The blue-white shimmer of the notification remained suspended in Lin Yue's field of vision, a digital brand that refused to fade.
Around him, the Game Hall was a cacophony of recovering players—shouts of terror, frantic whispers, and the rhythmic sobbing.
Lin Yue did not look at them. He looked at the summons.
He didn't feel a surge of adrenaline or the cold prickle of anxiety. Instead, he felt a clinical curiosity. To be summoned by a First Arbiter was a statistical anomaly. To be summoned privately, without the presence of the other six, was a deviation that suggested a specific, targeted intent.
"You're going to accept it," Bai Wuyin said.
It wasn't a question. Lin Yue looked at him.
Bai Wuyin was watching him with the same expression he used for everything—that particular neutrality that Lin Yue was increasingly certain was not absence of feeling but a very precise management of it. The sketchbook was still under his arm. His charcoal-dusted fingers were still.
