Qianye the Witch is one of the first real walls in Where Winds Meet. She is a main story boss in Chapter 1, and defeating her also unlocks a repeatable Campaign version with its own reward ladder. The fight mixes long scythe combos, teleports, and a second-phase health drain that punishes mistakes over time rather than in a single hit.
Qianye where winds meet: where to find her and when the fight unlocks
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Main role | Story boss and Campaign boss |
| Story chapter | Chapter 1, quest “For Whom Does He Return” |
| Region | Moonveil Mountain (Qinghe) |
| Specific location | Blissful Retreat |
| Campaign type | Campaign Challenge (repeatable, costs Energy) |
Qianye is fought first as part of the Chapter 1 main quest “For Whom Does He Return.” Progress that quest until the objective sends you into the Blissful Retreat Campaign at Moonveil Mountain. Clearing Blissful Retreat by defeating Qianye finishes that story beat and immediately unlocks a separate Campaign boss node for her on the world map.
The Campaign node lets you spend 20 Energy points per run to roll for gear and materials scaled by your World Level, so this encounter remains relevant long after you advance the story.
Recommended loadout for Qianye in Where Winds Meet
| Category | Recommendation | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Martial weapon | Panacea Fan | Continuous healing makes you effectively unkillable if you keep hitting and deflecting, especially during health-drain phases. |
| Alternative weapon | Infernal Blades / Twinblades | Fast multi-hit attacks refill health quickly when paired with lifesteal, enabling aggressive play in White-form. |
| Mystic Art | Guardian Palm | Strong defensive tool for punishing certain telegraphed melee sequences. |
| Mystic Art | Leaping Toad | High mobility to reposition around waves and AoE patterns. |
| Mystic Art | Meridian Touch | Hard counters specific charge-up moves such as Flaming Slashes and All Encompassing Slash follow-ups. |
| Mystic Art | Cloud Steps / Skywalk | Extra air movement to dodge vertical dives and ground slams. |
The Panacea Fan trivializes sustain issues. Its healing lets you commit to deflecting and chip damage without constantly burning crafted potions, which is crucial on higher difficulties where Qianye’s stray hits can delete large chunks of your health bar. If you prefer to run two damage weapons, fast dual blades or Infernal Blades can still work, but you need tight parry timing and more conservative potion use.
On the Mystic Arts side, treat Meridian Touch as a “skip button” for some of her nastier charge attacks. When its icon flashes during her casting animations, triggering it not only cancels the move but usually opens a long punish window.
How Qianye’s fight is structured
| Phase | Form | Key mechanics |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Red-haired Qianye | Standard scythe combos, illusions, room-wide scythe throw; no constant health drain. |
| Phase 2 (start) | Red-haired Qianye | Faster melee pressure, more waves, combo strings that demand consistent parries or dodges. |
| Phase 2 (mid) | White-form Qianye | Mirror-realm, passive HP drain every second; you heal only by attacking or deflecting. |
| Phase 2 (end) | Back to red-haired | Final damage check; repeats some moves with tighter timing. |
In the Campaign description Qianye is framed as a disguise master whose real self is never seen, and the fight reflects that with repeated vanishes, clones, and a realm shift. Mechanically, the big breakpoints are around 75 percent and 40 percent of her health bar in Phase 2: these are where she transitions into White-form with the arena burning and your health slowly leaking away.
Most of the difficulty comes not from a single instant-kill move but from getting clipped repeatedly by her line waves and teleport strikes, then being unable to out-heal the mirror-realm drain. Your goal is to learn which animations demand parries, which must be dodged, and where you can safely go on the offensive to refill HP.
Surviving Phase 1: punishable patterns and non-parryable waves
Phase 1 is where you learn her visual language. She leans heavily on two categories of moves:
- Close-range scythe strings that can be parried or perfect parried.
- Ranged wave attacks and arena tools that must be dodged.
| Move | What it looks like | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Upward Slash / Dash Slash | Short wind-up, then a forward dash with an upward cut. | Side-step or parry as soon as she starts moving; good Qi damage window. |
| Sweeping Slash (red) | Blade glows red, wide 360-degree sweep. | Perfect parry for a strong counter or roll through the arc; very punishable. |
| Falling Double Wave | Backstep, then she rises and sends two gold-glowing ground waves. | Cannot be parried; dodge sideways between the lines. |
| Triple Wave / Sweep to Single Wave | Gold or red charge, then multiple straight waves. | Use lateral dodges, threading gaps; parry only the melee sweep when applicable. |
| Double Shadow Strike / Illusion Strike | She vanishes, then reappears at your blind spot with wide slashes. | Stop moving; watch the camera snap and parry or dodge on each reappearance. |
| Goddess of Fire | She throws a burning double scythe that boomerangs, then dives. | Stay mobile; dodge the projectile path, then be ready to parry the final sweep. |
During these openings, focus on draining her Qi rather than pure HP. With Panacea Fan equipped, holding your ground and chaining deflects steadily pushes her toward the Execute state while continuously healing you. Once Execute becomes available, you can delete a chunk of her bar without exposing yourself to risky extended combos.
Phase 2 red-form: high-pressure melee and deadly wave strings
At the start of Phase 2, Qianye’s kit condenses into faster, more relentless strings. The main threats here are her multi-hit combos and the gold-glowing wave patterns that cannot be parried at all.
| Phase 2 move | Risk profile | Best answer |
|---|---|---|
| Horizontal Slash / 2-hit Combo | Standard melee; moderate damage. | Practice parrying both hits to keep Qi pressure high. |
| 3-hit Sweeping Combo / Faded Double Sweep | Several overlapping swing timings. | Either block and time a single parry mid-string, or dodge through each swing if your timing is inconsistent. |
| Sevenfold Combo (red) | Seven hits ending with a leaping strike. | All hits are interactable: block to be safe, or parry multiple hits if you want extra Qi damage. |
| Quadruple Wave (gold) | Four long-range waves; high chip if you misread. | Circle around her instead of backing away; rotate around her flank to slip between waves. |
| Divine Eruption | Short dash slash, then leap and six radial waves from the slam. | Parry the first dash; when she leaps, dodge the slam itself since it cannot be parried. |
| Cyclone Dive | She spins up a cyclone and then dives. | Back away from the cyclone core, then dodge sideways at the dive impact. |
One particular wave string stands out: during this phase she has a yellow-glowing scythe swing that fires a line wave capable of ending a run outright, especially on higher difficulty. When you see her scythe drawn back with a yellow glow, stop attacking and prepare to dodge forward, not sideways or back. Perfectly timing a forward dodge passes through the wave in fewer frames and often triggers slow motion, giving you time to slip behind her for a counter while she chains further waves.
White-form mirror realm: managing constant HP drain
Once Qianye’s Phase 2 health drops to roughly three-quarters, she jumps and slams the floor, shifting the arena into a white-toned mirror realm. Here, she swaps with a white-haired reflection, and a passive debuff starts draining your health every second. Direct attacks and deflects are the only consistent way to recover HP during this sequence.
In this realm, her attack list emphasizes mobility and teleports:
| White-form move | Behaviour | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Shadow Strike / Sixfold Shadow Strike | She disappears and chains several ground and falling strikes. | Watch for her reappearance cue and parry each swing; every successful deflect heals and refills Qi. |
| Shadow Leaping Strike | Vanish, then a vertical slam from above. | Dodge at the moment she reappears overhead; lateral dodges are more reliable than backsteps. |
| Flaming Slashes | Four fiery projectiles that inflict burn. | Trigger Meridian Touch during her charge-up to cancel the sequence and open a heavy punish. |
| Ghostly Combo | She becomes a white orb and blinks around you for three chained attacks. | Track the orb; when the light fades, parry or dodge. You can block most hits if unsure, but the last hit knocks back. |
| Ghostly Grab | Yellow-glowing scythe leading into a two-hit grab. | Cannot be parried; as soon as the yellow glow travels to the top of the blade, dodge backwards out of range. |
| Skyward Strike | Teleport, then a long ascent followed by a cross-shaped AoE on landing. | Drop lock-on, watch the sky, and dodge diagonally as she falls to avoid both the impact point and the extra AoE lines. |
Because of the constant health drain, you cannot turtle here. The safest plan is to stay in mid-range, bait short strings you can reliably parry, and convert every deflect into both HP and Qi gain. Panacea Fan plus Infernal Blades works extremely well: the fan stabilizes you, and the blades let you dump damage during White-form windows while still leeching life.
Later in the bar, she casts a White Phase Shift: a ghostly ring surrounds you while she stands on her scythe and slashes the arena before returning you to the original red realm. This transition does not normally add new damage, but it locks in whatever health deficit you still have from the mirror realm. Use the brief lull in direct threats to cast healing arts or drink medicine so you are not dropped back into red-form on critical HP.
Key punish windows and how to use Meridian Touch
Several of Qianye’s strongest attacks are explicitly designed to be interrupted by Mystical Arts:
- When she powers up the scythe with fire for Flaming Slashes, the Meridian Touch icon appears briefly. Triggering it negates the entire volley and leaves her exposed.
- During the second part of All Encompassing Slash, when she charges a huge slam from the roof, Meridian Touch can be used as she hangs in the air to cancel the plunge altogether.
Use these moments to either Execute (if her Qi bar is broken) or to chain your longest, highest-damage strings—especially if you are running dual blades or rope dart with strong DPS-focused arts. The more you capitalize on these windows, the fewer times you need to sit through dangerous wave patterns later in the fight.
Qianye rewards and why the Campaign node is worth farming
Clearing Qianye in the main story hands you a mix of currency, progression items, and even a mount:
| Reward type | Main quest rewards |
|---|---|
| Premium currency | Echo Jade ×20 |
| Exploration | Qinghe Exploration points ×10 |
| Coins | Zhou Coin ×15,000 |
| Character growth | Character XP ×22,500, Enlightenment Point ×1,500 |
| Items | Echoes of Oblivion: Tome ×1, Ferrying Mortality ×1 |
| Mount | Clip-clop horse mount ×1 |
The Campaign boss version then layers a multi-level reward track on top, with higher World Levels unlocking stronger tiers. Across levels 1–11, you can expect, in increasing quality:
- Swallowcall gear pieces (Tier 16 up through Tier 71, from Uncommon to Legendary).
- Blissful Retreat and Crimson Leaves cosmetic chests.
- Bamboocut: Wind Tips and Internal Art Note: Custom Chests.
- Attunement Stones keyed to Doom, Rhapsody, Gold Inlay, and Fieryheart.
- Gear Echo: Fieryheart at higher levels.
- Oscillating Jade, Zhou Coins, and Character XP at increasing amounts.
Campaign runs cost 20 Energy each, so it makes sense to push your World Level before committing large chunks of Energy into repeated clears. A higher World Level upgrades the quality of the Swallowcall sets and other drops, turning Qianye into an efficient mid-game farm rather than a one-and-done hurdle.
Where Winds Meet Qianye puts players at the intersection of spectacle and skill check: learning her visual tells, respecting the un-parryable waves, and exploiting healing weapons and Mystic Arts turns a punishing duel into a controlled dance. With Panacea Fan, disciplined forward dodges on her line attacks, and an aggressive mindset in the mirror realm, the “unkillable witch” persona starts to crumble—and her Campaign node becomes one of the more rewarding repeat fights in early Qinghe.
