Lie Buxi sits on the edges of one of Where Winds Meet’s earliest and most layered side stories. On paper, it’s just another detour in Qinghe, but Echoes of Old Battles quietly lays out how the game handles puzzles, dungeon design, and inherited grudges — and Lie Buxi’s family is right at the center of it.
Where Winds Meet and the Northern Vow ruins
Echoes of Old Battles is a Qinghe side story that unfolds in the Battlecrest Slope area of the Verdant Wilds. The whole quest is built around the remains of a Northern Vow garrison: collapsed walls, training grounds overrun by Tiger Fort bandits, and a sealed underground complex that still hides the last traces of a defeated army.
At the gate to these ruins, you meet an eavesdropper who assumes you are also chasing the Northern Vow treasure the bandits are rumored to have found. That man is Lie Bujin. His family name is the first hint that this isn’t just a random stash hunt, and his suspicions drag the player into the fortress to see how much of the Northern Vow still survives behind its broken walls.
Who Lie Buxi is and how she fits into the Northern Vow story
Lie Buxi belongs to the same family that once stood with the Northern Vow. She is described as the daughter of Lie Yan, one of the Eight Talents, and she follows her two brothers into the ruins of the North Alliance. The game categorizes her among the Qinghe “Jianghu Friends” — NPCs who can become Old Friends and talk to you through the in‑game AI chat window.
| Character | Role | Connection to Northern Vow |
|---|---|---|
| Lie Buxi | Jianghu Friend (Hero) | Daughter of Lie Yan, follows family into North Alliance ruins |
| Lie Yan | One of the Eight Talents | Former Northern Vow commander whose last words you read in the ruins |
| Lie Bujin | Quest hook in Echoes of Old Battles | Descendant of the Northern Vow, waiting outside the ruined garrison |
| Lie Bumie | Kneeling survivor in the training yard | Another Northern Vow descendant found inside the fortress |
Lie Buxi herself does not drive Echoes of Old Battles directly, but the quest fills in the history that shaped her. The garrison you raid, the oath you reconstruct, and the testament you eventually read all belong to Lie Yan’s generation. When the game later describes her trekking into North Alliance ruins, it is sending her back into the echoes of her own family’s war.
Echoes of Old Battles: How the side quest is structured
Echoes of Old Battles appears in the Side Stories list for Qinghe and is marked as the first volume of the “Echoes” line of quests. It plays out in a sequence of short objectives that alternate between combat and environmental puzzles.
| Stage | Objective | Key elements |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Enter the Northern Vow ruins | Speak to Lie Bujin, open the gate, clear the bandit guards |
| 2 | Secure the training ground | Defeat Zhang Bao and his men, talk to the kneeling Lie Bumie |
| 3 | Follow the treasure map | Find the chest, interpret the map, light the right braziers, use Mighty Drop |
| 4 | Open the secret chamber | Study the corpse’s pose, match characters on the walls to the oath |
| 5 | Reach the final vault | Free the waterwheel, open the last stone gate, uncover Lie Yan’s “treasure” |
The combat encounters are straightforward: early Tiger Fort bandits, an elite leader, and a handful of supporting swordsmen. The more memorable parts of the quest are the puzzles, which introduce several mechanics that keep reappearing across Qinghe — braziers that must be lit in a particular order, environmental smash points that only respond to a specific lightness‑skill finisher, and word puzzles that use the setting’s written language as a lock.
From Lie Bujin to Lie Bumie: the Northern Vow survivors
Once the outer bandit patrols are dead and the training yard is quiet, the quest shifts away from treasure‑hunting and toward the Northern Vow themselves. Kneeling on the training ground where Zhang Bao stood moments ago is Lie Bumie, a descendant of the defeated army still guarding the ghosts of the fortress.
Talking to him spells out why the Lie family is still lingering in a ruin. The “treasure” the bandits are chasing is bound up with an oath sworn by the old Northern Vow soldiers: a promise not to abandon their post, even when history has moved on. That oath is the thread that runs from Lie Yan’s generation down to Lie Buxi’s wandering path.
Treasure map and braziers: reading the Northern Vow’s clues
Zhang Bao leaves behind a chest at the far end of the training ground. Opening it produces a crude map of the base and a hint about fire. The garrison is dotted with flame contraptions, and Echoes of Old Battles teaches you that not every interactive object is relevant — only a specific subset matches the notes on the map.
The solution is simple but illustrative. One contraption sits on the wall with distinctive red doors, another stands on the training ground itself. Lighting those in the right order unlocks the central stone circle in the yard. Stepping onto that disc and using your aerial finishing move — Mighty Drop — smashes through the floor and reveals the first hidden level of the ruins.
That sequence packs three ideas into one short section: maps that refer to real structures, environmental props that double as locks, and Wuxia movement skills that are not just for combat or traversal, but also for opening doors that the normal controls cannot touch.
The oath on the walls: how the hidden chamber puzzle works
Below the training yard sits a stone passage that leads to a chamber lined with characters. A corpse lies posed in a particular way, and a statue of a Northern Vow hero waits ahead. The inscription you found earlier splits the unit’s oath into two halves, and each half is written somewhere on the chamber walls.
The puzzle asks you to light only the characters that match the oath. The first ring of text corresponds to the left wall, the second ring to the right. When the correct set of characters is illuminated on both sides, a stone door opens behind the heroic statue. It is the kind of puzzle that forces you to stop sprinting and literally read the room, and it quietly ties the fortress’s story to the language its soldiers once used.
The waterwheel and the real “treasure” of the Northern Vow
The final stretch of the quest swaps wordplay for machinery. A stuck waterwheel bars the way forward. Walking through the waterfall behind it and interacting with a mechanism gets it turning again, which in turn opens the last stone gate deeper in the ruin.
Beyond that gate, there are reward chests, but the real payoff is not another cache of coins. The golden chest contains the Touch of Death scroll, a Mystic Skill that unlocks assassination from behind, and the chamber’s walls carry Lie Yan’s own final words. Reading his farewell reveals what the soldiers of the Northern Vow actually chose to protect when their command structure collapsed. It is less about gold and more about how they wanted their struggle to be remembered.
That letter — often called the Warriors’ Pledge in the quest log — becomes the emotional center of the side story. It explains why Lie Bujin is still hovering outside the ruins, why Lie Bumie bowed to Zhang Bao’s corpse, and why Lie Buxi eventually walks back into the North Alliance ruins rather than away from them.
Rewards and why Lie Buxi’s family matters later
Echoes of Old Battles hands out a generous bundle of early‑game progression items: Echo Jade, Qinghe Exploration points, Enlightenment Points, Character EXP, Zhou Coins, Ebon Iron, the Touch of Death Mystic Skill scroll, and the Warriors’ Pledge letter itself. It also quietly unlocks a style of side content that Where Winds Meet leans on throughout Qinghe: layered ruins with multiple floors, puzzle gates, and a personal history binding a family name to a location.
| Reward | Type | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Touch of Death scroll | Mystic Skill | Grants a stealth assassination technique from behind |
| Warriors’ Pledge | Letter / Quest item | Lie Yan’s last words; ties into the Lie family’s legacy |
| Echo Jade and Ebon Iron | Materials / Treasure | Used for crafting and trading |
| Qinghe Exploration & EXP | Progression | Advances regional exploration rank and character level |
| Zhou Coins | Currency | General spending money in Qinghe and beyond |
For Lie Buxi, the quest’s importance is less mechanical and more narrative. Her father’s oath is carved into the walls you unlock, his last testament is what you read at the end of the dungeon, and her brothers’ path into the North Alliance is a direct continuation of what those walls describe. Meeting her later as a Jianghu Friend, and seeing her described as a Hero, lands differently once you have walked through the place where her family first staked that claim.
If you care about Where Winds Meet’s wuxia drama as much as its combat systems, Echoes of Old Battles is where the Lie name stops being just another NPC tag and starts feeling like a lineage that matters. Lie Buxi is one branch of that tree; the Northern Vow ruins are its roots.
