Backlash Part 2

Chapter 227: To Prepare an Escape

More time had passed than Wei Wuxian realized. He supposed that made sense. He couldn't account for time when he was unconscious, something that had happened three times early into his imprisonment thanks to the mirror that had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

Those mirrors were a problem. Wei Wuxian knew now that the mirror he had been working on was part of a pair. The mirrors would each cast an array formed of light and shadow around a target. The targets would temporarily swap bodies with the person in the other array. Wei Wuxian wasn't completely sure how long it lasted for.

The first time Wei Wuxian was pretty certain they had rendered the other person unconscious first. So Wei Wuxian had no awareness when he moved to the other body. From Wei Wuxian's perspective he passed out and then woke up some unknown amount of time later in a cell. He hadn't even deduced that he had been in another body for any of that time until later. When a familiar flash of light and translucent array blinded him. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds before he was blinking the spots out of his vision, suddenly groggy and disoriented.

Wei Wuxian was only able to learn what was happening because they hadn't rendered Wei Wuxian's temporary body unconscious. They had given them something. Something that left Wei Wuxian feeling weirdly buzzy, floaty and disconnected. Although maybe it was normal to feel disconnected when you weren't in your own body. Wei Wuxian didn't have a sober experience being in the wrong body to compare it with.

Wei Wuxian had wondered at first what they were doing with his body. Was someone else in it? His thoughts chased each other in useless circles for some time. Whatever they had given him made it difficult to hold onto a thought for more than a few seconds. Sometimes he would get half way through a thought and forget what the first half even was.

He didn't have to wait very long before finding out. Xue Yang was happy to gloat about what he did when he was in Wei Wuxian's body, and Jin Guangyao was not shy about using it as a threat. If Wei Wuxian wouldn't cooperate by providing them with the kind of information they wanted, then they may as well use his face to conduct their own experiments.

Since Wei Wuxian was trying to make this as difficult for them as possible, it didn't take long before they were using the mirrors again. Xue Yang was clearly taking whatever this drug was before they used the mirrors. Wei Wuxian would wake up with it in full effect. Weird sensations, thoughts so slippery that they'd slip through his fingers as soon as he grabbed hold of them.

Wei Wuxian fought to focus. If he wasn't unconscious then he needed to do something. Ideally Wei Wuxian would like to reverse the array. That was a thought he had latched onto while in his own body. Unfortunately the most aggravating part about those mirrors was that the array was hidden unless they were reflecting light to cast the array. Wei Wuxian didn't have bright red cinnabar to examine at leisure. He had only a few seconds in which to get a look at any of the characters.

The drug made remembering the characters difficult, but Wei Wuxian pressed on. Xue Yang's body always had its core sealed and access to resentful energy restricted. But Xue Yang immersed himself in resentful energy constantly. Even if Wei Wuxian was limited to what was in Xue Yang's body, it was a lot more to work with than what he had access to in his own. If Wei Wuxian could reverse the array he could return to his body. Most importantly, he could return to his body when it wasn't freshly cleansed and locked up in a tightly warded cell.

Wei Wuxian got close the last time. There had been an uncomfortable tugging sensation, a bit like diving down fast on your sword while also being tugged under water by the undertow. It was an uncomfortable combination accompanied by a few confusing seconds where he saw blurry images of a small village littered with bodies. Then he was back in Xue Yang's body feeling like everything around him was spinning.