The first time you trigger Meteor Flight in Where Winds Meet, the game immediately takes it away. The Afterglow quest hands you a powerful Lightness Skill, then quietly locks it behind a small pendant and a surprisingly large exploration grind. The missing piece is the Afterglow Pendant, and it sits at the center of both flying and advanced movement in Qinghe.
What the Afterglow Pendant actually does
The Afterglow Pendant is a key item that removes the “training wheels” from Lightness Skills in a given region. On its own, it doesn’t teach you any moves; instead, it acts like a permit that tells the game you’re allowed to freely use Grand Lightness Skills and Wallstride movement in that region’s open world.
| Item | Type | Main effect | Region scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Afterglow Pendant (Qinghe) | Quest / mode unlock | Enables free use of Grand Lightness Skills (flight) and Wallstride in Qinghe after Afterglow is cleared. | Qinghe only |
Without the pendant, trying to fly after the Afterglow quest simply cuts the screen to black and drops you back on the beach, with the fisherman reminding you that flying in Qinghe is restricted. With the pendant equipped, holding the jump button triggers your chosen Grand Lightness Skill and turns open world traversal into something closer to a wuxia movie than a standard MMO.
How the Afterglow quest sets up Lightness Skills
The road to the Afterglow Pendant starts with a Jianghu Legacy quest rather than with exploration.
| Quest step | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Find the fisherman at Moonveil Mountain (Qinghe) | You meet a martial master disguised as a fisherman near a small body of water west in Qinghe. | Starts the Afterglow Jianghu Legacy and introduces Meteor Flight. |
| Initial Meteor Flight tutorial | The fisherman lets you try Meteor Flight, launching you through the air to a beach near Blissful Retreat. | Temporarily unlocks Meteor Flight so you can see how Lightness Skills behave. |
| Wine Jar Challenge | You must jump across floating red wine jars and reach the fisherman’s boat without staying in the water. | Acts as a movement check; once cleared, you can pick up the Meteor Flight manual. |
| Post‑challenge lockout | The fisherman disappears and explains that you can’t freely use the skill yet, even though you’ve learned it. | Creates the “wall” that the Afterglow Pendant is designed to remove. |
Functionally, the quest gives you:
- Meteor Flight as a usable Lightness Skill in your skill list.
- A scripted demonstration of Grand Lightness flight.
- A hard requirement to obtain an Afterglow Pendant before the game lets you repeat that experience at will.
How to get the Afterglow Pendant in Qinghe
Once Afterglow is underway, the pendant is gated behind Qinghe’s exploration progress. The requirement is blunt: reach Exploration Level 4 in Qinghe, which corresponds to 4,000 exploration points, then claim the pendant from the exploration reward track.
| Requirement | Threshold | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Qinghe Exploration level | Level 4 (4,000 exploration points) | Afterglow Pendant (Qinghe), plus materials and currency |
How to check your Qinghe exploration progress
There are two fast ways to see how close you are to the pendant:
| Method | Steps | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Via the map |
1. Open the world map. 2. Look at the bottom‑left corner for the Qinghe region label. 3. Select the exploration level text under the region name. |
An exploration reward track showing levels, point thresholds, and the Afterglow Pendant at Level 4. |
| Via the journal |
1. Press Esc to open the main menu. 2. Open the Journal. 3. On the right, select the exploration level text for Qinghe. |
The same reward track, accessible without the map UI. |
Important: hitting 4,000 points is not enough by itself. You must manually claim the Level 4 reward from the exploration screen. If you skip that step, the fisherman interaction will stay stuck, and Meteor Flight will continue to fail.
Fast ways to farm Qinghe exploration points
Qinghe’s exploration level goes up when you interact with the region in almost any structured way. The game quietly assigns exploration XP to a wide spread of activities:
| Activity type | Examples in Qinghe | Why it’s efficient |
|---|---|---|
| Exploration quests | Exploration‑tagged tasks in the Journal, such as oddities or local events. | Bundle multiple objectives and often lead to new points of interest. |
| Side quests and Encounters | Standard side stories, Encounters with Jianghu characters, short scripted events. | Give solid exploration XP and narrative rewards at the same time. |
| Map discovery | Reaching new landmarks, shrines, viewpoints, and settlements. | Unlocks fast travel points and incrementally pushes exploration rank. |
| Chests and loot | Opening chests, looting hidden stashes. | Often chained to exploration markers; easy to grab while roaming. |
| Helping NPCs | Small favors, local tasks, and Jianghu favors in Qinghe villages. | Stacks with other goals and fills gaps while traveling. |
| Oddities and collectibles | Collecting Oddities for specific NPCs, interacting with unique objects. | Frequently tied to both exploration XP and other progression systems. |
A practical route to Level 4 looks like this:
- Follow the main story through Qinghe until it sends you toward Moonveil Mountain and Blissful Retreat.
- On the way, detour to every Boundary Stone and obvious landmark you can see, to build out your map.
- Pick up Exploration Quests and Encounters as you pass through hubs; many sit directly on high‑traffic paths.
- Open every chest and interactable you find in new sub‑zones like Witherwilds and Verdant Wilds.
By the time you’ve naturally cleared a slice of the region around Moonveil Mountain and Blissful Retreat, you are typically close to, or already at, the 4,000‑point threshold.
Re‑enabling Meteor Flight and other Lightness Skills
Once you have the pendant in your inventory, the Afterglow loop closes with one final conversation. Return to the fisherman and show him the Afterglow Pendant; this unlocks free use of Meteor Flight in the Qinghe overworld.
From this point, any of the flying‑type Lightness Skills can be used within Qinghe, as long as you’ve unlocked them:
| Skill name | Category | How it’s obtained | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meteor Flight | Grand Lightness (flight) | Afterglow Jianghu Legacy, via the fisherman at Moonveil Mountain. | Often the first flight skill players see; used heavily in the quest itself. |
| Thousand‑Mile Flight | Grand Lightness (flight) | Warrior’s Journey login rewards after the fourth login. | Functionally similar to Meteor Flight with a different animation. |
| Fan Glider | Grand Lightness (flight) | Higher Qinghe exploration ranks beyond Level 4. | Gliding‑style visual; same underlying flight system. |
| Wind Rider | Grand Lightness (flight) | Later exploration milestones in Qinghe. | Represents the upper tier of flight unlocks from exploration. |
All four skills are variations on the same system. They differ in animation and feel, but each one:
- Triggers by holding the jump button once you’re airborne.
- Starts a short timing sequence at the bottom of the screen, where pressing jump on cue extends your flight distance.
- Can be cut short simply by not pressing jump on a prompt, allowing you to drop where you want.
Wallstride and ground‑focused Lightness movement
The Afterglow Pendant does more than unlock airborne flight. It also enables Wallstride skills, a subset of Lightness Skills that improve sprinting, dashing, and wall‑running.
| Skill | Subtype | Unlock path | Effect on movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallstride – Swiftstride | Wallstride (Lightness) | Obtained from an Oddities NPC after completing the “Oddity: Melody Hunt” exploration quest. | Improves sprint and wall‑run responsiveness, making ground traversal feel more fluid. |
| Wallstride – Shadowdash | Wallstride (Lightness) | Also tied to the Oddities NPC unlocked by Melody Hunt. | Focuses on short‑range dashes and repositioning while running. |
These skills don’t launch you into the sky, but in practice, they matter just as much for everyday play. With the pendant active in Qinghe, Wallstride makes climbing cliffs, darting across rooftops, and threading through tight spaces feel far less constrained than the default sprint.
Region‑locked pendants and why flight turns off outside Qinghe
Qinghe’s Afterglow Pendant doesn’t grant universal flight rights. Each major region in Where Winds Meet has its own exploration track and its own version of the Afterglow Pendant or equivalent keepsake.
| Region | Requirement for flight | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Qinghe | Exploration Level 4 (4,000 points) and Afterglow Jianghu Legacy completed. | Grants the Qinghe Afterglow Pendant; enables Grand Lightness Skills and Wallstride in Qinghe. |
| Kaifeng | Region‑specific exploration rank (again Level 4) and local exploration progress. | Unlocks that region’s pendant; allows flight there but not retroactively elsewhere. |
Flying into a new region without its pendant is not possible; the game simply refuses to fire Grand Lightness Skills. The only way to restore full movement there is to repeat the exploration grind and claim that region’s Level 4 reward.
The upside is that Lightness Skills themselves are not lost or re‑locked. Once you have Meteor Flight, Thousand‑Mile Flight, Fan Glider, or Wind Rider, those skills remain in your repertoire everywhere. The only thing that changes per region is whether the world accepts you using them.
Once the Afterglow Pendant is in your hands and the fisherman has signed off on your training, Qinghe changes character. Boundary Stones and horses still exist, but they become backup options instead of necessities. The real traversal system is Lightness: a set of flight and movement tools gated not by gear score, but by how well you know the region and how far you’ve pushed its exploration track.
