Diverging Paths is the Prologue main quest and a foundational tutorial for Phantom Blade Zero. It kicks off with a deadly fight between our protagonist, Soul, and his old friend Zuo Shang. Then you’re sent into a 16-year flashback to learn basic movement and sword combat, and the mission wraps up with a tough two-phase boss fight. Completing the Diverging Paths quest sets up Soul’s overarching story and triggers the 66-day countdown that drives the whole campaign.
Choose Your Difficulty
Right as you enter the new game, you’ll be asked to choose a difficulty level among the four given options. You can change the difficulty at any point from the system menu during your playthrough:
- Wayfarer: Story-focused mode with reduced enemy aggression and high player survivability.
- Pathbreaker: The normal action-game experience with balanced enemy damage and reactive AI. It’s just another usual combat challenge like we used to in action games.
- Hellwalker: Hard mode with fast, relentless enemy strings and punishes mistakes heavily. The game calls it “the ultimate trial” for those with the guts.
- 66 Days: Unlocked only after you beat the game on any difficulty. It’s the same Hellwalker level, but you only have 66 lives to beat down all the bad guys of the region. Die for the 67th time, and it’s game over, and you’ll have to start from scratch.
Phantom Blade Zero Diverging Paths Quest Walkthrough
Soul and Zuo Shang’s Duel
The game opens in media res amidst a rainstorm at an abandoned mountain temple. Soul and Zuo Shang cross swords in a fast, lethal exchange, and after the cutscene, both swordsmen impale each other at once. Soul collapses, wondering if the blur in his vision is rain or blood, before the timeline jumps 16 years into the past.
Movement and Traversal
Taking control of Soul armed with a wooden practice sword, you stand in a bamboo forest and continue to walk toward the Order’s training grounds, following the movement lessons along the way.
- Basic Navigation: Move forward along the wooden bridge, adjusting camera controls as you run.
- Jump and Sprint: Jump over broken planks and sprint across open stretches.
- Crouch: Duck under low-hanging tree branches blocking the pathway.
- Wall Traversal: Look for diagonal scratch marks etched onto cliff faces. Approaching these surfaces while jumping lets Soul wall-run, vault vertically to higher ledges, or chain wall-kicks across narrow gaps where paths are broken.
The path splits near a small wooden pagoda: taking the high ledge lets you practice chained wall-runs, while the low route has you drop down and walk through the lower gully. You can go anyway as both routes converge at the same point, where Zuo Shang waits for you.
Combat Training (Core Mechanics)
Zuo Shang greets Soul and recounts rumors of a massacre at Soulrend Cliff, where multiple martial masters lost their minds and slaughtered one another, leaving ten bodies missing, and nobody knows where they vanished. After that, Zuo Shang challenges you to a sparring drill to improve fundamental battle techniques.
Press the Right Stick on the controller or the middle mouse button to lock on Zuo Shang and input light attacks to execute basic strike chains. Standard combos deal steady baseline damage and initiate offensive momentum.
Underneath your health bar is the yellow Sha-Chi meter. Sha-Chi works as your offensive energy resource:
- Sha-Chi is consumed when you execute heavy attacks or mix strong finishes into normal strikes.
- Sha-Chi Combos hit considerably harder and deal heavy guard damage to enemies.
Holding block enters a defensive Guard Stance. But guarding against continuous strikes quickly drains your Sha-Chi, and if the meter is completely emptied while you’re under assault, your guard breaks, and that leaves you vulnerable to attacks. To turn the tables, you need to apply consistent offensive pressure on Zuo Shang with light and heavy attacks to break his guard instead.
If you dodge without the movement stick, there will be a quick neutral backstep. Combine the dodge with a direction instead to perform a directional evasive roll or side-step.
You’ll want to press block right before an incoming strike connects. Unlike block hold, a successful parry costs you no Sha-Chi and severely depletes the attacker’s posture bar, which leaves them wide open for retaliatory strikes.
Zuo Shang has a few high-tier attacks that telegraph with blue and red visual flashes:
- Blue Flash Attack: Heavy strikes that pierce standard blocks. You must time a parry right as the blue light peaks to deflect the weapon and execute an automated counterattack.
- Red Flash Attack: Unstoppable techniques that cannot be blocked or parried under any circumstances. When time slows and the red glint flashes, use a directional dodge to clear the attack path.
When you press the skill button (which by default is L2 or Q), Soul will perform a Power Surge, which consumes a Sha-Chi Essence charge shown in the bottom right corner of the screen. These Power Surges give you hyper-armor combos that cut right through enemy moves and shred their guard or Sha-Chi meters.
Zuo Shang Boss Fight
Once the drill tutorials are concluded, the encounter shifts into a sparring duel against Zuo Shang. Before facing the real threats that’ll have you scratching your head, give this practice fight some care to try all the combat mechanics you’ve learned so far, and this boss is prepared to force you to do that.
Zuo Shang remains passive at mid-to-long range and won’t attack until you’re in his range. You can always step back if you need a second to reset or recover, or think through the situation. Your health replenishes automatically throughout this sparring match, so it’s an ideal arena to drill parry timings on his four- and five-hit flurries. Watch for his leaping downward blue-flash finisher to land clean parries. You’ll want to mix light attacks with Sha-Chi conclusives to break his guard and wipe out whatever health he has left.
Depleting his health triggers a cutscene where Soul drops to his knees, and blood-red energy violently bursts from his body, causing him to collapse in agony before returning to the rainy courtyard in the present time.
Zuo Shang, The Order’s Shadow Sovereign Boss Fight
The opening duel now resumes as a full-fledged encounter with Soul, fully armed with his crimson-edged blade against a strong version of Zuo Shang.
Phase 1: Zuo Shang, The Order’s Shadow Sovereign Boss
| Attack | Moveset | Counter Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Light Projectiles (Summoned Blade Volley) |
Manifests eight golden light-based weapons (swords, spears, and polearms) arranged in a ring around his torso, then launches them at you one after another in quick succession. | Parry in a steady, rhythmic beat to deflect all eight blades right back at him, depleting Zuo Shang’s Sha-Chi meter. If low on posture, sprint-strafe laterally in a wide arc. |
| Light Guns (Golden Gunfire Barrage) |
Summons floating golden guns above his shoulders and unloads a fast multi-shot volley of light bullets at Soul. | Mash the parry button repeatedly to deflect the bullets back, or sprint and dodge roll left-right to clear the line of fire without taking guard chip damage. |
| Light Projectile Combos | Leaps forward with an opening melee slash, immediately backflips into the air, and flings three light daggers down toward you. He can occasionally perform this aerial retreat into a red-flash dive attack. | Parry the first strike, then parry the three airborne projectiles. If time slows and a red flash flares while he’s mid-air, drop your guard and dodge roll to the side immediately. |
| Spinning Blade Disc | Zuo Shang sweeps his blade outward and flings a horizontal, rotating energy disc along the ground that hits multiple times on impact. | Dodge roll straight forward through the disc toward Zuo Shang to close the distance. Avoid blocking it unless your Sha-Chi meter is full, as the multi-hit impact quickly drains posture. |
| Jumping Slash | His blade glows with golden light as he leaps high into the air, pauses briefly at the apex, and slams down to the ground. | Delay your parry until his descent begins; mistiming it during his upward leap leaves you open. Alternatively, dodge roll to either left or right just before he hits the ground. |
| Red-Flash Lunge (Overhead Object Summon) |
Boss conjures a big relic above his head, then he will either toss the object at you, or time will dilate with a red flash as he lunges forward in an unblockable thrust. | If he throws the object, parry or dodge it. If the red flash appears and time slows down, don’t guard—dodge roll diagonally forward or to the side to punish his recovery frames. |
| Red-Flash Wave | Moves to the center of the courtyard, charges red energy into his blade, releases a ground pulse, and flashes red before he rockets forward across the arena. | This attack cannot be unblocked. Track his trajectory as he charges from the center, and execute a directional dodge right as he reaches melee range. |
| Blue-Flash Combo (Melee Flurry Finisher) |
Zuo Shang chains together quick martial kicks and sword slashes, ending with a delayed piercing thrust assisted by a time-dilation effect and a blue glint. | Guard or backstep the initial kicks and swings. Right when time slows and the blue flash appears on his thrust, parry to pierce his guard and trigger Soul’s automatic counter-riposte. |
| Red-Flash Rooftop Assault | Zuo Shang disengages by leaping onto the temple roof, showers the ground with a quick flurry of light daggers, and follows with an immediate unblockable red-flash aerial dive. | Tap parry in a hurry to deflect the falling dagger barrage while keeping him in view. The moment he flashes red and dives from the roof, drop your guard and dodge roll out of the landing zone. |
Zuo Shang’s own projectile barrages are best used against him. If you deflect all eight of those summoned blades, you’ll drain a big chunk of his Sha-Chi bar. Drop a Power Surge whenever his guard breaks for more direct damage and to get the job done.
Phase 2: Zuo Shang, The Order’s Shadow Sovereign Boss
When Zuo Shang drops below 50% health, he leaps atop the temple roof. This is what you should know to win this part of the fight:
- Roof Debris QTE: Zuo Shang kicks a massive section of the tile roof down at Soul. A prompt (Triangle on PlayStation / Y on Xbox / F on PC) will appear on-screen. Press it in time to slice through the rubble without getting hit.
- Aerial Bombardments: Zuo Shang mixes roof dives with red-flash shockwaves that track your position. Keep moving laterally and avoid standing under his jump trajectory.
- Giant Blade Blue Flash: He summons a massive golden broadsword overhead and dives forward. Stand your ground and parry right as he descends to leave him vulnerable to a guard-crush.
- Closing Out: Stay up in Zuo Shang’s face with Sha-Chi combos so he can’t breathe. Once you’ve stripped his Sha-Chi meter down to nothing, execute the second Power Surge to end the battle.
The Flesh Sculptor’s Choice
After you deplete Zuo Shang’s health to nil, the same cinematic mutual strike plays out where both warriors run each other through and fall dead onto the flooded flagstones. Soul wakes up in a dark, ethereal realm confronted by a hooded figure named The Flesh Sculptor, who’s holding two artificial hearts and offers a method of resuscitation:
- Hollow Heart: A clockwork mechanical organ that stabilizes Soul’s body by excising all human emotion, sentiment, and desire, leaving him to live only through cold logic and calculation.
- Tainted Heart: An organic, venom-saturated organ that keeps Soul’s heartbeat active via potent toxins, preserving his will and humanity, but puts him on a strict countdown, as the venom will claim his life after 66 days.
Soul chooses the Tainted Heart, sealing his fate, and the prologue chapter ends here. The next main quest is Reckless Pursuit, which takes place in the present as Soul travels by wagon along the mountain cliffs of Weeping Creek Valley.
