"Truthfully Novice Su, I think you're beyond flowery words at the moment," Wu Ling said frankly. "I can tell that you've carried a heavy burden all by yourself for a long time. You feel like you've bottled up a good many hurts, both large and small."
"You're like an overstuffed sack of rice and today has turned a small tear into a great flood of lost grains," Wu Ling said, sharing his perspective of the other man's emotional state to see if Su Jixin would deny it. When the other man didn't, he continued.
"You can't take out your feelings on your wife without harming your marriage, you can't take out your feelings on your daughter who you value more than yourself, so you're taking it all out on me because I'm convenient. I'm sure you'd be happy if I yelled back at you," Wu Ling said with a shake of his head. "But I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you."
Moving quickly, Wu Ling produced a tea set from his cosmos sack and began to expertly arrange the set. While he was certain that there was a time for strong wine and hot feelings, right now it didn't feel productive to let Su Jixin spiral around his cup. Instead, he hoped that a well-crafted cup of tea could help provide a breakthrough point in their conversation.
"Hou, can you light the burner for me?" Wu Ling asked, turning to the Golden Crow that still glared uncertainly at Su Jixin.
With an excited flap of his wings, the young Golden Crow hopped off Wu Ling's shoulder and exhaled a thin stream of flame, expertly lighting the small oil burner that Wu Ling kept as part of his traveling tea set.
Ever since consuming the Flame Tongue Heart Burning Pepper that Huang Yeyan had gifted him, Hou had been steadily practicing his new technique. While it was unlikely that it would become powerful enough to threaten cultivators until Wu LIng became an Understudy, it delighted his Guardian to be useful for more than hurling fireballs at Wu Ling's foes.
"I know that you want to give vent to your anger right now," Wu Ling said while he sorted through a small collection of herbs to add to the tea leaves he'd selected. "But I'm no good at winning shouting matches and I hate losing when there's nothing to be gained from the loss. Instead, I'm going to make you a cup of tea and I'm going to give you a chance to get what you want, or at least part of it."
"And you're going to do that by serving tea? It really is impossible to anger a eunuch isn't it?" Su Jixin snorted at the young artist, fully believing the rumors he'd heard of how the Bamboo Silk House treated men who joined the sect. After all, what man could sit so calmly in the face of the anger and bile that Su Jixin had poured all over Wu Ling?
"I'm not making tea because it gives you what you want," Wu Ling said calmly, refusing to rise to the bait about his supposed status as a eunuch. Revealing the truth now would only put him in a more disadvantaged position, it was better to let the Scholar keep his misunderstanding. "I'm making tea because I hope it will get me what I want."
With smooth, practiced motions, Wu Ling steeped a cup of tea to test its aroma and flavor. A brief sniff was enough to let him know that his blend of herbs would likely be successful even if it wouldn't be an enjoyable cup of tea.
The flavor wasn't much better than the aroma, starting sharp and bitter even when it had only been briefly steeped but as soon as his palette registered the bitterness the flavor melted away leaving behind a faint numbness on the tongue. This, more than anything else, was why he prepared this particular blend of tea. Su Jixin's emotions were far too sharp and jumbled to have a productive conversation.
A calming blend might reduce his anger and soothe his hurt but it would do nothing for the distrust that both fed into and fed off of the other emotions dominating the Scholar's heart at the moment. Instead, Wu Ling opted for a blend of herbs that numbed both the tongue and the sense of any emotion that the other man could feel.
It wouldn't stop him from feeling, that while his Aunt Hyacinth might be capable of brewing such a potent cup of tea, that was far beyond Wu Ling's humble skills. It would, however, allow him to have a more productive conversation, or at least he hoped it would.
"Novice Su," Wu Ling said once he'd finished brewing a second cup of tea that he presented to the older man. "Properly, I shouldn't address you by a cultivator's title. You're Su Xiang's uncle and by rights, as her sworn brother, I should address you as Uncle Su. I've tried to be respectful."
"I know you haven't been happy about me since you found out I wasn't the woman I presented myself as," Wu Ling acknowledged. There was no way to ignore the hurt that started from deceiving Su Yao and everyone else at school, so he could only acknowledge it and hope to move beyond it.
"But even if you don't want to acknowledge it," Wu Ling continued. "I want to build a relationship on a foundation of mutual respect. You're not only my sworn sister's uncle, you're also my junior sister's father. Please, accept this cup."
"If you'll forgive the flowery words, then as an Architect, accept my intentions to build a foundation upon which we can construct a relationship that works for both of us. If you can accept that foundation then I think we can address the things that are hurting you right now, but without that foundation, all we can do is fight. I don't want that, and I don't think Junior Sister Su Yao wants that from us either."