"How long of a trip is it?"

"Quite a distance, but cultivators travel quickly.  I can get there in a couple days easily enough."

"I suggest leaving in the morning, then."

"Yeah."

For now, Wei Wuxian has just reached the first of the farms.  He has farmers to inform, reassure, and tell to create poetry about themselves if they want to.  This one has a daughter, five years old, and she's so big now!  Wei Wuxian pouts dramatically as she hides behind her father's legs because she doesn't recognize him, because he was off at war for two years.

"Does the goddess Deviskaryl have a thing she's a goddess of?" the farmer wants to know.

Wei Wuxian looks down at the vial.  "I don't know.  Deviskaryl, do you have a thing you're a goddess of?  Other than forests.  Also, can you talk to people I'm talking to or should I be relaying things for you?"

"I can talk to anyone I'd like; hello, it's good to meet you all. I'm the goddess of self-actualization, as well."

The farmers are impressed! 

Admittedly, some of them are still suspecting that this is Wei Wuxian playing some kind of odd prank.  It wouldn't be the first time.  They don't call him out on it; if it is a prank it's unlikely to be a mean-spirited or harmful one and they'd rather see where it leads.

Deviskaryl isn't exactly chatty, when there's more than one person around, but she'll answer questions, and eventually notices their subtle skepticism and offers to show off some of what she can do: if Wei Wuxian pours the dirt from the vial out onto a table, she can produce two shallow reed bowls on it, and then she can manifest fruit in the bowls, or grain, including a couple varieties of rice they haven't seen before, or gems, or little stone statuettes of cats, and if they put something in one of the bowls she can move it to the other, no matter where they take them.

Sure, he'll pour out the vial for some tests.  Wei Wuxian wants to see the cool magic too!  Magic isn't something he will ever get tired of.

"Did you create these just now, or were they somewhere in your territory already and transported here?"

Living so close to Lotus Pier, these farmers know a good amount about what cultivation can and can't do.  This does not look like what they're used to seeing nor does it look like the rumored demonic cultivation that they heard Wei Wuxian used in the war.

The farmers offer effusive but genuine praise, and also more questions:  Will she want them to grow these crops for her?  Do they have mystical properties?  Are the farmers where she came from much different?

"I made the bowls and food just now, and the gems are extras from a batch I made a little while ago. The statuettes I had on hand; my artisans often make ones like that for practice, when they don't have another inspiration in mind." She produces another little cat, at that, this one made of glazed ceramic; it's of significantly worse quality than the others but charming in its own way.

"These crops might be better than the ones you have now, and you're entirely welcome to grow them and to ask me for more seed for them until they're established here, but they don't have any mystical properties and it doesn't matter to me which crops you grow, only that you're doing the best thing for yourselves. Farmers in my territory have an easier time, and more leisure - I can improve the soil and control the weather, so the harvests are always good - and I encourage them to spend the extra time on whatever calls to them the most. That's often artistry, but I'm not a goddess of art, I'm a goddess of being the best you can be according to your own feeling of what's best for you to be."

Aww, adorable practice cat figurine.  Wei Wuxian is going to coo at it.

The farmers thank her.  A few seem a bit wary of anything new, but most are intrigued and excited at the idea of more variety.  There are many farms in the nearby area.  Perhaps they can each try a small field of a different seed.

In turn, would it help if they made offerings of samples of the seeds and fruits they're familiar with so that she can copy them for the distant farmers of her homeland?  They aren't sure how her seed-generation ability works.  It's so different from what they're used to seeing.

That prompts one woman to begin praising one of the local recipes that use familiar crops.  It may be normal enough to all of them here, but Innkeeper Lin serves it to people who come from all over, even travelers from outside of Yunmeng, and they're always impressed.

She'd appreciate offerings of crops, for now; she can only make seeds of plants she's familiar with, and her farmers and her god friends always like having new things to try. In the longer run she'd prefer offerings that are meaningful to the person offering them, and that represent something they're proud of accomplishing or a way they're improving or that they'd like to improve; that certainly could be crops, but it's more often other things - like recipes, yes, a recipe someone is proud of developing is absolutely the kind of offering she likes. Poetry is another good example; poems are her favorite kind of offering.

(She whispers in Wei Wuxian's ear that he can keep the ceramic cat if he'd like to.)

They are indeed quite proud of their lotuses.  One man mentions how many things are named after them here, including their local cultivation sect's residence.  While Lotus Pier has - had - is getting more - gardeners for the lotus plants inside its walls, the wide series of lakes that the cultivators fly over and praise are their farms and lakes.  (The tone this is said with is one of happiness.  It's clear that these people have a good relationship with the local sect.)

There are a number of arts the locals are good at: folk songs, weaving, kite-painting.  None of this batch of farmers is good at poetry, though they will give it a try for her.  Each of their families has at least one person who knows a few hundred characters and there are plenty in town who can write more obscure words. 

Wei Wuxian would like to keep the ceramic cat if it looks like no one else wants it more.  No one looks particularly taken with it, so he whispers back a thanks and picks the statuette up.

She's not very familiar with lotuses, but if they can recommend a couple good varieties she'll get started on figuring out how to keep them healthy and happy. She's enthusiastic about singing and weaving but particularly delighted to hear about the kite-painting: in her territory in the other world they count the start of the year from when the butterflies show up on their yearly migration, and they fly kites as part of the festival for it, so she's sure there'll be some interest in sharing design ideas. And she likes spoken poetry just as much as written, and can transcribe it for them if they'd like their own copies, too.

She does, eventually, start seeming a little less enthusiastic about continuing the conversation, and shortly thereafter whispers to Wei Wuxian that she's ready to go and could he please bring the baskets to wherever the mail station should be, and also put his vial into one of them for a moment so she can refill it for him.

"That festival sounds like fun.  Cultivators usually use our kites for target practice games.  We all need to learn to use the bow, but shooting at a stationary target is so boring.  It's also not very realistic.  Ghosts and monsters pretty much never sit still and let us shoot at them!"  Wei Wuxian then gets distracted talking about and describing his own kite, which had been painted by his Shijie, Jiang Yanli - an extra-large kite like a brightly colored monster with lots of trailing tails. 

He supposes he ought to let the farmers get back to work, then.  Wei Wuxian follows the directions and gets his vial refilled, then starts heading back towards Lotus Pier.

Huh, she hadn't thought of using kites for target practice before - most places in her domain that are open enough to fly kites have too many people around to be safe for shooting, but there are a couple places along the river where it might work.

She stays quiet for most of the walk back, offering just enough acknowledgement of his chatter to make it clear that she's still listening, but as they get close she asks if it'd be a good time for a tour of the Pier.

"Sure!  The public parts, at least, and the town too.  I think I remember you mentioning you can't see through the vial.  Should I keep carrying the baskets until the end of the tour, if you can see through those?"

"Either way, really; I have a cat here, too." 

"Ah, probably best if you joined me as a cat.  I wouldn't wander off without you on purpose, but if I set you down when you're a cat and something happens you'll be able to come after me instead of having to yell at me until I can circle back around.  Lotus Pier can be a chaotic place at times."

"I'm not in a hurry." But a lanky tabby emerges from a nearby stand of flowers and stretches before coming over to rub against his shin.

Wei Wuxian doesn't know if she just appeared or had been following for a while, but either way is impressed.  He goes to pick her up.

Instead of taking the same route, he veers closer to the river for variety.  There are plenty of interesting trees and rock outcroppings along the way for him to warm up his tour guide voice on.  Soon enough they reach the first stop. 

"These are Lotus Pier's back docks.  More boring than the ones by the main entrance.  I'd take you over there first, for a proper entrance, but these ones are in the way unless we went all the way around.  And I suppose you've already seen where the normal sect members lived - those were the burned buildings you appeared near.  Anyway, these are the docks where bulk shipments of food and supplies get brought in.  They're also the docks where we keep our own boats for traveling or fishing on the river."

She allows him to pick her up, and spends a few seconds trying to find a position in his arms that will let her see without needing to claim both his hands before giving up and climbing up to his shoulder.

"Do you get many supplies in by boat?"

"Yeah.  There aren't enough people in the town to feed and clothe a whole sect of cultivators.  We buy things from all across Yunmeng then they bring them on the river.  That's the easiest way, at least for bulky things.  Valuable stuff like silk or dyes can be brought back in qiankun pouches but there are limitations to using them for things we'd use barges for.  Well, that, and most cultivators can be self important and would throw a fit if asked to exhaust themselves to haul around potatoes in their magic items."

"Cultivators are rare, then? Is there more to that than the training?"

"Maybe one in a thousand people are cultivators.  Most of that's that the training takes years and requires an experienced teacher, and it's dangerous.  There's no inborn trait that only a few people have, if that's what you're asking."

"I had acolytes in mind, actually - like how I blessed you, there's a thing we can do to give humans a stronger power than that. Different gods handle it differently; I don't have any acolytes at all, right now. I like customizing the power to the person which makes it a little more difficult for me. But one in a thousand sounds about right on average, or maybe a little high, for how many people are acolytes at home."