Karol was so shocked by the announcement that it took her a moment to recover herself. “Ar... are you sure?" she asked the lead representative when she finally found her voice.

“What did I just hear? Or are my ears deceiving me?" one of Lilah's critics asked in disbelief.

ALL those who were eager to see Lilah fail were now slack-jawed and speechless.

"If Lilah did not steal the formula, then that means the man..."

"Wait... is there more to this? Is there some backstage dealing going on here?"

Faced with such suspicions, the lead representative quickly spoke up in a no-nonsense tone. “The Makeup Artists Association is the epitome of fairness. We would never help anyone cheat."

“I bet you're helping Lilah do just that! I'm the one who owns the formula. She stole it from me!" the man shouted.

"Okay," the lead representative said with a sigh of exasperation.

"Since you claim that Miss Phillips stole your formula, can you tell us why these two formulas are so different?"

"What?" the man blurted in surprise. Already, he was racking his brain, trying to figure out which ingredients he had missed.

Perhaps he had left out one or two ingredients.

At this point, Karol's face immediately went sour. So the formulas were different? she asked the man in a “Are you sure the formula is really yours stern tone. “Or have you been lying to me?"

"It's mine, Miss Morris!" he exclaimed. "I swear, it's mine. Please believe me."

He couldn't just let the money slip through his fingers.

Just as the lead representative was about to say something, Lilah confronted the man, “You keep saying it's your formula. So tell us, how many ingredients are in it? And what's the function of each?"

“I... But how do you expect me to remember all of that?" the man grumbled. Clearly, he was stumped. He had no answers to the question.

"You can't remember how many ingredients are in your formula?" Lilah chuckled mockingly. “Well, for your information, there are 40 ingredients in it."

"I wrote 40," the man quickly countered. He had memorized them, but he didn't remember the total number.

"You wrote only 38," Lilah calmly pointed out.

"That's impossible!" the man bristled. "I'm certain that I wrote 40!"

Lilah couldn't help but smirk. "Then list out all of the ones you wrote; let's see whether it's up to 38 or 40," she told him.

The man began to list them out.

When he was done, he confidently announced, “That's 40 ingredients."

At this point, it was the crowd that replied him. “That's actually 38!" they chorused.