Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard sits in a strange spot in Where Winds Meet. It is clearly tagged as a powerful development material, it carries its own bit of character lore, and yet its actual mechanical effect is not surfaced in-game the way players might expect. To make sense of it, you have to look at three overlapping systems: development materials, “mysterious manuals,” and the Wind Beneath Wings Inner Way itself.
What Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard is
Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard is classified as a development material. Development materials are a broad item category used to permanently improve your character’s combat and exploration power. They are not regular consumables; they sit under the weapons > develop-type tabs and are used to advance Inner Ways, Martial Arts, Mystic Skills, or core stats.
The item’s own flavor text calls it the work of Zhang Bao, the third “king” of Tiger Fort, who refuses to live in his brothers’ shadow. The script is described as messy and written “through gritted teeth,” which ties it thematically to the Tiger Fort trio and to the Wind Beneath Wings Internal Art they created.
Two key points define the Leopard manual:
- It is labeled as a “Mysterious Martial Arts” manual whose effects are unknown.
- It “awaits one fated to unlock its secrets,” signaling that it is not plug-and-play; some condition or progression gate must be met.
Wind Beneath Wings Inner Way and the Tiger Fort connection
Wind Beneath Wings itself is an Inner Way (Internal Art) that pairs with the traversal Mystic Skill Skywalk Dash. It is a rare, general-path Internal Art focused on movement and sustain, not tied to any specific weapon path.
| Inner Way | Category | Core Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Wind Beneath Wings | Support · Mystic Arts · Recover | Reduces Endurance cost of Skywalk Dash dashes while jumping, boosts move speed after landing, heals bonus HP on kill. |
In mechanical terms, Wind Beneath Wings does three things once unlocked:
- Movement efficiency: reduces the Endurance cost of Skywalk Dash’s jump dashes by 10%.
- Traversal speed: boosts Movement Speed by 30% for three seconds after you land.
- Sustain on kill: restores bonus HP equal to 1% of Max HP + 1,000 after every defeated enemy.
Through Breakthrough tiers, the same Internal Art scales into a very strong exploration and survivability tool:
| Tier | Breakthrough bonus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Endurance cost reduction on Skywalk Dash jumps increases to 40%. |
| 2 | Max HP increases based on Solo Mode Level. |
| 3 | Skywalk Dash dash speed increases by 30%. |
| 4 | On-kill HP restore increases to 2,400. |
| 5 | Physical Damage Reduction increases by 2.2%. |
| 6 | After Skywalk Dash ends, Endurance cost is reduced by 30% for three seconds. |
To unlock this Internal Art in the first place, you follow a small chain of clues tied to Tiger Fort and the Northern Vow Ruins:
- Investigate Northern Vow Ruins, defeat guards and boss, light specific braziers, and clear an underground puzzle to reach 40% comprehension of Wind Beneath Wings.
- Clear the Tiger Fort outpost and defeat Zhang Hu, earning the remaining 60% comprehension.
Comprehension here is basically progress toward unlocking the Internal Art; 100% comprehension gives you access to equip it.
How Leopard relates to the Wind Beneath Wings Inner Way
Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard and the Wind Beneath Wings Inner Way are deliberately linked:
- The Inner Art is said to be created by the three kings of Tiger Fort.
- Leopard’s manual is described as Zhang Bao’s contribution, explicitly tied to that same trio.
- Both use the Wind Beneath Wings name and sit in the broader “develop / Internal Art” ecosystem.
That framing suggests a division of labor:
- The Inner Way is the actual passive skill you equip.
- The Leopard manual is a development material for that family of arts, very likely used as part of the advancement path once you meet the right requirements.
Unlike some development items that clearly state a concrete tier-up effect, Leopard is explicitly “mysterious.” It sits alongside items like Ultimate Jianghu Secrets, Sinking Boat Fist, and similar manuals that only trigger under the correct conditions and often punish the player with a temporary debuff if used incorrectly.
Mysterious manuals and why they “make you sick”
Players lump Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard together with Sinking Boat Fist and Ultimate Jianghu Secrets under the informal label “mysterious manuals.” These are rare manuals that promise powerful martial or internal techniques but behave very differently from normal consumables or passive unlocks.
Common traits of these manuals:
- They appear in the develop tab, not in basic consumables.
- Activating them can inflict a debuff such as Spellbound or a mental illness-like status effect.
- They often require a specific environment or posture to grant their real benefit.
- They tend to provide permanent, stat-like gains or inner power boosts once used correctly.
For example, Sinking Boat Fist has been shown to provide a flat increase to a core stat (reported as around +5 or +6 Coordination) when used while you are knee-deep in water. Used in the wrong place, it only inflicts Spellbound or a sickness debuff and no lasting benefit.
The same pattern seems to hold for other mysterious manuals: first you suffer the “wrong posture” penalty, and only when you meet the contextual condition does the manual finally consume itself and award the permanent benefit.
How Wind Beneath Wings Leopard likely behaves
Wind Beneath Wings Leopard is described with the same “mysterious” language and currently has no explicit stat line shown to players. In practice, it behaves like a mysterious manual:
- It sits in your weapon / develop inventory.
- Activating it can trigger a mental or spellbound-style debuff rather than a clear stat popup.
- It does not vanish until you successfully satisfy its hidden condition, mirroring how Sinking Boat Fist can be used multiple times until it “takes.”
Given its naming and lore, the Leopard manual most plausibly ties into:
- Unlocking or advancing the Wind Beneath Wings Internal Art family.
- Granting a permanent boost related to movement or coordination, in parallel to how Sinking Boat Fist is tied to physical stats when used in the right environment.
No explicit stat listing is provided for Leopard itself, and players experimenting with the manual have not surfaced a clear, confirmed bonus yet. It should be treated as a high-value development material whose benefit is intentionally obscured and gated behind experimentation or later patches.
Where Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard fits in the development materials list
Within the master list of development materials, Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard sits under the Martial Arts Upgrades subsection, in the same block as Ultimate Jianghu Secrets, Wildfire Spark: Note, and various tuning stones and ointments.
| Category | Example items |
|---|---|
| Inner Way Passives | Adaptive Steel: Note, Battle Anthem: Note, Insightful Strike: Note, Silkbind: Deluge Tips |
| Martial Arts Upgrades | Legendary Martial Codex I/II, Mountain's Might: Note, Ultimate Jianghu Secrets, Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard |
| Mystic Arts Upgrades | Beauty's Plume, Ebon Iron, Meteor Flight, Oscillating Jade |
| Gear Tuning | Large Tuning Stone: Doom, Gold Inlay, Rhapsody, Snowshield, Tuning Stone |
| Divinecraft Tools | Fire Oil, Toxic Powder, Aqua Wax |
That placement matters: it aligns Leopard more with long-term martial advancement than with a one-off buff. It is not a potion, not a short buff scroll, and not a crafting ingredient; it is part of the slow, permanent shaping of your character.
How to obtain and use Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard
The in-game description for Leopard’s acquisition is short: “Cultivate.” That wording is consistent with development materials that are earned through character progression, internal arts advancement, or specific cultivation-style interactions rather than simple drops or purchase.
At a practical level, players should treat Leopard manuals this way:
Step 1: Keep Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard in your inventory until you have a clear plan when to activate it. Avoid testing it right before tough combat, since it may inflict a sickness or Spellbound-like debuff.
Step 2: When you are ready to experiment, move to a safe environment that fits the manual’s theme. For Sinking Boat Fist that means knee-deep water; for a Wind Beneath Wings manual, a high place or an area tied to Tiger Fort or Skywalk traversal is a reasonable context to try.
Step 3: Open the weapons > develop (or equivalent development) tab, highlight the manual, and use/activate it. If you only receive a debuff and the manual remains, the condition was not satisfied.
Step 4: Clear any mental or spellbound debuff using the known cures. For manuals that inflict water-cleansed sickness, standing in knee-deep water for several seconds can remove the status; Healer NPCs or profession skills are unreliable for this specific kind of ailment.
Step 5: Retry activation later once your character’s cultivation, location, or posture changes. The manual will persist until it successfully delivers its permanent effect.
Note: If you plan to engage a major boss or difficult instance, finish all manual testing and fully clear any debuff first. The penalties from these manuals can reduce stamina or inner energy regeneration, impairing combat performance.
How Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard plays with your build
Wind Beneath Wings, as an Inner Way, is already a strong fit for agile exploration-focused builds:
- It makes Skywalk Dash cheaper on Endurance, allowing more frequent air dashes.
- It speeds up ground travel after you land, smoothing long-distance traversal.
- It bakes in sustain by healing a chunk of HP on every kill, especially strong in dense encounters.
Wind Beneath Wings: Leopard likely serves as a rare development ceiling-raiser for that theme, whether by nudging a specific stat, unlocking an extra nuance of the Internal Art, or interacting with the martial arts tied to the three Tiger Fort kings. That makes it especially relevant for:
- Players who lean hard into mobility and hit-and-run styles.
- Solo explorers who value self-healing and movement efficiency over pure burst damage.
- Anyone actively pushing the Wind Beneath Wings Breakthrough tiers and collecting manuals associated with Tiger Fort legacy techniques.
Until the manual’s exact numeric effect is fully surfaced, the safest assumption is that it is worth holding and eventually using under the right conditions rather than selling, discarding, or ignoring. It belongs to a very small class of items that permanently reshape your character’s capabilities, even if they cloak that power behind obscure requirements and short-term sickness.
