The wuxia world of Where Winds Meet lets you do more than sprint and wall-run; you can actually fly. The game wraps this ability inside its Lightness Skills system, with multiple “grand” movement skills that launch you into the air and let you glide or soar across entire regions.
Lightness Skills and how flight actually works
Flight in Where Winds Meet is not a mount, a consumable, or a traditional glide meter. It is tied to Mystic Skills in the Lightness (movement) category. Four of these are dedicated to airborne traversal:
| Lightness Skill | Type of movement | How it feels in play |
|---|---|---|
| Meteor Flight | Grand flight | Launches you high, then lets you streak forward like a falling spear. |
| Thousand-Mile Flight | Grand flight | Long, dragon-like soar across the sky. |
| Fan Glider | Grand flight | Glide with a fan, trading height slowly for distance. |
| Wind Rider | Grand flight | Acrobatic dashes forward through the air. |
Despite their different animations, these four skills solve the same problem: crossing big chunks of the open world quickly without relying on Boundary Stone fast travel. They all count as “Grand Lightness Skills” and share the same regional restriction rules.
On top of these, you start with some basic Lightness tools from the very beginning:
| Baseline Lightness Skill | Effect | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Threefold Skywalk | Triple jump in mid-air. | Unlocked by default. |
| Skywalk Dash | Dash in your facing direction after a jump. | Unlocked by default. |
| Mighty Drop | Fast, controlled descent. | Unlocked by default. |
| Abyss Dive | Dive and swim underwater in deep water. | Unlocked by default. |
These baseline skills make the world more vertical. The four grand skills are what turn that verticality into actual flight.
How to unlock Meteor Flight (your first flight skill)
Meteor Flight is usually the first true flight skill you get. Unlocking it has two parts:
| Step | What you need to do | Where it happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Start “Afterglow” | Track and start the Afterglow Jianghu Legacy side quest. | Qinghe region, via the Jianghu Legacy tab. |
| 2. Meet the fisherman | Talk to the “fisherman” near Moonveil Mountain. | Marked quest area near a pond. |
| 3. Experience Meteor Flight | He will briefly demonstrate Meteor Flight and send you flying. | You land at a beach near Blissful Retreat. |
| 4. Clear the wine jar challenge | Jump across floating wine jars to reach his boat without falling in. | Shoreline by the fisherman’s boat. |
| 5. Claim the skill | Talk to him again and take the book and long spear. | Same boat location. |
The platforming section is forgiving in one important way: the game throttles your momentum so you do not overshoot the jars. Touching the water resets you to the last jar, so you can brute-force your way across with decent timing.
Once you finish the challenge and obtain the scroll, Meteor Flight is technically unlocked as a Mystic Skill. You can see it under the Movement tab in the Develop > Abilities > Mystic Arts menu. At this point, though, the game still blocks actual use of the skill across Qinghe. That is where the Afterglow Pendant comes in.
Why you need the Afterglow Pendant to actually fly
Simply learning Meteor Flight is not enough. The game enforces flight restrictions region by region. To use any grand Lightness Skill freely in Qinghe, you must earn and equip the Afterglow Pendant, a regional key item tied to exploration progress.
| Item | Region | Effect | How to obtain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Afterglow Pendant | Qinghe | Enables Grand Lightness Skills and Wallstride in Qinghe. | Reach Qinghe Exploration Level 4. |
| Flight Medallion | Kaifeng | Equivalent unlock for Kaifeng. | Reach Kaifeng Exploration Level 4. |
After finishing Afterglow, try to use Meteor Flight in Qinghe without the pendant, and the game will fade to black and drop you back at the beach. The fisherman explicitly tells you flight is restricted until you prove yourself to local authorities by exploring the region. When you reach Exploration Level 4 and have the pendant, you must speak to him again and show it before Meteor Flight activates properly.
Once the Afterglow Pendant is recognized, you can trigger Meteor Flight anywhere in unlocked parts of Qinghe. Using it is simple: hold the Jump button to launch into the air and transition into flight.
How to reach Qinghe Exploration Level 4 quickly
Qinghe’s exploration system tracks almost everything you do in the region and converts it into Exploration Points. Hitting Level 4 is the gate for the Afterglow Pendant. You can monitor this progress from the world map by using the exploration indicator in the lower-left area of the screen.
Almost any activity in Qinghe contributes points, but some are more efficient than others. Focus on:
| Activity | Why it is efficient |
|---|---|
| Discovering Boundary Stones | Each fast travel point yields a large chunk of Exploration Points. |
| Completing side quests | Jianghu Legacies and other side content award steady exploration XP. |
| Finishing Encounters | Short, self-contained events that nudge the bar forward. |
| Collecting Oddities for Qi Sheng | Exploration-focused collectibles that also unlock Wallstride upgrades. |
| Opening chests and interacting with curios | Smaller payouts that add up over time. |
A straightforward route is to ride through the first few sub-regions of Qinghe and light up every Boundary Stone you can reach, then mop up easy side quests and Encounters. The combined rewards are usually enough to push you to Exploration Level 4 without grinding.
Thousand-Mile Flight, Fan Glider, and Wind Rider unlock conditions
Meteor Flight is not the only way to take to the sky, and the other grand skills sit behind different unlock paths.
| Skill | Unlock condition | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Thousand-Mile Flight | Day 4 login reward from the “A Warrior’s Journey” track. | Claimed via the event rewards menu after logging in on four different days. |
| Fan Glider | Earn 6000 Qinghe Exploration Points. | Appears as a milestone reward in the Qinghe exploration list. |
| Wind Rider | Earn 7000 Qinghe Exploration Points. | Another late Qinghe exploration reward. |
These unlocks only grant the skills themselves. You still need the appropriate regional flight item (Afterglow Pendant, Flight Medallion, etc.) equipped to use them within that region’s airspace.
The end result is a layered system:
- You unlock Meteor Flight with a story-flavored side quest.
- You passively unlock Thousand-Mile Flight from showing up for a few days.
- You earn Fan Glider and Wind Rider by deeply exploring Qinghe.
- You turn any of them “on” for a region by reaching Exploration Level 4 there and equipping that region’s flight item.
How regional flight restrictions work
Flight is tied to each region’s exploration rank. Qinghe uses the Afterglow Pendant; Kaifeng uses the Flight Medallion. Every major region follows the same pattern: reach Exploration Level 4, claim the flight-enabling accessory, equip it, and your grand Lightness Skills function there.
Two important rules follow from this design:
- Unlocked skills are global. Once you have Meteor Flight, Thousand-Mile Flight, Fan Glider, or Wind Rider, the skills stay in your movement list everywhere.
- Usage is local. You can only actually fly in a region where you have hit Exploration Level 4 and have that region’s flight item equipped.
That means when you step out of Qinghe into Kaifeng for the first time, you temporarily “lose” the ability to fly until you raise Kaifeng’s exploration rank to 4 and collect the Flight Medallion. Boundary Stones, Encounters, and side content in the new region play the same role they did in Qinghe.
Using Meteor Flight more comfortably
Meteor Flight’s default presentation leans heavily into cinematic camera work. It looks dramatic, but it can make it harder to judge distance and direction during longer flights. The game includes a specific camera option to address this.
To make flights easier to steer, open the settings menu, move to the camera section, and change the Grand Lightness Skill camera mode from its cinematic preset to a free camera option. This keeps the camera behind your character instead of swinging around for dramatic angles, making it much easier to line up long glides between points of interest.
Once that is set, the combination of Threefold Skywalk, Skywalk Dash, and a grand flight skill turns most early boundaries into suggestions. Boundary Stones become more of a backup plan than a primary travel tool.
By tying flight to both character progression and regional exploration, Where Winds Meet turns Meteor Flight and the other Lightness Skills into something you grow into, not a trivial early unlock. Once the Afterglow Pendant is in your hands and the fisherman has recognized it, the game’s opening regions start to feel very different: cliffs flatten into mild bumps, and distant quest markers shrink to a few seconds of airtime.
