Cloudtop Ascent is the server-wide construction event that arrived in Where Winds Meet on August 20, 2026, and it hands out gacha currency for doing very little combat. Everyone on your server pours contribution points into building the Cloudstair, the staircase leading up to the new Heaven’s Threshold region. Your personal payout comes from Work Merit, the event currency you spend in the UnionPay event shop — and two Lingering Melodies sit right there on the shelf.
Quick answer: Lingering Melody costs 160 Work Merit in the UnionPay event shop with a limit of two, so you need 320 Work Merit total. Earn it by clearing the Cloudtop Ascent: Foundation quest, then every unlocked Mountain Express delivery and the weekly Mountain Material Gathering objectives.
UnionPay event shop: Work Merit costs
Work Merit only spends inside the UnionPay shop attached to the event menu, and the two Lingering Melodies are the highest-value items in it if you pull on the Celestial Echo banner. The Beyond Clouds glider skin is the other headline purchase, and at 600 Work Merit it costs nearly twice both Melodies combined.
| Item | Cost / limit |
|---|---|
| Lingering Melody | 160 Work Merit, limit 2 |
| Beyond Clouds (glider appearance) | 600 Work Merit |
| Resonating Melody | Work Merit |
| Attunement / Re-attunement / Returning Stone: Mirage | Work Merit |
| Supreme Melodic Stone: Mirage, Melodic Breakthrough Box | Work Merit |
| Inner Way Note Chest, Oscillating Jade, Bag of Coins | Work Merit |
| Moving Ox, Spot On, Vase of Spring, Peach Branch, Softwave Dye Powder | Work Merit |
Tip: buy the Melodies first. The stock limit means you cannot convert leftover Work Merit into extra pulls later, and event shops close when the event does.
Unlock the event with Cloudtop Ascent: Foundation
Cloudtop Ascent: Foundation is an Exploration side quest that acts as the tutorial for the whole event. Until you finish it, the Build the Cloudstair page and the Mountain Express deliveries stay closed. It is short — a delivery run with a zipline in the middle — and it pays 75 Echo Jade total, 3,000 Character EXP, and 3,000 Coins along the way.
Mountain Express deliveries: the main Work Merit source
Mountain Express is a set of timed courier mini-games, and each cleared stage pays out both Construction Progress (which feeds the server bar) and Work Merit (which feeds your shop budget). The important restriction: stages are one-and-done. You cannot replay a finished delivery to farm more currency, so a sloppy run costs you rewards permanently — you simply wait for the next batch of stages to unlock.
| Stage | Destination |
|---|---|
| Mountain Express I | Mohist City |
| Mountain Express II | Xu Jiahe |
| Mountain Express III | Darkcloud Pavilion |
Mountain Material Gathering weekly objectives
The second Work Merit tap is a weekly checklist that mostly overlaps with things you already do. None of it requires the new region, and every completed line also adds Construction Progress to the server bar.
| Weekly objective | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Take part in construction | 3 times |
| Consume Energy | 480 |
| Gather in the open world | 20 times |
| Log in | 1 time |
| Obtain Jade Fish | 1,000 |
How Build the Cloudstair progress works
Build the Cloudstair is the server-side tracker, not a personal one. Phase One: Foundation asks the whole server for 1,000.0M contribution points, and every Mountain Express clear or weekly objective you complete pushes that number up while crediting your own contribution total separately. Exploring for blueprints left behind by earlier wanderers can also speed the build along.
Foundation is the first of three quests matching the three phases of the Cloudstair, with the finished staircase opening the route to Heaven’s Threshold. The event menu also shows Echoes of Creation as content still to come; no start date for it is confirmed yet.
What Lingering Melody is for
Lingering Melody is the pull currency for the Celestial Echo draw, the limited banner carrying time-exclusive cosmetics. One Melody equals one draw. Nothing you win affects combat power — the gacha in Where Winds Meet is cosmetic only — but Harmonic Cores and legendary appearances only come from here.
| Celestial Echo draw | Detail |
|---|---|
| Cost | 1 Lingering Melody per draw |
| Legendary rate | 0.83% (pity included) |
| Epic rate | 11.04% |
| Rare rate | 88.13% |
| Pity | Legendary guaranteed at 150 pulls, Epic every 10 pulls |
| Pity carryover | None between banners |
| Epic duplicates | Convert to Essence of Heaven x5 |
Confirming the purchase and common blockers
You know the Melodies landed when the UnionPay shop entry flips to sold out at 2/2 and your Work Merit balance drops by 320. The Melodies themselves appear in your inventory and immediately count toward the Celestial Echo draw counter.
Three things stop people short of 320 Work Merit. Mountain Express stages that show a lock icon are gated behind the event schedule rather than anything you did wrong, so they cannot be rushed. Finished stages never reset, meaning a missed timer is lost income you cannot re-earn. And skipping a week of Mountain Material Gathering removes that week’s Work Merit entirely, since the objectives roll over rather than stack.
Treat the deliveries as the priority and the weeklies as the safety net. Clear each Mountain Express stage the day it unlocks, keep the Energy and Jade Fish objectives ticking, and both Melodies are locked in well before the Cloudstair reaches Heaven’s Threshold.
