The offer is entirely serious, but there is a slight jest to it; she's offered it to women before, when she was the best doctor in Qishan and people came to see her, before her uncle and his paranoia and his health took over everything about her life, set her on a path from which there was no escape. A jest, for them, but a serious offer too, to help and protect. Most of them laughed it off or blushed and looked away and ignored the request, but it was there.

"Millet won't work," she tells him, even though he's aware. A sigh, long-suffering. "Just because he grew up on the blandest food imaginable and was healthy doesn't mean it's actually going have an impact on you." Millet. Of all the foods. "I'll inform him to feed you more vegetables."

"Not unequal," he says, and Wen Qing wants to laugh at that, although she doesn't; she'd spent too long with him in the Burial Mounds to laugh at any of his insecurities. Especially when she helped it along, asking him to do the impossible and save Wen Ning. But she does mentally scoff, shaking her head. He's the best of all the cultivators she knew, even beyond standing up for them and being willing to help her find her family.

"He's the one unequal." It's mostly a grumble, and she sips her tea to give her a second to compose her mind. "Properly court him. Or have him court you. Don't let him make all the decisions about your marriage. Especially since he hasn't told you any of them."