Liyue Tariffs: Silk Flower

A monograph recording the local customs of Liyue Harbor. First compiled by Fadlan, a traveling Sumeru scholar sojourning in Liyue, then edited by many Liyue scholars, and widely published and circulated in Liyue.

—Silk Flower—

For Liyue's respectable citizens, Silk Flowers are everywhere in their lives. The Silk Flower is a bloom of dazzling color; its soft petals are often processed into silk satin. Even after layers of processing and weaving, the flower's innate elegant fragrance lingers long. Thus Liyue people also specially cultivate varieties for boiling into balm, and the most luxurious of balms must first be offered to Rex Lapis and win his assent.

Costly Silk Flower balms, according to differences of fragrance and luster, hold different meanings among Liyue women. There is an unwritten rule among Liyue people: in ordinary social intercourse, one must not rashly raise questions of balm with a young woman. But if a careful person can guess what kind of balm is used, correctly read its character and traits, and express this cleverly, then there is a greater chance of winning her heart.

According to sayings popular in Liyue's countryside, the method of making Silk Flower balm was first taught to humans by an adeptus secluded in Mt. Aocang. In that age when the transcendent and short-lived mortals lived together, the adeptus once guided humans to learn from plants, birds, and beasts the arts of courtship and love, and once took the form of an elegant immortal bird to teach girls bathing in clear springs the exquisite methods of making and applying balm.

What sort of maiden could move a reclusive adeptus? In countless tales and legends the truth is long lost—yet balm made of Silk Flowers has been passed down for a thousand years to this day. It is said its ambiguous fragrance and soft, graceful craft have not changed through millennia of history.

According to growth environment and ancestral lineage, Silk Flowers also take on different traits as they grow. Liyue merchants give these Silk Flowers of different features and uses many flashy names, then ascribe the names to some chance encounter of Rex Lapis descending to the world, or to a miraculous gift of the adepti, dressing them with strange and wonderful stories—such promotional ads always win the favor of Liyue Harbor's leisurely folk.

Demand makes Liyue's florists keen to cultivate and breed new Silk Flower types in quantity; thus in cities and towns where Liyue mortals dwell, brilliant Silk Flowers are widely distributed. Regrettably, years of geographic change and the rise of mining have nearly destroyed wild Silk Flowers' habitats; wild Silk Flower communities in Liyue's outdoors are almost extinct. The few remaining plants are carefully protected by reclusive adepti, blooming with quiet, elegant flowers of a temperament utterly different from city-cultivated Silk Flowers.

Interestingly, in Liyue eyes the dazzling, fragrant Silk Flower is also one of the symbols of Rex Lapis. This majestic giant god who walks the human world mainly in male form—did he ever take female form to receive offerings of flowers? Among sparse historical records and tangled country legends we can hardly affirm such a conjecture, yet neither can we wholly dismiss it as baseless fantasy.

This writer has personally witnessed statues of the Seven accept feminine tribute carefully made of Silk Flowers; as for with what heart the Geo Archon receives his subjects' offerings—that is not for a foreign traveler such as this writer to guess.