Where Winds Meet: Echoes of Old Battles – Complete Side Quest Walkthrough & Touch of Death Guide

Echoes of Old Battles is one of the first side stories in Qinghe that really shows what Where Winds Meet wants to be. It is not just a quick detour for loot. You raid a ruined fortress, free a captured heir of the Northern Vow, dive into an underground tomb, and then solve a language puzzle built around a fallen army’s last oath. Your reward is Touch of Death, one of the strongest early Mystic Skills in the game, plus a fat stack of Echo Jade, materials, and EXP.

If you are coming from straight combat or exploration, this quest can easily stall you. The brazier step is easy to miss, the stone wall puzzle looks overwhelming, and the waterfall section feels like a dead end if you do not realize the game expects you to walk straight through it. The good news is that Echoes of Old Battles is actually very linear once you know what each clue is trying to tell you.

In this Where Winds Meet guide, we will walk you through how to start Echoes of Old Battles, clear the fortress, solve the Yanyun Oath wall puzzle, fix the waterwheel behind the waterfall, and finally reach the Northern Vow treasure room to unlock Touch of Death Mystic Art.

1. How To Start Echoes of Old Battles Side Story

Echoes of Old Battles is a Side Story / Jianghu Legacy Volume I in Qinghe♦Verdant Wilds, Battlecrest Slope, set entirely in the Northern Vow Ruins, a broken garrison taken over by Tiger Fort Bandits.

To start it:

1. Reach Verdant Wilds in Qinghe: Once you can freely roam that part of the map, look for Battlecrest Slope. You can also track the Jianghu Legacy entry in the exploration menu to place a marker.
2. Find the ruined fortress: Head toward the icon for Northern Vow Ruins. It is a large, destroyed fort with a collapsed main gate and broken walls.
3. Talk to Lie Bujin at the gate: Outside the gate, you will see Lie Bujin leaning in and eavesdropping on the bandits inside. Speak to him and exhaust his dialogue. He explains that Tiger Fort is interrogating a Northern Vow descendant and hunting for their hidden treasure. You receive Clue One: Descendant of the Northern Vow and the Echoes of Old Battles Side Story officially starts.

From here, your first objective is to breach the fortress, clear the courtyard, and reach the training ground where the interrogation is happening.

Northern Vow Fortress Entrance.

2. Clear the Northern Vow Ruins and Defeat Zhang Bao

2.1 Open the Main Gate

The quest log tells you to investigate the eavesdropper and open the gate. You cannot just walk through the front.

1. Scale the right wall: From the main gate, head to the right side and climb up onto the battlements.
2. Reach the guard tower: Move along the wall to the front watchtower above the gate. As you get close, the game shows a short scene of the Tiger Fort Bandits talking about blowing up the ruins with gunpowder.
3. Shoot the gunpowder barrels: Look for the barrels beside two bandits you just overheard and destroy them with a ranged attack. This clears the area and softens resistance at the entrance.

4. Return to the gate: Drop back down, interact with the Push Open prompt on the main doors, and the fortress opens up.

If you want extra loot, turn left after stepping inside, use aerial movement to reach the rooftop chest, and grab the coins, Echo Jade, and EXP.

2.2 Get to the Far Watchtower

Once inside the Northern Vow Ruins, you have a choice: clean out the courtyard, or sprint to the next objective.

• The courtyard is full of Tiger Fort Bandits and archers on platforms. Clearing them makes the later boss fight safer, but takes time.
• To progress, aim for the tall watchtower on the far wall, opposite the main gate.

Climb that far watchtower and you will see Honest Jing, Ling Dayou, and Zhang Liang discussing how to track down the treasure while Zhang Bao bullies a prisoner in the training ground below. This is your preview of the upcoming fight and a safe spot to take out a few enemies at range.

You can actually cheese some of the bandits and even tag Zhang Bao from up here. Their AI will often struggle to find a path up to you, giving you a safe opening to thin the pack.

3. Zhang Bao Boss Fight Tips

Drop down into the training ground when you are ready. Zhang Bao fights with twin axes and has two main moves you need to respect.

3.1 Zhang Bao’s Moves

• Downward Swing

  • Telegraph: raises both axes overhead, pauses, then slams them down.
  • Counter: wait out the delay, dodge sideways as the axes fall, then punish the recovery.

Where Winds Meet Zhang Bao’s Downward Swing.

• Twin Thrusts

  • Telegraph: pulls both axes back, then lunges straight ahead to close the distance.
  • Counter: side dodge while he is mid lunge. He is wide open for a combo afterward.

Where Winds Meet Zhang Bao’s Twin Thrusts.

Zhang Bao himself is not that tanky. The real danger comes from extra bandits and archers still alive around the arena. If the fight feels messy, reset and clear more enemies from the platforms first, or kite Zhang Bao away from archer sightlines.

Once Zhang Bao goes down, the kneeling man he was interrogating finally gets a name: Lie Bumie, a descendant of the Northern Vow. He is clearly traumatized and keeps repeating that he has not betrayed his family. Talking to him does not advance the quest. The actual trigger is to find the treasure map Zhang Bao stole.

4. Light the Braziers to Reveal the Arena Mechanism

Your next objective is to search the training ground for the treasure map.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Find the four braziers: Two are already lit by the time you arrive. The other two unlit braziers are tucked around the edges of the arena. You can easily spot them by looking for smoke trails from the unlit braziers.
2. Light Brazier 3 and Brazier 4: Use any fire source or interaction prompt to ignite the remaining braziers. Once all four are burning, the training ground is considered “set up.”
3. Loot the optional chests: While you are moving between braziers, look for up to five loot chests scattered around the yard. They reward Echo Jade, Oscillating Jade, Zhou Coins, Character EXP, Qinghe Exploration, and Enlightenment Points.
4. Trigger the treasure map cutscene: With all braziers active, head back to the platform near Lie Bumie and interact with the nearby chest. A cutscene plays, and you obtain Clue Two: The Treasure Map. At the same time, a circular contraption in the middle of the arena becomes essential.

Clue Two explains that the map describes how to open a hidden chamber containing the Northern Vow treasure. The solution is surprisingly brutal: you slam the contraption using a martial move.

4.1 Use Mighty Drop to Open the Underground Passage

Return to the circular stone disk in the center of the training ground.

1. Stand on the contraption and use Mighty Drop, as instructed by Clue Two.
2. The arena shakes, and the disk functions like an elevator. You break through the floor, revealing a shaft leading to the underground ruins.

3. Drop in and follow the tunnel until you reach a stone door flanked by statues.

Open the door and you will find a single corpse in a rigid, ceremonial stance. Inspecting it unlocks the key to the next big puzzle.

5. Yanyun Oath: How To Solve the Wall Puzzle

Interacting with the corpse gives you Clue Three: Yanyun Oath, along with a new stance you can equip under Meditate > Puzzle. The oath itself is written as eight Chinese characters that read something like “Every inch of land is worth dying for.” (山河寸土, 誓死不易)

You will use:

• The words to solve the wall puzzle.
• The stance to activate the statue in the next room.

5.1 Reach the Statue Chamber

From the corpse:

1. Take the left-hand path deeper underground.
2. Watch out for a rope trap stretched at the base of a staircase. Jump over or duck under it.
3. The corridor opens into a circular chamber, dominated by a heroic stone statue at its center, with walls lined with glowing stone slabs.

This is the famous glowing wall that tends to stump players.

5.2 How the Wall Puzzle Works

The puzzle boils down to one idea:

Only the characters that belong to the Yanyun Oath (山河寸土, 誓死不易) should remain visible. Everything else needs to be pushed back into the wall.

Here is the step-by-step:

1. Use the Yanyun Oath stance: Stand in front of the central statue and perform the Yanyun Oath gesture when prompted. The statue moves, and the stone slabs around the room light up or slide slightly, indicating they can be interacted with.
2. Read the nearby signpost: On one side of the wall, there is a sign that repeats the motto from Clue Three. That line confirms which characters belong to the oath and which are noise.
3. Identify the odd ones out: The room is split into three wall sections on each side, with pairs of characters on many slabs. Some of those slabs show one of the oath characters. Others show completely different characters.

4. Push the wrong slabs in: Your job is to push back the slabs that do not contain any of the eight oath characters. Once they slide in, those extra characters disappear, leaving the walls spelling the Yanyun phrase.

First Stone Slab.

In practical terms:

• There are three slabs you actually need to push in.
  • One is on the right wall, the closest section to the statue. (移)
  • One is on the left wall, the farthest section. (漂)
  • One is on the right wall, middle section. (百)

You do not have to hit them in a specific order. Watch for slabs that are highlighted but show a character that does not match anything in your Clue Three text. Once all three bogus characters are pushed back, you will hear the mechanism complete, and the stone gate ahead will unlock.

Walk through the newly opened passage, avoid another floor trap near the bottom of the stairs, and grab a chest sitting on wooden beams above a drop. When you are done looting, drop down to the next level.

6. How To Fix the Waterwheel Behind the Waterfall

The next area drops you into a cavern with a large waterfall and a stuck waterwheel.

1. Inspect the waterwheel: Interact with it to receive Clue Four: The Waterwheel, which explains that the wheel is hit by the current but not moving. Something is jamming it.
2. Walk through the waterfall: The quest marker appears behind the falls. There is no trick here: walk straight through the curtain of water to enter a hidden alcove behind it. You will not take damage or get knocked back.
3. Release the chain: Inside the alcove, interact with the chain mechanism on the rock wall. This frees the waterwheel, which starts spinning again and unlocks the final stone gate deeper in the cave.
4. Grab the optional chest: Before you leave, look at the statue head in front of the waterfall. There is a chest perched there. Use the rock formation to climb up and loot it.

Head back out through the waterfall and follow the route that has now opened toward the last stone gate. This leads to the Northern Vow’s resting place.

The Waterfall & Waterwheel in Echoes of Old Battles.

7. How To Finish Echoes of Old Battles And Get Touch of Death

The final stretch is straightforward but heavy on atmosphere.

1. Enter the tomb chamber: Past the last stone gate, you will find a room piled high with armored corpses, frozen mid-stride. These are the Northern Vow soldiers who made their last stand here. There is a side chest here you can loot immediately.
2. Read Lie Yan’s Final Words: Move deeper into the inner sanctum. On a table near the main chest, pick up Lie Yan’s Final Words, which give you context for the army’s fate and their unresolved grief over Yanyun.
3. Open the main chest: Open the golden chest in the back of the room to receive Warriors’ Pledge and, more importantly, the Touch of Death Mystic Skill scroll.
4. Inspect the wall inscription: Before you leave, interact with the large inscription on the central wall. It describes the soldiers being surrounded, outnumbered, and unable to reclaim their homeland, but choosing to die for their oath anyway. Reading this inscription completes Echoes of Old Battles. A white interaction marker will appear to send you back to the surface near the fortress.

Shortly after, the game usually drops you into a small tutorial encounter that spawns you behind an enemy and prompts you to use Touch of Death, giving you a clear example of how the skill works in normal gameplay.

8. Echoes of Old Battles Side Story Rewards

Finishing Echoes of Old Battles gives you both a powerful skill and a substantial chunk of progression for Qinghe. Depending on the source you check, exact numbers can vary slightly, but the core rewards look like this:

Key rewards

• Touch of Death Mystic Skill
• Warriors’ Pledge Letter
• Medicinal Tales
• 6 x Lv. 2 Ebon Iron
• 2 x Oscillating Jade
• Around 40–50 Echo Jade
• Around 80–88 Qinghe Exploration
• 100 Enlightenment Points
• 8000–13000 Character EXP
• 8000–13000 Zhou Coins

Even if you ignore the raw numbers, the combination of a new assassination tool, piles of Echo Jade, and a big bump to regional exploration makes this quest one of the best value side stories you can clear early on.

Echoes of Old Battles Completion Screen.

And that’s everything you need to know about how to complete the Echoes of Old Battles Side Story in Where Winds Meet.

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