And Yan Wushi, leaving seclusion, thinks that this is the most interesting thing he's seen in years.

...Lots of things are the most interesting thing he's seen in years because he was in seclusion and seclusion, by definition, doesn't have many interesting things to look at. The most interesting thing he has seen in a period of several years which ended as soon as he entered seclusion a decade ago.

But regardless. The reclusive sect leader of Xuandu Mountain, the finest Daoist sect in the world, is losing a fight and falling into an enormous black portal the likes of which Yan Wushi has never seen before in his eight-hundred-years-and-change. It's interesting.

Hehuan Sect has been getting on well enough without him for ten years and can probably handle a little while longer. Yan Wushi jumps in. 

They both land in a grove of trees!

It's a very nice grove, with sunlight filtering down through the trees and no particular horrible monsters visible at short range. The trees and grass and weeds don't look very familiar, though.

Shen Qiao does not notice this for two reasons! First of all, he's unconscious, and second of all he's blind. 

Well, that's no fun at all. His new toy has to be aware of being played with!

Yan Wushi hops on his sword and flies up to see if there are any cities around here that might have taverns and doctors from whom he can purchase medicine. 

As he rises he sees the landscape below spread out like a map, and so can pinpoint villages and cities on it with supernatural ease.

... Mostly what he pinpoints is that the grove, while a very nice grove, is on the edge of a really big forest; there are not, as it happens, any cities near him in the sense in which China has cities, except a long way off. There are some nearby tiny villages, and a bit past that some small villages, and if he searches he can find towns with a few thousand, and if he goes off thataway towards the really big lake he can find a slightly larger number of thousands on its edge, and then that one alllll the way over there might be a provincial capital, if the province was rural and underpopulated?

The portal seems to have taken him to the barbarian realms? Yan Wushi has never been to the barbarian realms before.

Yan Wushi decides that the best chance of a tavern and a doctor is going to be in a town. He flies back down, throws Shen Qiao over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and flies off to the nearest town. 

The nearest town is a fairly nice place north of the big river, up against the forest. All the buildings are made of wood from the forest's trees, and there's a carpet of large farms and ranches stretching off south of it. There's none of the elaborate walls or precise geometric layout of a Chinese city, not even the thinnest palisade or vaguest vision into four quarters, just a fading into the wood one way and a fading into the farms the other. The largest buildings might be temples or government centers? Or they might not.

Well, yes, he did expect that this was full of barbarians. 

He lands and then looks around for something that appears to indicate that it's a tavern or other place where one can exchange money for food or shelter. 

Yup! There's buildings with hand-painted wooden signs that look like they're probably taverns - nearby ones include a pig roasting on a spit, a helm above a keg, and a sword above a tankard all advertise themselves. (There's also a stag's-head one that might also be a tavern or might be something else.)

People (barbarians - they don't look Chinese at all) respond with significant shock to his arrival! Not, like, huge amounts, there's not the everyone-kneels-or-prostrates-themselves that you might get if they knew who he was, but they make room for him and seem impressed with the way he has a flying sword and everything.

He goes to the one with a sword above a tankard, reasoning that this would appeal to cultivators.

He looks for someone who looks like the person in charge here. 

It's a homey little place. There's a couple of people inside eating, dishes with a lot of meat and also fresh-baked bread, and drinking beer; it looks like it'd be more full in the evenings. The person in charge looks most likely to be the barman, a middle-aged barbarian with a scar on his chin and an implicit aura of relaxed calm.

...barbarians don't speak Chinese, do they. 

He opens his qiankun bag and dumps a mildly absurd amount of gold on the counter, then sees if they have an interpreter hidden in the back or if he's going to have to ask for a room through mime. 

Ah, a Tian adventurer without a Tongues active!

He says something in a language Yan Wushi doesn't know and sends a girl (his daughter? possibly? Barbarians all look pretty similar) off to go get someone or something.

He's not taking any of the gold yet.

Well, then, he will patiently wait until the daughter or whatever comes back. It's not that he objects to communicating through mime. (Yan Wushi feels strongly that humiliation is a thing that happens to people who are not Yan Wushi and ideally at the hands of Yan Wushi.) But he wants the entire building if he can get it and that seems a bit hard to communicate without words. 

Right! Someone will come back, a man in the same sort of rugged tunic and coat and trousers as the other barbarians and a golden bow-and-arrow pin on his cloak. He will, with open hands and exaggerated care to show it's harmless, do some kind of magical thing to the bartender, and then make moves towards doing it to Yan Wushi?

Yan Wushi nods agreeably in the way of a man who is absolutely confident that, if the cultivation technique happened to be one he did not like, he could defend himself and then murder everyone in this room in the next two minutes. 

He pokes Yan Wushi and says things, and Yan Wushi then speaks Taldane!

"Is your friend all right?" is the first thing the bartender says.

"WHOA. That's cool. --He lost a fight very badly. I haven't gotten a chance to look at him and fix him up. I'd like to rent this tavern for a week. If that's not enough gold I can give you more."

"More than enough," says the bartender, frowning. "Stick around, Odd. Is it [technical-term-similar-to-qi-drain*] or did he just take a beating?"

(*: "Negative levels.")

"I'm not sure. I caught the last three rounds of the fight, just enough to see him falling into the portal that led us here. --Also, there was a portal that dropped us here, I don't know if that's a known thing."

"Huh. Neither'd I. Well, we can check -"

He'll pour the unconscious Shen Qiao a shot, and, with the care of a moderately experienced bartender of Cayden Cailean, put it to his lips, and attempt to get him to swallow it, aided by a solid slap on the back!*

(*: Cure Light Wounds.)

Shen Qiao blearily resurfaces to consciousness. 

It is very rude to ask a cultivator who isn't a member of your sect about their techniques. Knowledge is power; most fights are won by knowing one more thing than your opponent does; the difference between renown and honor and an ignoble death is often a single scroll. 

"That's an interesting cultivation technique. What medicine was in the alcohol?" 

Yan Wushi is a rude person. 

Not waiting for the bartender to answer, Yan Wushi touches Shen Qiao's acupoints. "Ouch. Negative levels down to a commoner. Nasty, nasty fight. It looks like your cultivation technique took care of all the actual damage but it's going to be a while before he can do much."

He laughs. "Nothing that's not in every bottle - a drink's good for the shock, after a long battle. The cultivation-technique-subtype-[untranslatable]* was a Cure Light. Odd, anything you can do for him?"

The more taciturn man shakes his head. "Nothing rest won't."

(*: "Spell.")