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.

The environment around her had a similar feel. It was mostly the Cloud Recesses. In some places it would be just a few people standing here or there that didn't belong. In some places it was like someone had cut holes in the world around her. Parts of the environment were gone and instead she was seeing pieces from completely different places showing through those gaps. Wei Wuxian had never described anything like this. Not happening to him, not even something he had speculated happening. There was also the incident with the door which was giving her serious concern.

She couldn't help but wonder if the broken door had been her doing. True she had wanted to break the door down. She had screamed at the door as if someone could actually hear her. She hadn't actually touched the door but it smashed in violently and nothing in the environment reacted to it. When she looked inside the residence it was nothing but a hazy black void with a broken door laying still as though it were on a floor. If that had been her doing, then what exactly had she done? Wen Qing couldn't help but worry that it might have Lan Xichen. It was certainly not her intention, but everything inside here should be either part of him or part of her? With the strange disjointed mess she really wasn't sure which of them it was coming from. The environment was filled with things that could only come from her, but also things she had never seen or experienced.

"Jiejie!" Wen Qing immediately spun around looking for the source of the voice.

"A-Ying?" She called out. That had been her didi's voice, she was sure of it. She turned several times scanning the chaotic environment. She didn't see him anywhere.

"Jiejie. If you hear me make that angry scowl you always had when you caught me planting A-Yuan in the fields." Wei Wuxian's voice echoed around her, coming from no specific direction. Wen Qing's face automatically shifted into the disapproving scowl laced with just the tiniest bit of fondness. She hadn't even chosen to comply. Just reminding her of it had been enough to elicit the response.

"Awe~! Jiejie you can hear me!" Wei Wuxian giggled. "That expression you're making always made me laugh." Wen Qing wasn't sure what to say to that, and if Wei Wuxian needed her to make expressions to know she could hear him then she could assume that he couldn't hear her.

"So um... serious talk." Wei Wuxian's voice now sounded nervous and Wen Qing did not like that. "So a very unexpected problem occurred in empathy. You remember the two most important things for performing empathy safely? Usually the second one, staying calm is the problem... Well um, the first one was apparently the problem this time and because of that Lan Xichen's soul has ended up entangled with yours. I um... Jiejie, if we pulled you out now you'd end up ripping a huge chunk out of Lan Xichen's soul and taking it with you... large enough that it might kill him." Wen Qing could hear the emotions in Wei Wuxian's voice. Fear, pain, anxiety, worry. She supposed the only reason he was still functioning so well was because there were people relying on him. Wei Wuxian had always been someone who pushed his pain and instability aside in favor of supporting and helping someone else.

"Jiejie... You should know that to save Lan Xichen we will have to put you in more danger. No matter what we do there is going to be some damage to Lan Xichen's soul and you are going to take something with you. However, I think we can make it so there is only a little damage to Lan Xichen's soul. The problem is it makes it very likely there would be a small amount of damage to yours as well. I... I don't want you to be hurt Jiejie, and I don't want Lan Zhan to lose his ge. I... I'm gonna keep trying to think of another solution, but I am worried the longer it takes the harder it will be to mitigate the damage." Wen Qing could hear the pain in Wei Wuxian's voice.

'Oh my self-sacrificing didi. I'm glad I didn't let you be the subject of empathy. Not only would I be afraid of the lengths you might go to in here to protect Zewu-Jun, but I probably would not be able to figure out what went wrong.' Wen Qing sighed as she shook her head. She waited for Wei Wuxian to tell her what she could do. She assumed if it was all up to him then he would not have needed to find a way to talk to her.

"If you decide to go this route then what you would need to do is try and pull Zewu-Jun into one of your memories. It will probably need to be one very emotional for you. Forcing a memory that can absorb you completely so it can force you both closer to a normal state of empathy. Probably pick one you remember well as it will be easier for it to be more solid. If you don't want to go that route then see if you can't just draw Lan Xichen's consciousness out some other way." Wen Qing nodded in response even though she expected that wouldn't translate into anything Wei Wuxian could perceive.

Wen Qing began looking around, trying to spot Lan Xichen again. Normally in empathy you were tethered to the subject, for rather obvious reasons. Of course by now Wen Qing knew this was no longer a normal empathy. She felt emotions twisting inside of her that did not fit the circumstances. Most probably emotions that were coming from Lan Xichen. Wen Qing rubbed her chest in discomfort. Her chest felt tight with anxiety and distress.

"A-Zhan!" Wen Qing heard the sound of young Lan Xichen's voice. She moved swiftly towards the sound. She was just in time to see the eight year old Lan Xichen running towards a collapsed six year old Lan Wangji.