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Originally Posted by
ChanceEncounter
His skill was clearly at a much higher level than them individually. That much was never debated.
The issue is that when attacking him collectively 3v1, he was not able to defeat them. The effort he apparently exerted is not really the issue here. He admits later he was trying his best and his opponents were formidable.
杨莲亭怒道:“你往日自夸武功盖世,为甚么杀不了这几个奸贼?”
东方不败道:“我已……我……”
杨莲亭怒道:“你甚么?”
东方不败道:“我已尽力而为,他们……武功都强得很。”
DFBB says here he tried his best but weren't able to kill any of LHC, RWX, and XWT in the 3v1 melee because their skills were too high. In other words, his effortlessness is likely an aesthetic style of his, not purely a matter of his exertion, since he admits he tried his best.
Now, certainly there is an element that says he likely would have fared better had he a real weapon instead of a needle. But with great-level fighters in other novels, we see a relatively small swing in their performance with or without the existence of a weapon. YG, for instance, was not written as overpowered by JLGS because he was fighting with 1 arm vs JLGS wheels, even though barehanded JLGS is on par with ZBT and likely slightly better than YD. XF rarely used a weapon and was able to defeat plenty of weaponed foes, even those on par with LHC/XWT/RWX. The advantage exists, of course, but is not large enough for fighters of a certain level that it completely changes everything.
XAJH is different, of course, in that it seems to focus much more on external forms than most of JY's other novels, including some of the rare cases where inferior internal wins through much better technique (though I would argue XLN being able to defeat JLGS + Mongol elites all at once is a great example of the principle). But crucially, XAJH lacks characters with Great level internal. In the same interview where JY reveals that DG9J should beat Sunflower/BXJF, he also says that YG's internal is much better than LHC's, despite LHC's swordsmanship technique being much better than YG's. And presumably he's talking about LHC at the end of the novel, where his internal was actually quite good relative to his contemporaries.
Now the question becomes is possible for XF, XYS, GJ, etc to hold off and even gain the apparent upper hand against LHC/XWT/RWX in a 3v1. I would say, at the very least, it should be a debate. Given some of their feats, it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
All this is to say that I think his current rating on this site is fairly accurate. He's probably more impressive than the high-end Greats (XF, YG, XYS, MRB, GJ), but it's not such a vast difference that you can't imagine a similar performance from them. A difference of 5 points is probably the I'm comfortable with.