Well, they're parasites, aren't they? They contribute nothing to society. Peasants grow food, and cultivators defend the people from ghosts and demons, and craftsmen make tables, and the emperor governs them all wisely and well, but merchants are really entirely unnecessary for society. Moving stuff around does not produce wealth. 

Thousands of peasants, starving, because the crops failed and there was nothing for them to eat, while elsewhere fruit rots on the vine for lack of anyone to take it. A plague sweeps through the land while the doctors go hungry in a plagueless region. 

A man who has grapes and needs a plow, a man who has a plow and needs a horse, and a man who has a horse and needs grapes, and they go around and around and around because none of them has what the other one needs.

A leatherworker makes jackets while children go shoeless, not because of any cruelty but because he doesn't know what they need.

And-- a merchant brings the fruit and saves the peasants from starvation, a merchant buys the grapes and the plow and the horse and gets them all to the people who needs them, a merchant pays the leatherworker for the shoes and not the jackets and the children are shod and their feet do not bleed. Prices, a means of coordination as beautiful as relationships and rites, connecting that which is valuable to those who value it, and no individual has to know where things ought to go. 

--oh.

A cultivator fills her qiankun bag with rice and flies on her sword and there are no famines, ever again, the peasants use their savings from the good year to cover food for the lean and no one ever has to starve--

The peasants don't give the cultivators tribute but pay for services rendered, and the cultivators don't hunt a powerful but solitary demon for glory, they exorcise the ordinary ghosts and kill the ordinary fierce corpses that are killing the children and breaking down the fences--

The wealth of the Lan Clan, not in gold and silver in vaults, but put to work, as ships and smiths and fertilizer and looms and the press, wealth that is created and not just stored, fertile wealth, wealth that has children as a prosperous family does--

It seems that they have been doing things quite wrong. 

He requests more information about this new way of doing things. 

Scarcity and choice and opportunity cost, marginal analysis, markets, comparative advantage, gains from trade, supply and demand, market equilibria, elasticity, preferences and utility, budget constraints, productivity, monopolies, international trade, public goods, market failures, efficiency--

More please. 

Human capital, growth, knowledge accumulation, debt, interest, investment, optimization, externalities, competition, fiat currency, optimal savings, insurance, present value, futures contracts, risk and return, portfolio theory, the efficient market hypothesis-- 

He wants more, more, more. 

(Subconscious in his mind is the idea that he needs this for the good of his sect; it has never occurred to Lan Xichen that he might not rule.)

Game theory and signalling and voting and bargaining and transaction costs and collective action and price theory and political economy and-

And before he returns Xichen to Golarion, Abadar sends him an image of Wen Ruohan, gently nudged in the direction of fair trade, of contracts which benefit all sides; of the Lan clan rebuilt, strong and prosperous, all of the Lan cultivators safe; of the books sewn into Lan Xichen's robes placed in Lan Qiren's offices and copied into Abadar's vaults, so that the knowledge so many Lan had died to preserve would never be lost. 

When you make a deal with Abadar, he always leaves you better off for it.. 

Nie Huaisang does not like wars. He has never been much of a man for glory or honor, and as far as he's concerned the Wen should stop killing people so he can go home and paint fans and play with his birds.

But no one consults Nie Huaisang about matters of geopolitics, and so here they are.

Nie Huaisang has devoted himself to the prospect of survival with a level of grim determination that would be surprising to anyone who had ever seen him wield a saber, go on a night-hunt, or indeed do much of anything that he doesn't want to do. He has faked innumerable undetectable maladies, arranged for himself to be assigned to guarding caravans on the safest routes, and initiated a dozen boys into the wonders of sexuality before leading them to the conclusion that if he, Nie Huaisang, went off to battle then he might die and they would never get a blowjob again.

Nie Huaisang is tired of this. It takes effort. Nie Huaisang has never before done anything requiring effort and it is just as awful as he always thought it would be. 

Right now, Nie Huaisang has attached himself to Lan Xichen to fetch him tea and confidential documents. To Nie Huaisang's mind, this strategy has four fundamental merits:

1. The First Jade of Lan is one of the most talented cultivators in the world. 
2. While this is the case, he is spending his time not in battles, which kill people, but doing paperwork, which has never been known to kill anyone. 
3. He is a warm, generous, and patient man, unlike Nie Mingjue, who has a distressing tendency to yell about bravery and the duty of the Nie when he notices what Nie Huaisang is up to, or worse be calmly disappointed. 
4. Lan Xichen is an absurdly, unreasonably beautiful man and Nie Huaisang is optimistic that he can add him as Boy Initiated Into The Wonders Of Sexuality #13, although the fact that he doesn't drink is a problem.

And so Nie Huaisang happens to be nearby when a hole spontaneously opens up under Lan Xichen. He is far away from the hole to begin with and running in the other direction, and then it literally warps into a sort of ellipse so that it catches him and he falls in.

This is very unreasonable. 

--and suddenly Nie Huaisang is in a cave absolutely glittering with treasures, gold and silver and jewels, books and artworks and strange alchemical artifacts-- 

"Morning. I'm Norgorber, god of crimes."

"I didn't know crime had a god."

"Criminals pray, don't they? Very devout people, criminals. 'Oh god oh god oh god please don't let them catch me fuuuuuuuuck Norgorber help they have dogs' is my liturgy."

"I don't know why you're interested in me, I have never done anything illegal in my life," he says automatically.

"No one who is suitable to be my cleric would admit to committing crimes. Pure as the driven snow, the lot of you."

"Wei-xiong* pressured me into helping him steal lotus seeds, I'm not exactly a criminal mastermind."

*honorific for a friend

"No, you're not a criminal mastermind, you're the spoiled second son of one of the most powerful clans in the jianghu. I cleric on potential."

"I DON'T HAVE POTENTIAL FOR ANYTHING!" he says, immediately breaking into tears.

"See? Trying to emotionally manipulate a god. You've mastered it already."

Nie Huaisang sobs.

"So I was hanging around Axis-- mm, I should back up a little bit, yes? So I snatched you into the world of Golarion, where all beings are divided into nine categories along two axes--"

"I DON'T WANT TO GO TO GOLARION!"

"Tough. I'm Neutral Evil, not Neutral A Nice Person. --As I was saying, nine categories, two axes. Evil is being out for yourself. Good is being a priggish little bitch who's too prissy to get their hands dirty. Law is rules and order and systems, Chaos is freedom and disobedience and structurelessness, and caring about either of them too much is stupid because then you might decide to be Lawful or Chaotic instead of rich."

Sob.