottomless maw.
“Heh… heh… haha… ha…”
I saw the mouth being seized by the black hand. Then, another black hand emerged and grabbed the lower jaw, forcing the mouth open to its limit.
A lightless shadow began to squeeze its way out — chest, abdomen, waist, legs, and finally, an inverted head.
It was a negative image, a shadow composed entirely of darkness. It had no fixed form, yet it seemed to possess countless clear silhouettes.
Its hands braced against the ground like deformed feet, while its legs pointed straight up toward the void. The entire torso was upside down.
The place where the head should have been was empty, but from the junction of the legs — the crotch — a head grew upward.
That face had no features, yet it seemed to contain a thousand faces and a thousand forms.
It negated the reality of the world as it emerged from the body that had withered into a human-shaped silver foil.
A layered, contradictory voice that seemed to ring from all directions at once constructed sentences directly in my mind:
“Ah… let us correct an error, Mr. Lu Xiu. I have abandoned the name Mephisto. Now, you should call me—”
The inverted head tilted slightly as if “staring” at Lu Xiu.
“—the demon of negation.”
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