Echoes of Old Battles is the first Jianghu Legacy in Qinghe, and it does a lot at once. It introduces a fortress raid, a multi-layered underground dungeon, a language-based wall puzzle, and finishes by handing you one of the strongest early-game Mystic Skills: Touch of Death. If you only remember one thing, make it this: every puzzle in this quest is solved using clues you pick up along the way, especially the Yanyun Oath motto.
Echoes of Old Battles quest overview
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Quest type | Side Story (Jianghu Legacy Volume I) |
| Region | Qinghe – Verdant Wilds, Battlecrest Slope |
| Start NPC | Lie Bujin, eavesdropper outside the ruined Northern Vow fortress gate |
| Key reward | Mystic Skill “Touch of Death” plus materials, Echo Jade, EXP, and coins |
| Core mechanics | Brazier activation puzzle, Yanyun Oath wall symbol puzzle, waterfall waterwheel mechanism |
The quest flow is straightforward but dense. You storm the Northern Vow Ruins, defeat Zhang Bao, read and follow a treasure map, reveal a hidden arena contraption, learn the Yanyun Oath from a corpse, solve a character wall puzzle in the underground chamber, then fix a jammed waterwheel behind a waterfall to finally reach the Northern Vow’s sealed resting place.
How to unlock Echoes of Old Battles
You’ll first need access to Verdant Wilds in Qinghe. Once you can roam that region, head to Battlecrest Slope and look for the ruined garrison with a collapsed main gate. At the gate stands Lie Bujin, an anxious wanderer who is listening in on the Tiger Fort Bandits. Exhaust his dialogue to receive the first clue and formally start Echoes of Old Battles.
You can also track the Jianghu Legacy entry in your exploration menu to place its marker on the world map, which makes finding Battlecrest Slope easier if you haven’t explored Qinghe much yet.
Fortress phase: enter the Ruins and defeat Zhang Bao
The opening act plays out across the ruined Northern Vow fortress courtyard.
| Fortress milestone | What you actually do |
|---|---|
| Investigate the eavesdropper | Talk to Lie Bujin at the gate to learn of the Northern Vow treasure and Tiger Fort’s search. |
| Open the gate | Climb the right-hand wall, reach the guard tower, clear the bandits, then return to the gate and push it open. |
| Secure the training ground | Cross the courtyard to the far watchtower and then down into the arena where Zhang Bao is interrogating a prisoner. |
| Defeat Zhang Bao | Clear his two escorts, then dodge his slow twin-axe swings and punish the gaps in his Downward Swing and Twin Thrusts. |
Zhang Bao himself isn’t mechanically complex; the real danger is the archers and other melee enemies scattered across platforms. It’s often safer to thin out archers before you commit to the arena, or abuse their pathfinding from the initial tall watchtower by peppering them with arrows while they struggle to reach you.
Once Zhang Bao falls, the kneeling prisoner reveals himself as Lie Bumie, a descendant of the Northern Vow. He’s too shaken to talk and simply repeats that he hasn’t betrayed his family. The next phase is triggered not by talking to him, but by finding and activating the treasure map he was tortured over.
Training ground contraption: how the brazier puzzle really works
The treasure map is your second major clue and the key to the arena contraption. It highlights specific flame contraptions around the Ruins – large braziers on stone or wooden platforms.
| Objective | Action in the training grounds |
|---|---|
| Find the treasure map | Open the glittering chest at the far end of the training ground, on the platform near Lie Bumie. |
| Interpret the map | Note the marked flame contraptions around the southern and northwestern walls and the one above the arena. |
| Light the correct contraptions | Ensure the marked braziers are lit. The ones already burning when you arrive count toward the solution. |
| Reveal the mechanism | Once the configuration matches the map, a circular stone platform emerges at the arena’s center. |
| Trigger the descent | Jump above the circle and use Mighty Drop / Heavenly Slam to smash it, opening the underground staircase. |
There’s no timing component here; you can walk the walls at your own pace, lighting and adjusting braziers until the circular disk in the arena rises. That disk is your elevator — treat it like a breakable platform and slam it to punch through the floor.
Yanyun Oath: learning the motto that drives the wall puzzle
The underground portion begins with a catacomb corridor lined with statues. Push the stone door open and you’ll find a lone corpse posed in a rigid, ceremonial stance. Interact with it to receive Clue Three: the Yanyun Oath and the phrase it embodies.
The oath is written as eight Chinese characters:
| Yanyun Oath characters (in order) |
|---|
| 山 河 寸 土 誓 死 不 易 |
Alongside the written motto, you also unlock the Yanyun Oath stance as an emote. You’ll use both very soon: the words solve the wall symbol puzzle, and the gesture itself activates the chamber mechanism.
From the corpse, take the left-hand path deeper underground. Watch out for a rope trap stretched low across the stair bottom — either jump over it or crouch under it. The tunnel opens into a large circular chamber dominated by a heroic statue.
Wall symbol puzzle solution in Echoes of Old Battles
This chamber is the centerpiece of the quest and the part that blocks most players. The good news: the puzzle logic is simple once you stop treating the walls as noise.
How the wall symbol puzzle works
First, stand directly in front of the central statue and perform the Yanyun Oath gesture. The statue shifts and the surrounding walls come alive: stone blocks slide, and highlighted characters begin to glow.
Each interactable block works the same way:
- Pulled out = illuminated (lit character)
- Pushed in = dark (hidden character)
Your goal is to display the Yanyun Oath phrase across the two walls in front of the statue. Structurally, that means:
| Wall | Required lit characters |
|---|---|
| Left wall | 山 河 寸 土 |
| Right wall | 誓 死 不 易 |
Every other interactable character must be pushed in and dark. Some correct characters are already fixed in place and don’t respond to interaction; you can safely ignore these and focus on the blocks that blink or respond to your inputs.
Practical approach: focus on what doesn’t belong
If matching stylised calligraphy to the clue text feels overwhelming, invert the problem: memorize or note the eight correct characters, then walk both walls and push in anything that is not one of those eight. When you finish, the remaining lit blocks naturally form:
- Left wall, reading left to right: 山 河 寸 土
- Right wall, reading left to right: 誓 死 不 易
You do not need to hit them in any specific order. The gate only checks the final configuration: all eight oath characters lit, all other interactable characters dim. Once that condition is met, the stone gate behind the statue unlocks with a rumble.
Beyond the puzzle: traps, chest, and the waterfall waterwheel
Pass through the newly opened gate and follow the corridor. There’s another low rope trap near the bottom of the stairs; respond the same way as before. At the end, you’ll see a chest perched on beams over a pit. Use the nearby wooden beams and ledges to jump across, grab the chest, and then drop down into the next cavern.
You land in a small grotto dominated by a waterfall and a large waterwheel. Interact with the waterwheel to receive the fourth clue: it’s being hit by water but doesn’t move, which means something is blocking or locking the mechanism.
| Waterfall phase step | Required action |
|---|---|
| Inspect the waterwheel | Interact with the wheel in front of the waterfall to get Clue Four about it being jammed. |
| Find the blockage | Walk straight through the curtain of falling water into a small hidden cavity behind it. |
| Release the chain | Interact with the chain mechanism on the cave wall to free the waterwheel and set it spinning. |
| Collect optional loot | Climb the rock formation near the statue’s head in this area to grab another chest. |
| Proceed | Return out through the waterfall and follow the now-open route to the final stone gate. |
Tip: the entrance behind the waterfall is not visually obvious, but it doesn’t require any special movement skills. Just walk forward into the water; there’s no damage or knockback.
Final chamber: Northern Vow treasure and Touch of Death
The last stretch is linear. Push open one more heavy stone gate and you’ll step into a chamber piled with armored corpses, frozen mid-defiance. This is the Northern Vow’s final stand made physical.
There are two key interactions here:
- A side chest in the corpse chamber and another golden chest in the innermost sanctum, which yields the “Warriors’ Pledge” and the Touch of Death scroll.
- Inscribed writings on the central wall that recount the soldiers’ last thoughts on being surrounded, outnumbered, and unable to reclaim Yanyun.
Reading the wall inscription completes Echoes of Old Battles. A white exit icon appears behind you that returns you to the surface near the fortress.
What Touch of Death does and how to use it
Touch of Death is a Mystic Skill that turns your stealth approach into a lethal opener. It allows you to deliver a massive single hit to an enemy who hasn’t noticed you yet, effectively functioning as a backstab-style assassination.
| Touch of Death behavior | Effect in play |
|---|---|
| Activation condition | You must be behind an enemy who is unaware of your presence, usually while crouched or approaching quietly. |
| Prompt indicator | A special attack prompt appears with a distinctive icon, signaling that a Touch of Death sneak attack is available. |
| Damage profile | Delivers very high burst damage, often removing a large portion of a standard enemy’s health or outright killing weaker targets. |
| Combat role | Best used to open fights by deleting high-priority targets or evening the odds before a larger brawl starts. |
After leaving the Northern Vow sanctum, the game walks you through a short tutorial encounter where you spawn directly behind an enemy and are prompted to use Touch of Death immediately. That scripted moment is your blueprint for using it in the wider world: crouch, approach from behind, wait for the special prompt, then execute for a decisive first strike.
Echoes of Old Battles is more than a loot run; it’s a compact lesson in how Where Winds Meet handles clues, traps, and environmental puzzles. If you follow each clue in sequence — especially the Yanyun Oath characters — you get a clean throughline: from hearing about forgotten warriors at the gate, to standing in their tomb and carrying their signature technique back into the open air.
