Against the Flow bosses: Jagged Steel and Peng Meng

At a glance

Both are on the main path. Neither can be missed.

Jagged Steel is the tutorial, and the game tells you so

Three separate things mark this as a teaching fight rather than a challenge: it is the first real boss of the campaign, the arena is wide and forgiving, and it is designed to make you learn the Sha-Chi loop before anything else asks you to.

What it teaches: both you and the boss have a Sha-Chi bar under the health bar. Emptying theirs breaks their guard; attacking a boss who still has Sha-Chi is close to wasted effort. Weapon switching restores your own Sha-Chi, and blocking builds Refined Sha-Chi, which pays for the unblockable skill that depletes theirs.

That framing carries the rest of the game. Every boss after this assumes you internalised it here.

Peng Meng’s Dread Axe decides a chapter-2 fight

This is the thing worth knowing before you leave the region:

Peng Meng drops the Dread Axe Phantom Edge. Two fights later, Jing Ye dismounts and fights behind a spiked shield that damages you when you hit it. Two charged Dread Axe heavies break that shield outright; without it you spend the phase chipping a wall.

So Jing Ye’s shield phase is built around a drop from three bosses earlier. If you are reading a Jing Ye guide wondering why your damage feels wrong, this is usually why.

Route notes

Jagged Steel sits past the red-thread barrier in Weeping Creek Valley, in the open area where several enemies are already fighting him. You can let them soften him before engaging — he does not reset.

Peng Meng follows in the same valley. Both are on the road to Steel and Steam; you cannot reach the next chapter without passing them.

Notes

• No health values exist for either fight. The game does not display boss HP, so none are published here.
• Jagged Steel’s drop is a weapon, not a Phantom Edge. It bleeds, which makes it a reasonable fallback for Jing Ye’s early phases.
• Both fights are low-difficulty by design. They are teaching encounters; the chapter’s real escalation starts with Sixfold Scythe.

Related

• Jagged Steel — the tutorial fight that opens the chapter
• Peng Meng — the Dread Axe fight
• Snake’s Reflection — where the Dread Axe pays off
• Jing Ye — the shield phase this chapter’s drop exists for
• All bosses