While I don't think he was wrong, I don't think he is nearly as good at this verbal sparring thing as he thinks he is and if he was actually talking with someone who had more experience and skill (coughXiulancough) he might have been torn apart.
The moment Wu Jing started talking about how Ling Qi doesn't see some other members of the party as peers, he stepped on a potential landmine of how Ling Qi was treated by scions of the Emerald Seas nobility in the outer sect. She was scorned, ridiculed, and dismissed. Even when she became, officially, a member of the nobility nobody invited her to parties, nobody tried to introduce her to other peerage members, and nobody tried to integrate her into the peerage. She only began to attend parties when she became the retainer of Renxiang. Ling Qi, for the majority of her career as a noble, has been treated as an outsider intruding into the nobility.
You don't plant an apple tree and expect a peach tree to sprout, and the actions of the Emerald Sea's nobility as a whole have led to a situation where expecting Ling Qi to have a desire to see the peerage as peers is just as bizarre. Furthermore, Wu Jing's approach of talking about the peerage to Ling Qi opened him up to some brutal lines of discourse.
A person with sufficient knowledge of Wu Jing's position on Imperial culture and with a sharp enough wit could then transition the discourse of a commoner entering the peerage into the hypocrisy of Imperial Culture in regards to commoners. If it is a sacred and honorable duty to protect, nurture, and direct commoners then why are commoners held in contempt when the results of said protection, nurturing, and direction lead to some of them being able to assume some of the noble burdens and become immortals? Should such individuals not be celebrated as proof of cultivators ability to protect and nurture mortals to the degree that some become immortals?
By taking these tracks of discourse, Ling Qi could have directed him into a corner where he had to defend how the Emerald Sea nobility treated Ling Qi and the way Imperial Culture treats commoners becoming cultivators to Ling Qi, or try to disengage as gracefully as possible. This course would have won us no favors with him and his clique, but it could have hurt his reputation and directed individuals who don't like him towards us.
Ling Qi had the information needed to make these connections and take this route, but she certainly doesn't have the skill to actually do it at the moment, or at least not well. Wu Jing could have gone for a safer tactic and discussed how Ling Qi treating this party as if there was something treacherous/insidious when she was invited in good faith, and how disappointing it is to see a retainer of the Cai treating the peerage as if they were waiting to backstab her.
Honestly, I feel that it is good that someone breached these topics to Ling Qi, and that someone wasn't a social juggernaut. It will give Ling Qi some experience dealing with more antagonistical members of the nobility.
