Chapter Five: The Shortest Route, the Loudest Slap

The memory card held no video, only an encrypted list and an invitation to the New Wave Art Foundation's annual competition. Finalists would exhibit at the Lan City Museum, and the winner could use its underground climate vault. The invitation was addressed to Lin—and had been sent three years earlier. Gu Wenzhou then announced that he would judge the finals. He told reporters that art could not be held hostage by paranormal marketing, and displayed Lin's early figure studies as alleged plagiarism of the late artist Chen Du. They were Lin's academy application pieces, his only remaining proof of adolescence. The originals had vanished from a bank vault.