Backlash Part 1

Chapter 46: Empathy

Wen Qing had never performed empathy herself, but she had spent many hours trying to anchor Wei Wuxian's thoughts as he rambled about a hundred different ways to make it more viable for regular use by average cultivators. His mind was even wilder than hers when she was contemplating new methods of treatment. She had always been more methodical and organized in her ideas than him, but overtime she came to respect that each of their methods had a cost and benefit compared to the other.

Wei Wuxian was always full of ideas and most of them came and went so quickly that they never became more than that. Wen Qing was not as wild in her imaginings. Each idea she pursued was carefully considered and deliberated to its ultimate conclusion. It was more thorough and resulted in many treatment advancements, but few of her ideas ever pushed the limits of the imagination the way Wei Wuxian's ideas did. Every time Wei Wuxian did focus on one idea long enough he always invented something incredible. Wei Wuxian was always quoting the YunmengJiang Sect motto at her.

'Attempt the impossible.' He would say with a grin. It was one of the times his grin would be genuine, but often after he said it his expression would fall. It reminded him of his former home and former family. The one who's suffering he blamed himself for and the one he could not return to anymore. In one of their conversations about his crazy ideas she had made a comment that he latched onto.

'Everything is impossible until someone makes it possible.' Wei Wuxian began quoting it back at her all the time and it warmed her heart to see him be able to say it proudly without wilting after the pronouncement. He thought it had been a spur of the moment thing she said in their discussion and had even teased her about it from time to time. She never told him that it was deliberate.

Wen Qing had actually sat down and thought of dozens of sayings related to doing impossible things. She had planned to casually introduce them one at a time into conversation with him. She figured she could keep doing it until one of them stuck. She wanted him to be able to embrace this part of his identity that had been instilled in him, without devolving into the guilt and sorrow of reminding himself of where he learned it. Wen Qing was more than thrilled when the first saying she picked ended up being the one he latched onto.

Wei Wuxian was someone who made things possible. His chaotic and creative mind pulled inspiration out of the strangest places and when he did create something from them it was frequently something never achieved or never considered. Even if anyone had considered the ideas before they had probably dismissed it as too much work or likely impossible to achieve. However, Wei Wuxian was not other people. Her didi was someone who could do things no one had ever done. He was someone who could do the supposed impossible.

The momentary smile on Wen Qing's face quickly vanished back into an expression of concern. She had never performed empathy herself, but she had listened to hours of ramblings and descriptions. She knew something was not right about what was happening, but for the life of her she didn't know why. Wei Wuxian had given her descriptions of what some of the issues might be experienced as. They didn't match what she was seeing. The first weird thing was that she was viewing Lan Xichen's memory, but even if it hadn't but what was supposed to happen it didn't worry her too much. However, ever since that door was mysteriously smashed in things had been getting... weird.

Now and then sections of the world around her would be wrong. She was in the Cloud Recesses, but sometimes it was not entirely the Cloud Recesses. She'd pass an open lecture hall and the inside would be Wen Rouhan's throne room in Nightless City. She'd glance behind her and find sections of Cloud Recesses had become the farms from the Burial Mounts. Mixed in with the pale robes of GusuLan Sect disciples, she'd see QishanWen Sect Uniforms.

None of the images were complete. It was like images of people and places she had seen had been scattered through the Cloud Recesses. The abrupt interruption of these things into the tranquil Cloud Recesses was jarring to say the least. She looked up at the sky when she noticed a weird pattern to the shadows being cast. She immediately regretted this. Entire sections of the sky seemed to be from completely different places and times. There was the haunting gray sky of the Burial Mounds at noon. A clap of thunder drew her eyes over to a section of sky that was pouring rain from a night sky. A dozen more disjointed images of the sky with distinctly different times of day and atmospheres made it dizzying to look at. It was like someone had taken many different paintings of the sky and cut them into pieces, then pasted different sections together.