In Where Winds Meet, the Qinghe side story “Afterglow” turns a simple lake crossing into a hard skill check. To earn the Meteor Flight lightness skill and start flying, you have to jump across a line of floating wine jars and reach a small boat in the middle of the water without touching the lake, all under a time limit.
Here’s how that challenge actually works, what the game expects from your movement, and why the midstream boat matters for windwalking.
Where the Afterglow quest starts and why the boat matters
Afterglow is a Jianghu Legacy / Side Story set in the Qinghe – Moonveil Mountain area. The key NPC is a nameless fisherman who later reveals himself as Qiu Yuehai, a spear master famous for his lightness skills. Meeting him and finishing his trial is the gateway to:
| Outcome | What you get or unlock |
|---|---|
| Meteor Flight | A Mystic Art movement Lightness Skill that lets you chain multiple mid-air jumps and begin true “windwalking”. |
| True Heart Spear & tome | A spear and martial manual left on the boat once the challenge is complete. |
| Afterglow Pendant (later step) | An item tied to fully using lightness skills in Qinghe after you gain enough regional exploration experience. |
The midstream boat challenge is the centerpiece of this quest. Until you succeed, Meteor Flight remains locked behind Qiu Yuehai’s approval.
How to unlock and reach the fisherman
Before you can even see the wine jars, the quest has to be active.
| Requirement | Action |
|---|---|
| Region | Be in Qinghe, specifically the Moonveil Mountain area. |
| Quest unlock | Ask the Wayfarer at Moonveil Mountain to start the Jianghu Legacy “Afterglow”. |
| Tracking | Open the Exploration menu > Jianghu Legacy tab > select “Afterglow” and track it so the marker appears. |
Once it’s tracked, head toward Witherwilds in Moonveil Mountain. If you’ve already unlocked it, teleport to the Porcelain Kiln Boundary Stone to cut down travel time, then follow the quest marker west along the lakeside until you find the Fisherman NPC standing beside the water.
Talk to him to start the side story. After some dialogue, he lets you taste Meteor Flight in a short, quick-time sequence, then lays out the real test: crossing the water via wine jars to the boat in the middle of the lake.
How the wine jar challenge works
The game gives you a strict set of conditions when you formally begin the challenge with Qiu Yuehai:
| Rule | Details |
|---|---|
| Time limit | You must reach the midstream boat within 5 minutes. |
| No water contact | You fail each attempt the moment you touch the lake; the book “must not get wet”. |
| Respawns | Falling in drops you back on the last wine jar you successfully landed on, not at the shore. |
| Movement tools | You rely on chained jumps and a dash, with limited mid-air actions between jars. |
Legit movement route to reach the midstream boat
The jars are spaced to force you to use the full depth of the jumping kit taught here. Think of it as a fixed sequence of jump counts and a single dash:
| Segment | Movement input | What to focus on |
|---|---|---|
| Shore → first jar | Single jump | Use a normal jump from the bank; no extra inputs needed. |
| First → second jar | Single jump | Another normal jump is enough; line up your camera straight across the jars. |
| Second → third jar | Double jump | Tap jump again at the top of the first jump to get the extra height and distance. |
| Third → fourth jar | Triple jump | Chain three jumps in the air; do not panic-tap or you’ll waste the last jump too early. |
| Fourth → fifth jar | Triple jump | Repeat the three-step pattern; you’re crossing the widest gap here. |
| Fifth jar → last jar | Double jump + dash | Use two jumps to gain height, then dash forward to snap onto the final jar. |
| Last jar → boat | Short hop | One careful jump is enough; overshooting is harder to recover from. |
The important part is understanding that the game counts how many mid-air jump extensions you have between each landing. If you spend an extra jump correcting your angle mid-flight, you may come up short on the final step to the next jar.
“Cheese” methods using umbrella gliding
The jars are designed to push you into mastering the Meteor Flight-style triple jump and mid-air dash. But some players sidestep the intended difficulty with umbrella-based gliding:
| Approach | How it works | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Umbrella glide | After missing a jar or mid-way through a jump, deploy your umbrella, charge an attack, and use the glide to float across a large part of the gap. | Mistiming the deployment or charge can drop you straight into the lake. |
| Partial skip | Use the jars to get some height, then angle a glide to skip one or more jars and land closer to the boat. | If you overshoot, the respawn still places you on the last jar, but you waste time. |
This “cheese” method is less about precision, jar-to-jar jumping, and more about controlling your glide arc. It can feel easier if you already have strong umbrella control from other content, but it teaches you less about the raw triple-jump timing that Meteor Flight leans on elsewhere in the game.
What happens when you reach the boat
Landing safely on the boat within the time limit completes Qiu Yuehai’s trial. The game acknowledges that you have crossed the water “without a drop” on you, and the master accepts that you are at least minimally worthy of his technique.
At that point, the boat itself becomes a loot platform. On or near the deck, you can pick up:
| Item | Role in the quest |
|---|---|
| Meteor Flight manual | Unlocks the Meteor Flight Mystic Art movement Lightness Skill once claimed. |
| Long spear | Represents Qiu Yuehai’s martial legacy; it is granted alongside the manual. |
Picking these up completes the core “Reach the Midstream Boat” objective and advances the Afterglow story volume tied to Qiu Yuehai’s fading school of martial arts.
How to equip and use Meteor Flight after the challenge
Once the trial is done and Meteor Flight is unlocked, it still needs to be equipped and actually used before the wider Afterglow storyline wraps up.
| Step | Action to take |
|---|---|
| Open abilities | Press Esc to bring up the main menu, then go to Develop > Abilities > Mystic Arts > Movement. |
| Select Meteor Flight | Choose Meteor Flight as your active movement Lightness Skill. |
| Perform the skill | Press and hold your jump key (default Space on PC), then tap jump up to three additional times in the air to execute the multi-step Meteor Flight jump chain. |
The quest expects you to demonstrate the move a few times to prove you understand it. Doing so progresses the “Use Lightness Skill” objective, reinforcing the technique you needed to cross the lake in the first place.
Afterglow Pendant and fully unlocking windwalking in Qinghe
The midstream boat challenge only unlocks the basic Meteor Flight skill. To fully exploit lightness skills in Qinghe, you need the Afterglow Pendant, which is gated behind regional exploration progression.
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Qinghe exploration level | Reach level 4 exploration in the Qinghe region, which requires 4000 exploration experience. |
| How to gain EXP | Complete chests, oddities, side content, and other activities in Qinghe to build exploration EXP. |
| Claiming the pendant | Once level 4 is reached, claim the Afterglow Pendant from the Qinghe exploration rewards interface. |
| Turning it in | Return to Qiu Yuehai on the western edge of Qinghe and choose the dialogue option indicating you have found the pendant. |
With the pendant acknowledged, your lightness skills become fully usable in that region. Each new region repeats a similar pattern: raise exploration to a set threshold, obtain a region-specific unlock, and only then deploy high-end movement abilities freely there.
Once the midstream boat is behind you, Meteor Flight stops being an abstract martial legend and becomes part of how you navigate Where Winds Meet. The lake crossing is short, but it quietly sets the expectations for how exact the game wants your timing and camera control to be whenever the winds lift you off the ground.
