Cangang, Peng Meng, A Hua, Zhuiming, and Hua Qianxiao stand in that order and between them eat most of your first few hours. Each one teaches exactly one thing. Cangang teaches you to read an opening. Peng Meng teaches you not to eat a black-lit attack. A Hua teaches you to bring the right weapon. Zhuiming teaches you that the parry does not always come on the first swing. Hua Qianxiao teaches you that patience beats speed.
Every boss below is laid out the same way: where to find him, what he does, how to answer it, and what to change when you are still stuck. Blue attacks, red attacks, Perfect Defense, breach, and finishers are not re-explained here — the combat system breakdown covers that ground in detail. Black-lit attacks are the one new signal, and Peng Meng is where they show up.
Cangang: the first boss, and the cheapest place to learn the signals
Where to find him
Chapter one runs from the bell at the Place of Beginnings to the courtyard outside the post station. The path goes past the crack in the Goddess statue, which guards a boss that is simply too strong this early — the usual advice is to walk on by. Break the red thread at the bottom of the Puppet Valley to the west, and Cangang is next. He is the first fight you cannot route around. The fuller opening sequence is in the first hours guide.
What he does
Cangang belongs to the frenzied brute family: he closes distance and keeps swinging, which is exactly the pressure that drains your sha-chi faster than a pack of regular enemies ever will. No guide has broken his moves down one by one, so the individual swings are unverified. What his fight is built to do is teach: the blue and red tells are clearly separated, and you still have medicine in the pouch and somewhere to retreat to.
How to answer it
- Do not chase the third hit. Two swings, then step out and wait for the next opening.
- Parry the blue, dodge the red, and spend the breach window on damage. The cheapest early setup is the Cangang Blade (残钢刃) in your main hand for bleed and the Red Bridal Ghost Slash (红妆鬼斩) off hand for shield breaking: bleed grinds him down, the shield break opens the window. The build logic is in weapons and difficulty.
- If other enemies are in the arena, you can leave them to Cangang and come back when both sides are worn down. Whether that works reliably is unverified, so do not build a plan on it.
- Drink when you actually misread a tell, not the moment your health dips.
If you are still stuck
Go back to the bell and buy the two cheapest skills: Refill Gourd (悬壶, 5,000 awareness dust, one extra secret medicine use) and Calm Mind (气定神闲, 5,000, your next light attack after a dodge or block interrupts more easily). Ten thousand dust for both, which is the best value in the chapter. Skills reset with P and refund everything, so try them and move the points later if they do not fit. Difficulty can be picked on the first run and changed whenever you want.
Peng Meng, the Axe Boss: the first black-lit attacks
Where to find him
Clear the courtyard outside the post station and head north for the cell key, then come back and open the cell. Peng Meng is behind it. Beat him and you use his axe to cut the chain-sealed door, which is the only way onward — this fight is a gate, not a side attraction.
What he does
He is the first boss with black-lit attacks. Two of them open his combos: a head-on charge, and a ground slam delivered with his back turned. He has three blue attacks. Black light follows different rules from blue: you can parry it, but one parry eats a large amount of sha-chi without emptying the bar. It is the attack you can block and still walk away with nothing to spend on a counter.
How to answer it
The published answer is blunt: the Black-Scarred Twin Blades (黑伤双刃) hold the defensive slot, and the Cangang Blade does the breaching and bleeding. When black light starts, step out — do not trade the twin blades for that parry. Handle the blue attacks normally, bank the sha-chi, and spend the breach window on the Cangang Blade.
When the three blue attacks blur together, the emergency workaround is to press block and dodge together: in practice the blue tends to register as a dodge and the red tends to trigger the sha-chi dodge. It is not the correct answer, but it beats standing still and eating the combo.
If you are still stuck
Both black openers have a long wind-up. Dodging the moment you see black is more practical than identifying which one it is, because parrying black buys you very little anyway.
Getting cornered is the usual death here. Golden Cicada Shell (金蝉脱壳, 65,000) automatically pulls you back and grants immunity the moment you are breached, which buys one free escape every time you would otherwise be pinned.
A Hua, the Ghost Bride: your bleed build does nothing here
Where to find her
Enter the first floor of the Tower of Killing Intent, take the staircase on the front right all the way down, then climb the left-hand ladder to the top. She is also called the Ghost Bride, so both names turn up when you search.
What she does
She is a puppet type, which means bleed does not work on her. That is the trap: you walk in with the Cangang Blade that carried you through two bosses, and her health bar does not move.
Red flowers rotate around the arena and close the circle in. Her normal attacks sprout brighter red flowers that explode in place a few seconds later. Three white flowers can be blocked, but the instant a white flower is struck or fades, she teleports directly onto you.
How to answer it
Change weapons first. The black-scarred family — Black-Scarred Twin Blades, Long Black Scar (长形黑伤), Wooden Black Scar (木制黑伤) — does normal damage to her; the bleed setup stays in the bag.
A brighter red flower is a countdown. Step off it instead of finishing the combo; moving one pace costs far less than the explosion.
Block the white flowers when you can, and do not stand there afterwards. She is about to be in your face, and that moment is your combo window, not hers.
The known cheese is the Thousand-Mile Stride (日行千里) skill: open the fight by pulling distance, let her drop into her free state, and grind her with light attack loops. It is not hard, just slow.
If you are still stuck
If you cannot afford Thousand-Mile Stride, press P, reset your skills, move the points over, and move them back after the fight. The refund is full and costs no materials.
Flower explosions are delayed damage, so roll outward. While the circle is closing, every flower in the arena becomes a threat — two rolls inside the ring is one too many.
Zhuiming: the chain's blue attack sits mid-combo
Where to find him
Past the chain-sealed door that Peng Meng's axe opens stands the Tower of Killing Intent. Beyond the tower, on the way to the great waterfall, Zhuiming is waiting. His title in the bestiary is the Organization's hunter.
What he does
Two phases. The one thing worth memorizing: his chain-swing blue attack always lands in the middle of the combo, never as the opener. Anyone who tries to parry the first swing eats the whole string.
When the chain drops vertically, run sideways. Rolling forward is a gift to him. The tornado is a leave-immediately signal, not something you trade hits with.
How to answer it
Wait for the middle of the string before you press parry. A successful parry teleports you into his face, which is a free counter combo handed to you by the system — steadier than creating your own opening.
Phase two speeds him up, but the rules do not change: blue in the middle, run sideways on the vertical drop, leave when the tornado appears.
One convenience worth knowing: die in phase two and the next attempt starts in phase two, with the first half skipped. That is Gamersky's tested account from October 29, and no second outlet has repeated it yet.
If you are still stuck
Last Resort (绝处逢生, 85,000) absorbs one lethal hit per fight. It is expensive, but if you keep dying on the tornado rotation it is cheaper than replaying the phase.
Do not attack during the tornado. Run, wait for it to end, then go back in.
Hua Qianxiao, the Sword Fanatic: he drinks, you cross the bridge
Where to find him
Blood Forest, then the abandoned official road, then the bridge overlooking Pangzhen. The bridge is the arena, and its length is part of the fight.
What he does
While he drinks, he converts sha-chi into a shield, and the end of the drink knocks you away. So crowding him during the drink is a losing trade: the shield is still up and you are the one who gets thrown.
How to answer it
The published solution is a single loop. The moment he starts drinking, run to the far end of the bridge. Wait for him to follow, wait for the shield to run dry, breach him, take your combo, and then he drinks again and you run again.
Run, wait, breach, punish, run. It looks cowardly and it is the only stable rhythm in the fight. Trading into the shield means paying health for his sha-chi, which is a bad exchange at any price.
If you are still stuck
This is the cheese the guides hand you, and it needs no fast hands — it needs you to skip the last swing. The extra hit you sneak in while the shield has a sliver left is usually the hit that knocks you off the bridge.
If the running feels slow, Thousand-Mile Stride makes the distance much easier to manage.
Before you walk into a boss arena
- Counter items. None of these five needs a resistance trinket; those come later. There is a fire-resistance trinket before Fire Meteor and a lightning-resistance one before Changhong, the Lion Dance Lord wants a boss with a water dragon head killed first, and the Thorn Pass only opens after the Lion Dance Lord is down. Pick those up on the way past instead of remembering them when you are stuck.
- Skills. Buy the cheap ones first: Refill Gourd (悬壶, 5,000), Calm Mind (气定神闲, 5,000), and Flowing Water (行云流水, 12,500, blocks and dodges no longer interrupt your current combo). The expensive pair are insurance: Golden Cicada Shell (金蝉脱壳, 65,000) and Last Resort (绝处逢生, 85,000). Every skill resets with P for a full refund, so experiment freely.
- Medicine. Potions and secret medicine are two separate resources, so do not mix them up in your head. Top up at the bell before a boss. Which flask heals how much, and how secret medicine accumulates, is laid out in healing and progression.
- Weapons and swapping. Two primary weapons and two Phantom Edge arms; swapping primaries refills your sha-chi. Set both weapons where your hands expect them before a fight — weapon switching covers how that loop is supposed to spin.
华千霄 and 花千笑: one boss, two spellings
Some quest text and a number of video titles write his name as 华千霄. The boss you actually fight is the Sword Fanatic, 花千笑 — same pinyin, different characters, which is why the romanized "Hua Qianxiao" hides the mix-up from English readers entirely. No wiki or guide site carries a separate entry for 华千霄, so treat it as a second spelling of one character and search with 花千笑 when you want results. Where the variant came from is unconfirmed.
All five share one thing: the tells are readable. The hard part is not adding the extra swing once you have read them.