Constantine quickly arranged the array, and the moment he injected energy into it, the pendant emitted a dazzling light.
The other party responded quickly, obviously accustomed to such matters, and in a short while, a huge red figure with two horns on its head and three pairs of eyes on its face appeared in the room.
Arrogant first closed the elevator door to block the eager Greed and then began with a sentence that nearly infuriated Greed.
"We're prepared to sacrifice the souls of human infants for you, what do you plan to give us in return?"
Although the words spoken were those of a devotee, the tone was as indifferent as a business negotiation, clearly displeasing both sides.
The Sanguine Demon also noticeably paused; he had responded to countless devotees' summonings, but had never seen anyone so brazen. Where others would start with a load of flattering words, then timidly present their offerings, begging him to bestow a modicum of power.
The Sanguine Demon's gaze fell on Shiller, but since it wasn't his true form appearing, it was like looking through several layers of veil, he couldn't actually see clearly who was present, only a vague shadow.
However, what attracted him the most was the orb of light in Shiller's hand, containing extremely rich and pure energy, looking like numerous succulent infant souls.
Having such capable devotees, the Sanguine Demon thought to himself, and he was somewhat aware of Earth's situation. He had just dozed off, and most of his followers had become sneaky and stingy. How could there be such a generous one here?
With a grand gesture of his hand, the Sanguine Demon very generously allowed a portion of his power to pass through the smallest mesh and present itself before everyone. He was sure the other party would recognize its value.
To this, Shiller showed a contemptuous expression and turned to leave, prompting the Sanguine Demon to hastily call out to him.
Fine, there are not many capable people in this era; a powerful individual naturally has high aspirations and looks down upon such trifling energy. So, offer a bit more, after all, compared to the essence of soul energy, it wasn't much.
Yet Shiller's look of disdain became even more pronounced, his expression as if to say, "Is that all you can do?"
Many people may not realize, everyone has expressions they are adept at making, and scientific studies have shown that a specific expression from someone can make a more profound impression than others' and even their own different expressions. Shiller was clearly very good at making expressions of disdain.
Indeed, through repetition, Shiller displayed this expression countless times while reading research papers, and under his deliberate control, such expressions often left a deep impression on his students.
Even without making a face, Shiller could, by simply willing it, exude an air of disdain from every part of his being.
And in this moment, that was the case. Although the Sanguine Demon couldn't make out Shiller's face clearly, he felt as if Shiller was looking down on him.
"Why summon me if you don't believe in me?" the Sanguine Demon said, holding back his discontent, albeit with some reluctance.
He was not one to tolerate much, but he was forced to comply with the situation; he had been feeling quite irritable lately.
As mentioned before, for two different species to conceive a child, sparking the soul can be quite tricky. Talya and Loki had tried numerous times without success because they were inherently incompatible, or to put it another way, the reproductive isolation between Frost Giants and humans was quite severe.
Reproduction among species in the cosmos is very complex and could constitute an entire field of study, influenced by many factors—it's not as simple as wanting to conceive at will.
Fortunately for the Sanguine Demon, his race was naturally well-matched for reproduction with humans. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible to impregnate a woman and achieve the desired outcome. It wasn't as if he was planting a bomb in these women; he genuinely fostered a life with them, or there wouldn't be the special case of Raven.
Just because he knew it was relatively easy to impregnate human women, he didn't treasure them or see anything special in the offspring with humans, at least not in the past.
A problem arose now, however; the Sanguine Demon suddenly couldn't summon human women to his dimension anymore.
One might think that as a Big Devil, if he lacked humans, he could simply summon another race, but unfortunately, he didn't mesh well with other species. Sometimes after summoning, they couldn't get pregnant or have difficulties giving birth, and if they did give birth, the power might all be gone.
He had spent a lot of time in his domain researching and found out that humans were truly his ideal match, a pristine light in his youth. Had he not encountered such a breathtaking race early on, he wouldn't have known what he was missing.
Of course, the Sanguine Demon wanted to know what was going on, to understand what had occurred across the universes.
Regrettably, he was already barred from the physical universe and couldn't see clearly what was happening inside. He was unaware that the cosmic barrier that had blocked him underwent a round of hot updates, and now not only could he not enter, but people inside couldn't leave either.
And what he knew even less was that this was the downside of Batman's involvement with universe management—he was too adept with computers, and more importantly, too industrious.
As an Archangel, Bruce had truly been involved in cosmic management while modifying the Rune System, but after all, he wasn't a real angel. He was human, with a human's concept of time.
Upon reviewing the system's records, Bruce exclaimed in surprise that the last update was a hundred thousand years ago. Asking the other archangels about it, their reactions all suggested, "Isn't an update every hundred thousand years frequent enough?"
Bruce really couldn't stand it; his compulsive perfectionism as a super-genius made it intolerable for him to watch so many system bugs flit before his eyes, so he released over twenty hotfixes in three days, patching all the bugs.
These Archangels sure had guts, seeing that Bruce hadn't caused any mayhem, they just let him be.
And could Bruce possibly not mix in his own self-interest?
During that time, he was also busy with the Barbados invasion plan for the Light Universe, as everyone knows, a project that's too simple doesn't call for funding, but if you want a sustainable scheme that drains the lake dry, you need to up the difficulty.
So Bruce deliberately strengthened the barriers of all the physical universes, just to make it harder for Barbados to infiltrate the physical cosmos; of course, now it was his difficulty infiltrating the physical cosmos, with Barbados merely footing the bill.
As long as the barriers were reinforced, Bruce could make another killing by making serial calls to Barbados for money, which is why he tampered a bit during the upgrade—now, not even a single hair could pass through the physical universe with ease.
Bruce indeed extorted a lot of money with this trick, but it was the angels and demons who suffered, with too tight a net that incarnate avatars barely had any power, where once they would have summoned worshipers for a chat, now the phone signals were spotty at best.
Both angels and demons had deep reserves to fall back on; Sanguine Demons, on the other hand, who spread their faith using primitive methods, were even worse off, unable to fathom why their old tactic suddenly stopped working, and could only sit at home waiting for followers to summon them.
But he himself didn't have many devout followers to begin with, as his proselytizing method was essentially a "fear lottery draw", lacking in scriptures or theories to pass down, it was naturally hard to have anyone summon him.
Today, he finally had one who came with a generous gift prepared. No matter how bad the attitude, he couldn't miss this rare opportunity.
Seeing Shiller's disdain, the Sanguine Demon hesitated for a moment, then went ahead and cranked the energy output to maximum, having increased the one-time energy transfer to the limit allowed by the net.
These country bumpkins of Earth must have never seen such immense power, right? The Sanguine Demon was quite proud internally, not everyone was as powerful and generous as he was.
Unfortunately, not only Shiller, but even that kid who had launched the Summoning Formation seemed unimpressed within the room.
Constantine was worldly, when he had reigned supreme in the Magic realm, he could have been compared to a young noble vying for glory, as untold verses of love poems were written for him.
This meager power, to appease beggars?
The Sanguine Demon felt somewhat insecure too, after all, the net's mesh was, quite frankly, too small; with a Magical Defense Network wrapped around Shiller's universe, the power that could be brought in couldn't exactly be described as a raging torrent, it felt more like water conservation.
"If that's the case, there's nothing left to discuss," Shiller pretended to hang up, to which the Sanguine Demon immediately said, "Wait, business might not have worked out, but goodwill remains. Look, you are the only one on this Earth who has my number, how about we talk about another deal?"
The trade the Sanguine Demon mentioned naturally referred to continuing his original missionary enterprise, convincing this group of people to bring him human women to his world, so he could carry on with his business.
But the reality was in front of him, if such a powerful Demon King couldn't handle it himself, could he really expect a few petty humans to manage it?
Shiller proposed a different solution.
"You see, the purpose of bringing women over is to have children, to be precise, children whose souls carry your energy. And now, seeing as we can obtain so many pure infant souls, it proves we have access to many infants."
"So why not just give your power to me, and we'll implant it into the babies' bodies – wouldn't that achieve the same goal?"
Shiller's reasoning was so sound that the Sanguine Demon was left speechless.
He seriously considered the feasibility of the plan and thought, theoretically, it could work, but the question was, could he really trust this group of humans?
At that moment, Shiller and Constantine added, "To show our sincerity, you can exchange your energy for the infant souls we currently have, and the energy you give us will be used to complete this plan."
"That means the infant souls are effectively a free side-dish, you can have yourself a feast, and then just sit back at home and wait for good news."
After some hesitation, the Sanguine Demon felt it was still acceptable because, after all, it was like paying money for goods; even if the cash wasn't used properly in the end, he would have the products in hand.
The only issue was that Shiller was asking a high price for these infant souls, but considering there weren't many in the entire universe who could get their hands on such pure infant souls, even Satan might not have it this good, the Sanguine Demon gritted his teeth and stomped his foot in agreement, buying into it.
This was also because he hadn't experienced human e-commerce sales like 'Buy 1 Get 3 free', which is actually about making you buy four at the price of genuine goods at once, selling both at a higher price and quantity.
Due to the small mesh of energy transmission in this universe, it took the Sanguine Demon all afternoon just to transfer the energy, and then Constantine on the other end delivered souls until midnight.
After the deal was concluded, both parties were satisfied. The Sanguine Demon returned home with the souls for a midnight snack, while Shiller found Raven holding the Sanguine Demon's power.
"It really worked?!" Raven exclaimed in astonishment.
"Of course." Shiller smiled and said, "Now it's up to you."