( Oh, no, he knew the different times. Xiao Xingchen alive, Wen Qing breathing, these are not possible from his world, from his time.

That's a different sort of disturbing. Xingchen isn't reacting to Xue Yang in the soulbroken way; the name caused him pain, but he hadn't shattered, and Wei Wuxian doesn't know if mentioning Song Lan or Xue Yang at the time of Xiao Xingchen's death would have produced a response so comparatively... reasonable.

Wen Qing is even longer out of the world he knew best. So... )

For the sake of the forest, we... may have to admit, the layout of truth as we thought we knew it is more flexible than it was before. Maybe we... how we're pulled here, we don't understand either. The gates, that whole process, it's an unknown. If we're from the same worlds or not, from different times as... well, we are, Jiang Cheng doesn't know what he should and that's only explicable if he hasn't lived through the learning yet. So we're from different times, certainly, and different worlds, even if we thought we shared the same one.

( He pauses. )

I don't know about you, but I can really use a roasted potato after that thought.

( Also because he has no more wine right now. )