Quote Originally Posted by CC View Post
There really is no realistic answer to this question which can give internal coherence to martial arts stories.

Someone who can jump 30 feet up, block hundreds of arrows bare handed, swing a sword 30x in a blink of an eye and palm blast people from 30 feet away and kick entire horses up in the air will in real life demolish an army.

Why? Because in real life, even in massed battles, the other side WILL run away once the front collapses. In historical battles, most academics agree that not more than 5-10% actually die before the whole gang routs.

The most accurate IMHO depiction would be the DGSD style where the martial artist goes in and KOs/catches the opposing leader/general because he cant be stopped.

Also. if you do it Dynasty Warriors I-X style, just blasting the front ranks and having soldiers fly from your blows like how Sauron was wiping the alliance with his mace in the LOTR movie opening, the entire enemy army WILL run if they are humans.
It is indeed incoherent. The best way to reconcile this is

-Like you said, not all Xuan generation monks are created equal. It's possible that Xuanming and Xuanshi were not proficient with any of the 72 Supreme Skills, and could only use low or mid-tier Shaolin techniques in real combat, against a live enemy.

-Were those Khitan horse archers by chance? The English longbow with a draw weight of 80 to 150 lbs. could penetrate mail (but not plate). The Mongols and other nomadic horse archers could use a composite bow with up to 170 lbs of draw weight.

If 8 Khitan horse archers used their mobility and shot 8 arrows at a time, each arrow with 150 to 170 lbs draw weight could perhaps compare in power to the Picking Flower Finger technique, one of the 72 Shaolin Supreme skills. That skill consist or rubbing the thumb and index finger, then firing 3 consecutive Qi projectiles that cut/penetrate like a sharp knife.

Jiumozhi used Picking Flower Finger against one of the better Xuan generation monks at Shaolin. JMZ he shot 3 Qi projectiles, the Senior/Elite Xuan monk also shot 3 Picking Flower Finger projectiles, and JMZ 3 Qi projectiles clashed with and went **through** the 3 projectiles of the Xuan monk and still retained enough momentum to deal damage equal to 3 knife stabs.

So if each arrow from a 150 to 170 lbs. draw weight bow is equal to the Picking Flower Finger of a "Senior/Elite" Xuan generation monk, then 8 "Elite Xuan monk" Picking Flower Finger vs 2 "average Xuan monk" mid-tier techniques, then it could be a coherent explanation why those 2 Xuan monks lost against 8 Khitan warriors.