The morning mist rolling across Mirror Lake was thick, damp, and incredibly peaceful.
Yan Shuo sat comfortably on the smooth, gray rock by the water's edge. He held the crooked bamboo fishing pole with a loose, relaxed grip. The thin silk line disappeared into the vast, mirror-like surface of the lake, completely undisturbed by the wind.
He wasn't actually trying to catch a spirit-carp.
Deep beneath the freezing water, hundreds of feet below the lakebed, his rusted iron hook had securely lodged itself into the invisible, pulsing golden current of the western leyline.
With every slow, rhythmic breath he took, Yan Shuo channeled a microscopic thread of his pitch-black Abyssal Qi down the fishing line. It was a surgical, incredibly precise corruption. He was slowly feeding the ancient node a lethal dose of demonic gravity, rotting the spiritual foundation of Bai Chen's grand cage from the inside out.
