Is Yue Buqun stronger than Linghu Chong (difference between Bixie n Sunflower manual)

[shangster]

Hi Spcnet,

I'm new to the forum, and after watching many adaptations of Smiling, Proud Wanderer, I have always wanted to know if Yue Buqun is supposed to be stronger than Linghu Chong. Please understand that I have never read the novel, so for those who have read the novel, please let me know. I know that in most adaptations, Linghu chong ended up being the second strongest swordsman (fighter) in Smiling, Proud -- the strongest is, of course, Dongfang Bubai. Judging by how uber strong Dongfang is in the story, Yue Buqun should at least come close to Dongfang, don't you think? First, Yue was already a top 10 fighter in Smiling Proud before learning the Bixie swordplay manual. Second, he is also top 10 in internal energy with his mastery in Violet Mist skill. If you combine his knowledge of Huashan sword, Violet Mist and his complete mastery of Bixie Sword skill, shouldn't he be second to Dongfang Bubai or at least stronger than Linghu Chong?

My second question is the Bixie sword manual. I always thought that this manual is an abridged version of the Sunflow manual. Correct if I'm wrong, but the story behind the manual was that two huashan brothers copied the original manual from a Shaolin monestary, and later recited what they copy to a Shaolin student. And then the student began to learn the skill based on his own interpretation of the manual. If this is correct, then isn't the Bixie manual an almost exact copy of the Sunflower manual? I also remember that in some adaptations, it was explained that the Bixie sword skill is only one of the many skills from the Sunflower manual. Again, for those who have read the novel, please explain the difference between the Bixie and Sunflower manual. Thanks.

[ChronoReverse]

(1) If LHC had never saw LPZ and DFBB, he'd probably have lost against YBQ.

But after LHC has had time to think about the moves, YBQ had no chance at defeating LHC since YBQ isn't creative enough to utilize the PXJF speed for anything else.

As for LHC's level, I'd still put him below Shaolin's FZ and RWX.



(2) Your interpretation is not quite right. PXJF is actually a better expression of the original KHBD because it was from a single source who actually understood the underlying principles.

KHBD had glaring flaws that were sort of glued together with half-hearted explanations.


So KHBD(copy) is more comprehensive while PXJF is abridged but retains more of the essence. If I were forced to learn one or the other, I'd definitely go for PXJF.

The sword moves from PXJF were likely just fabrications though. They're ordinary but it's the instant speed from the underlying theory that gave it power.

[Dirt]

If BXJF was only speed increases, wouldn't that mean that Yu Buqun was still using Huashan swordplay? That's something LHC should already know. I don't get how looking at someone executing speed can help with someone else. I'm surely missing something.

[pannonian]

If BXJF was only speed increases, wouldn't that mean that Yu Buqun was still using Huashan swordplay? That's something LHC should already know. I don't get how looking at someone executing speed can help with someone else. I'm surely missing something.

Evil-resisting swordplay had a set of sword moves attached to it. Yue Buqun being what he was, he wouldn't have imagined BXJF could have been used any other way, so he'd have used the BXJF sword moves along with the internal. Higher tier martial artists from Linghu Chong upwards would have understood the essence, and adapted the theory to whatever moves were appropriate to the situation.

[Trien Chieu]

If I were forced to learn one or the other, I'd definitely go for PXJF.

I think death is better than learning that martial art given what you have to sacrifice. Aren't both the Sunflower manual and Pixie sword play incomplete? How can it be still so powerful.

http://www.spcnet.tv/forums/showthre...ighlight=pixie

[ChronoReverse]

I think death is better than learning that martial art given what you have to sacrifice. Aren't both the Sunflower manual and Pixie sword play incomplete? How can it be still so powerful.

http://www.spcnet.tv/forums/showthre...ighlight=pixie

That's one of the reasons why there's speculation on how powerful the original must have been; the power of just the incomplete version is already so tremendous.

[Ren Wo Xing]

Here's the history of the KHBD/PXJF.

1) Original KHBD is kept at Shaolin.
2) Two brothers at Mt. Hua go to Shaolin and secretly memorize half of KHBD each.
3) Shaolin realizes what they did, sent Dayuan to remonstrate with the brothers. The Shaolin abbot burns and destroys the original KHBD manual.
4) The two Mt. Hua brothers each recite their half to each other, but the two halves don't match up to form a coherent whole. A huge argument erupts.
5) Dayuan arrives at Mt. Hua. Delighted at his presence, the two Mt. Hua brothers each recited their half of the manual to him, trying to get him to confirm who was right and who was wrong.
6) Listening intently, Dayuan gives them some casual answers that nonetheless was sufficient for the brothers to 'reconcile' their parts. The brothers thank Dayuan profusely and create a 'bootleg' KHBD.
7) Seduced by the martial arts of the KHBD that he learned from the brothers, Dayuan sends a formal letter of remorse and resigns from Shaolin.
8) Learning of the creation of the bootleg KHBD, the Ten Elders of the Sun Moon Sect launch a sudden raid on Mt. Hua and take it for themselves.
9) Dayuan changes his name to Lin Yuantu, invents the '72-Style Pixie Swordplay' and founds the Fortune and Prestige Escort Agency, dominating the martial world.
10) RWX, as leader of the Sun Moon Sect, eventually gifts the bootleg KHBD which the Ten Elders stole to DFBB.

So in principle, Lin Yuantu's understanding of KHBD should be greater than the bootleg KHBD the Mt. Hua brothers created. BUT, the novel also strongly hints that, so as to disguise the origin of his newfound martial arts ability, the actual stances of the '72-Style Pixie Swordplay' may be actually, genuinely crappy; the power behind them comes from speed and internal energy generated by Lin Yuantu's KHBD. Watching the battle between the Qingcheng expert and Lin Yuantu, Yue Buqun's master commented that the moves seemed ordinary, but sometimes they would weirdly speed up at critical moments. He attributed this to some oddity in the sword skill, but it seems much more likely that Lin Yuantu was always capable of that speed at all times; he just hid it most of the time.

PXJF itself is therefore not necessarily a more 'pure' or more powerful expression of the original KHBD than the bootleg version, simply because Lin Yuantu wanted to disguise the KHBD parts.

[tape]

I've always had trouble classifying how strong some characters were in XAJH.

Linghu Chong had the best sword arts and terrible bare handed fighting, but in an actual fight to the death, would he win over someone who wasn't trying to compete sword arts with him? Would he beat Zuo Lengchan or Ren Woxing? As he was watching the fights at Shaolin, he didn't even understand their palm styles, so I can't imagine he would be able to 'break' them. It always seemed to me that JY was purposely keeping his martial arts level somewhat secretive so that he can always bust out victory in times of defeat if necessary so it wouldn't seem inconsistent.

Yue Buqun should also be weaker than Zuo still, as he had to resort to using a poison needle as well as tricking him with the fake manual in order to gain victory. I'd imagine he would just beat him fair and square if he was capable of it -- though he might've also planned to make himself look in danger for an excuse to blind him and permanently remove him as a threat.

Monk No Commandment is able to easily subdue Tian Boguang and does a number of really impressive feats. I wonder if he is initially better than the headmasters minus Zuo. Of the Four Friends in West Lake, Ren Woxing himself praised White-Black as being extremely skilled (along with Huang Zhong), and that is rare enough that it makes me think they're stronger than the headmasters as well. Lots of characters in XAJH appear that don't get as much screentime as I'd like.

[Ren Wo Xing]

In his fight with 'Great Yin-Yang Palm' Yue Hou, it was hinted that even if he didn't understand/couldn't find an immediate flaw in his opponent's stance, DG9J allows LHC to find a proper (if not 'perfect') counter.

“Excellent palm skills!” Linghu Chong acclaimed and swung his long sword upward. Because he couldn’t find a single flaw in Yue Hou’s palm form and his movement, this thrust of his had both defense and offense, ninety percent of it was false while only ten percent of it was real.

But in Yue Hou’s eyes, this upward swing was brilliant. Regardless of which part of Linghu Chong’s body he planned to strike using his two palms, he would always end up sending the center of his palm toward the tip of the sword. So only half way through the palm strikes with his two hands, he immediately retracted his palms and leapt backward.

I think Yue Buqun's goal was to permanently 'neutralize' Zuo Lengchan, not just 'beat' him; also, he didn't want to reveal too many strange arts, which would raise a lot of questions in people's minds. He had to seize victory at a single blow, which his stratagem allowed him to. I think he was probably slightly above ZLC at the point of their fight, but not enough for him to win in the convincing manner that he needed.

I agree about all the weird characters; let's not forget that while Yue Buqun said that it would be impossible for him to restrain all 6 energy streams even using ZXSG, Monk Bujie did exactly that with his own twin palm streams...and then Shaolin's Fang Sheng managed to subdue all EIGHT energy streams. So there's definitely a lot of top level people that were probably above YBQ. I also agree that Huang Zhonggong and Heibaizi were almost definitely top notch experts as well, based on RWX's praise (which he was quite sparing with in general), and let's not forget the Ten Elders of the Sun Moon Sect, or people like Beggar's Clan Leader Xie Feng, who was able to easily write on wood (which Qiu Chuji back in ROCH thought, correctly or incorrectly, was impossible/very difficult even for people like Yideng). XAJH was a time filled with hidden dragons and crouching tigers indeed!

[Doc Kwok]

5) Dayuan arrives at Mt. Hua. Delighted at his presence, the two Mt. Hua brothers each recited their half of the manual to him, trying to get him to confirm who was right and who was wrong.
6) Listening intently, Dayuan gives them some casual answers that nonetheless was sufficient for the brothers to 'reconcile' their parts. The brothers thank Dayuan profusely and create a 'bootleg' KHBD.

The bits underlined are not stated by the text, and I tend to disagree with this interpretation for several reasons.

承認私閱《葵花寶典》，一面深致歉意，一面卻以經中所載武學，向他請教。 - Admitting secretly reading the Sunflower manual, on the one hand they expressed deepest apologies, on the other they sought his advice on the martial arts contained in the manual.

當下渡元禪師並不點明，聽他們背誦經文，隨口解釋，心下卻暗自記憶。渡元禪師武功本極高明，又是絕頂機智之 人，聽到一句經文，便以己意演繹幾句，居然也說來頭頭是道。 - Duyuan didn't point this (not having read the manual before) out, listening to them recite passages from the manual, he casually explained, secretly memorising it. Duyuan's martial arts were originally extremely sophisticated, and was an extremely intelligent person, listening to one phrase, he would explain his own take on it with several phrases, managing to make perfect sense with all he said.

The brothers were asking for elaborations on bits of the text they couldn't understand, not reciting the whole thing to him just to see who was right. There is also no mention of unifying the halves whatsoever.

...而他二人所筆錄的《葵花寶典》殘本，也給魔教奪了去... - and the incomplete copy of the Sunflower manual that the two wrote, was also snatched by the demon cult.
辟邪劍法是從《葵花寶典》殘本中悟出來的武功... - Evil-warding sword technique is a martial art that was gleaned from the incomplete copy of the Sunflower manual.

This implies that the Sun Moon cult's copy already existed before Lin Yuantu's visit. Furthermore:

不過岳蔡二人所記的，本已不多，經過這麼一轉述，不免又打了折扣 - but that which Yue and Cai remembered was originally not much, after this transfer, it was unavoidable that there would be further losses.
其實這部手錄本殘缺不全，本上所錄，只怕還不及林遠圖所悟 - actually, this written copy is incomplete, that which the copy records, might well not match up to that comprehended by Lin Yuantu.

These are rather contradictory statements, but can be reconciled if the 'matching up' refers to quality rather than quantity (i.e. the Sun Moon cult copy might have more of the original material, but less coherent without the benefit of Lin Yuantu's martial insight).

From a common-sense perspective, the notion that the two kept what they read in their heads until they could make sense of the whole is absurd - if you had a long, complicated document that you were unfamiliar with and had to memorise in a hurry, wouldn't the first thing you would do be to make a written brain-dump of what you remembered, regardless of whether it made sense? Even Lin Yuantu had to hastily write down what he remembered on the first thing that came to hand - his sash.

Looking at the first edition of the novel somewhat explains why these passages don't hang together so well. In the first edition, KHBD was created by an unknown married couple in their prime, who later split up (gee, I wonder why ?). It was in two volumes, a 'heaven' and 'earth' volume, each written by one of them, and the two brothers memorised one volume each. The volumes did not mesh because they were not meant to - the authors had wildly opposing martial arts philosophies. So each brother trained in their own portion, leading to the Huashan schism (no mention of needing the other volume to train - that was added in the second edition, but with no further elaboration outside of a single line).

The timeframe is also different - the attack from the cult came decades after the event. I get the impression that Jinyong hadn't yet thought of the self-castration angle at this point, since this means that they and their students had plenty of time to learn from the manual. In the second edition, this was reduced to 'not long' to take that time away, but given all the things they were supposed to have done (become bitter rivals, found a new faction, fall out with Shaolin), it doesn't feel like it should be a short time at all.

So in principle, Lin Yuantu's understanding of KHBD should be greater than the bootleg KHBD the Mt. Hua brothers created. BUT, the novel also strongly hints that, so as to disguise the origin of his newfound martial arts ability, the actual stances of the '72-Style Pixie Swordplay' may be actually, genuinely crappy; the power behind them comes from speed and internal energy generated by Lin Yuantu's KHBD.

Actually, after seeing the 2nd and 3rd stances in which Lin Pingzhi used four Qingcheng students' swords to kill each other, Linghu Chong's assessment was '高明之極' - sophisticated to the extreme.

When fighting Yu Canghai:

他辟邪劍法的招式，余滄海早已詳加鑽研，盡數瞭然於胸，可是這些並無多大奇處的招式之中，突然間會多了若干 奇妙之極的變化，更以猶如雷轟電閃般的手法使出... - The techniques of PXJF, YCH had researched in detail, understood them all, but in the midst of these rather unsurprising techniques, there would suddenly be certain extremely exquisite variations added, furthermore employed with lightning-like speed...

So, while the 'base' sword art might be crappy, the base plus the extra variations was not. However, since Dugu 9 swords takes the crown in terms of technique sophistication in this novel, the techniques alone probably weren't that threatening to a DG9G user, since given a brilliant move, he would simply improvise an even more brilliant move to counter it on-the-spot.