Ren didn't even tense.
That was the first instinct and it was wrong, because tensing against corruption was giving it exactly the kind of resistance it knew how to consume.
He had learned this the hard way the first time the corruption had been dense enough that aggressive resistance made things worse rather than better. His system had remembered that lesson even when his mind had been too occupied to consciously recall it.
So he relaxed…
Not completely, not the way you relaxed when there was nothing to worry about, but the specific opposite of tensing: keeping the system active, the channels open, the circulation running without giving the corruption a pressure point to push against.
Like keeping water moving so sediment doesn't have the stillness to settle. Fern would have understood that analogy better than any mana theory Ren had ever written.
He analyzed…
