shen qiao and yan wushi in golarion
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"Fuckers," Yan Wushi says agreeably. 

Yan Wushi is not per se against taxes. He has, in his time, put down any number of tax rebellions for various emperors he was advising. If Yan Wushi wants something you have, he can have it, because he can beat you up; if you don't like this situation, you should cultivate until you can beat Yan Wushi up and take his shit instead.

But this Asmodeus fellow sounds annoying, like the most snivelling Confucian ministers going on about the duty of the gentleman to the peasants and how actually it is best for everyone if the ministers get to have fine robes and wine and concubines and not to have to do any heavy lifting. Yan Wushi can't stand people who are too weak to admit that they have what they have because no one could stop them from taking it. An emperor is a bandit who stays put, and it's in his interest to make sure that the peasants are richer so that he can steal more. That's all. 

He tosses the bartender another gold coin. "A cup of whatever you think I wouldn't have had before?"

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Which can be provided!

(It's quite good. Must just be that people who get into Cayden Cailean tend to be good at brewing. Can't possibly go the other way around.)

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Yan Wushi sips his drink and prioritizes his questions. 

Most important things first: "Anything that needs killing around here?"

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"Nothing at your level, probably," he is here estimating from the flying and the amount of gold in the bag of holding. "There's wolves that need hunting and goblins and trogs raiding off the hills, but I don't think anyone can pay you for those half as much as you pay for your drinks. I can ask around, though; might be something the next town over."

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"If it's interesting they don't have to pay me, I have enough money."

Yan Wushi considers asking about hiring a boy, but then decides that orgasms last a minute but trolling Shen Qiao lasts for a lifetime. (Specifically, Shen Qiao's lifetime.)

So instead he says, "a-Qiao might benefit from something that-- isn't so hard to fight, once he's recovered a bit. The fight with Kunye was nasty. I'm worried about him."

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"Well, there's always wolves going after sheep, and raiders from the hills. I can ask around, see about pointing him at whatever needs training. Matters to the people he helps, even if it's not as much fun for him."

"... But I doubt there's anything interesting for you, unless someone's seen a dragon or Deadeye's Haunt has gone real bad."

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"I'm mostly interested in taking care of him," Yan Wushi says, all sincerity. "What's a Deadeye's Haunt?"

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"Massacre site near the border. It was a temple of Erastil - old deadeye, god of hunters and farmers. Back in the war some druids had set up there, healing whoever came by, and there were a good many of our boys were resting there. Molthune killed everyone, healer or soldier or anyone who just got stuck there, burned the place to the ground. It's been full of resentful corpses* ever since. They tried their army, we tried the militias, adventurers have tried what adventurers try - however many they put to rest, there's always more next year."

(*: This term just translates, oddly enough.)

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Yan Wushi thinks wistfully about raising an undead army. Over the course of his eight hundred years, he's learned that raising an enormous undead army to terrorize the countryside almost never helps, which is really surprising, because naively you'd expect it to be a solution to any number of problems. But one of the privileges of age is being nostalgic about a young man's folly, and Yan Wushi indulges himself in a daydream of an endless and ever-replenishing corpse supply with which to terrify the peasantry. 

The barbarian lands clearly have different forms of cultivation than China does. Yan Wushi guesses that they don't have much demonic cultivation, and this problem might be trivial for him to solve. He'll go over, take a look, see what he can do. If it's interesting he'll fix it, and if it's boring he'll use it for sparring practice. 

Speaking of unusual forms of cultivation--

"How do you ask a god to give you a circle?"

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"Depends on the god. Cayden Cailean, I just got drunk and decided to start the bar, and the next morning when I prayed I got spells. You find a god that fits you and pray and thinking about how you'll do things that god wants done?"

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He bows. "Thank you. I'll go take my rest."

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"Welcome. Come down this evening if you like, it'll be more fun then."

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Yan Wushi goes upstairs, prostrates himself, and thinks loudly I would like to be able to perform interesting new kinds of magic. Any god who is interested should give me the ability to perform interesting new kinds of magic, and then I will loyally advance Their interests as I understand Them. When I understand the magic, I'll probably want to stop, unless Their interests are in line with mine, but I hope it can be an amicable parting. As you can see from my history with emperors I always wrap up ongoing projects before leaving. 

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Well, if Yan Wushi weren't Chaotic Evil, Nethys would probably have a deal for him. 

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Yan Wushi tries again. 

Yan Wushi is fundamentally an unambitious person. This is an odd thing to say about the fourth most powerful person in the jianghu, but it's true.

Some people want to become powerful to get their revenge on those who hurt them, or to show off how much more powerful they are than everyone else, or to cause the world to be a better place by their lights. Yan Wushi likes cultivating: he likes meditation, he likes drills, he likes studying ancient texts, he likes fighting. He likes teaching, at least if his students are bright enough to be interesting. He likes challenges; he likes being good at things; he really likes getting better at things. And if you get better at things for long enough, it turns out you are one of the most powerful people in the world. 

He wants the god-magic because he wants something else to learn to be good at. He doesn't much care what the god wants him to use it for. He's open to any deity, really, as long as there are interesting challenges with which he can become better. 

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Yeah, Irori can't hear him from all the way over in Lawful Neutral. 

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Yan Wushi did not get where he was today by giving up that easily. He is immortal. He is capable of inedia. He can and will sit here prostrate for the next fifty years until somegod gives him magic powers. 

To the extent that Yan Wushi has any ambition at all, it is to be safe. He's not paranoid. He's not unable to ever feel truly safe, like an emperor who barely eats because so much of each dish goes to the poison tasters. Yan Wushi is extraordinarily powerful and has traded it in for an extraordinary level of safety. It doesn't take much time to do the necessary politics to keep Hehuan Sect powerful enough that no one messes with them. Sometimes people offend him and he has to do a horrific revenge involving mind-control cannibalism and so on, but he hardly ever has to do it anymore. The nice thing about mind-control cannibalism revenge is that once it's on the table people hardly ever offend you and you don't have to interrupt your cultivation to do it much. 

It's just... he knows that the only person who really truly has Yan Wushi's best interests at heart is Yan Wushi. He likes having money, likes fine wine and pretty boys and good poetry, likes cultivation, and (yes) likes getting to fuck with people without those people being able to do anything about it. He especially likes not being the victim of any mind-control cannibalism revenges himself. And the way to do that is to be strong enough that no one can hurt you even if they want to.

Some non-demonic cultivators have occasionally proposed to Yan Wushi, in various words, that if he wanted other people not to do mind-control cannibalism revenges to him, he could not do that to other people. Yan Wushi thinks this is a dumb argument. Most people who feel inclined to do mind-control cannibalism revenge will do it whether Yan Wushi does it or not; to the limited extent his behavior has any effect on it, it probably decreases the likelihood by making him so terrifying that no one wants to take revenge on him. 

Yan Wushi is very frustrating to argue philosophy with. 

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...well, hello. 

What an interesting traveler from another world. 

Norgorber wants to give Yan Wushi a circle for the same reason he wants to give a circle to anyone else: because he wants to see what the fuck they'd do with it. 

But not a cleric circle, no, not for this one...

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In an extraordinarily disconcerting experience, Yan Wushi has two new cultivation techniques and a set of instructions dropped into his brain. 

One of the cultivation techniques is a sense that isn't on by default but that he can use at will. Most of the objects he tries it on don't shine to this sense; Shen Qiao shines very brightly to it. 

The other cultivation technique is that he can call upon his new god, name unknown, to smite people who shine to this new sense. Presumably they are people his god doesn't like very much. 

The instructions are:

Innocence is ignorance, and ignorance is weakness. I will seek to shed my own ignorance, and encourage ignorance in my enemies.

I do not accept credit, nor do I take blame. I work always in the shadows. 

A fair fight is not worth fighting. I will take every advantage I can. No tool is beneath me.

Cold eyes, cold heart. My enemies can expect no mercy from me.

Everyone is expendable, and I will sacrifice them all as necessary.

Each life I take shapes the future to my lord’s desires.
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Lame.

Yan Wushi wanted the translation spell. Instead, he got "detect people my god doesn't like" and "ask my god for help murdering people my god doesn't like." Literally nothing of help to Yan Wushi's god-unrelated goals. Besides, Yan Wushi was excellent at murdering people without assistance and to be honest he considers this kind of insulting. 

Maybe it's a probationary period and he will get cooler powers in the future? 

At least the instructions are convenient. It's all stuff Yan Wushi would totally be doing anyway. 

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Shen Qiao makes a pained noise in his sleep. 

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Hm. Yan Wushi should do some medicine, he thinks.

He takes Shen Qiao's pulse and examines his acupoints. None of the injuries in the fight should have phased Shen Qiao-- he is well past the point of cultivation where he can shove his intestines back in his stomach and keep going. And to the extent that the injuries were hurting him, the bartender's unorthodox cultivation method seemed to have fixed him up.

No, the problem is that Shen Qiao has been poisoned-- probably well before the fight. The poison has left Shen Qiao's golden core at-- Yan Wushi judges expertly-- about one percent of the strength it should be. And because the very thing that removes the poison from Shen Qiao's body has been destroyed, Shen Qiao is going to take a long time to recover. Months, maybe years. 

What's more, Xuandu Mountain is a secluded Daoist monastery. The cultivator Shen Qiao was fighting, Yan Wushi knew, would have been the only outsider allowed up-- and then only the moment the fight was about to begin. The only person who could have possibly poisoned Shen Qiao was someone at Xuandu Monastery itself.

...Fascinating. 

Yan Wushi is very pleased with himself for jumping in the portal.

He prepares a list of ingredients for medicine and takes them downstairs. "Which of these do you have?" he asks the bartender.

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Once the brief translation difficulties are sorted out, the bartender will go over the list.

... "I don't know half of this stuff," he says. "I've can get you pear brandy" (which is totally not what "autumn pear syrup" translates to) "- and I've tasted ginger, but I don't know if there's any in town. I'll guess half a dozen households have wolfsbane or willow bark, and for the rest I can run it over to a druid?"

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"What's a druid?"

Yan Wushi is going to use his new power on the bartender. (The one about whether his god likes the bartender. Not the murder one.)

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His god does NOT like the bartender.

"Like a cleric, but they worship -" he gestures at the forest outside the town. "The world. They know about plants and animals, more than any alchemist."

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