Argh... This forum's server seemed to be down yesterday, so I couldn't connect...
First off, to Lav, about my formatting... the box where we type in our replies is way too small on my browser, so I had to copy and paste to Wordpad to type in my replies, and then copy the whole thing back to this forum. This is why I don't use the quote function. Also, I found the quoted parts have font size too small for my liking, as I often have difficulties reading my own writing that others quoted. So I'll just continue to post in my own format...
Now to Athena:
> Back to the LDS and LDA, it's true that Xiao Feng used
> that to injure the 4th Evil. And pushed Ding ChunQiu
> away. But those are considerable weaker than Xiao Feng.
Ding was about one class weaker. The others were probably two classes below. But the Greats never shown that they have such abilities even against much weaker opponents.
> I mean Huang YaoShi used a pebble to block an expert
> like JinLun FaWang (who could be stronger than Huang).
He also used pebble when he had to attack weaker fighters from long distance.
> The "Greats" could perform a LDA action against martial
> artists weaker than they are like Li MoChou, Mei ChaoFeng,
> Wu SanTong, GongSun Zhi, etc.
Can you be more specific? I would like to see a quote from the book very much!
Again, from my own reading, I never noticed an instance where a Great was able to use LDA to injure a weaker fighter. I remember Kwok (a former poster in the JY forum) was saying the same thing. And I had been involved in a few DGSD-vs-Trilogy debates over the years in a Taiwanese JY newsgroup, and I've never seen a Trilogy-supporter claiming that the Greats had injured someone through LDA. This is why I'm very interested in seeing a quote.
> Tigerwong made an excellent remark about knowing and having
> the technique to perform a LDA. Xiao Feng, Xiao YuanShan,
> MuRong Bo and JiuMo Zhi had great stance energies because
> powerful fierce palm techniques were their specialties.
This point doesn't stand when you consider XF and H7G and GJ all knew the Dragon Palm as their main technique.
Also from the Dik Wan (Di Yun) - Fa Teet Gong (Hua Tie Gan) comparison that I gave, LDA/LDS is highly inner power dependent, and techniques have very little to do w/ it.
> Whereas Huang YaoShi was skilled in "elegant" martial arts
> not placing emphasis on fierce and powerful rather on refinement
> and elegance but with "XIAN TIAN GANG QI" as foundation.
But not every Great was a finesse fighter. HYS seemed to be the only one among them. But Greats as a whole had not shown that they could others through long-distance.
> First of Xiao Feng wiped away the characters JueYuan scraped a
> chessboard away. According to many dictionaries (i.e. Oxford, Cobuild)
> Wipe: removing/clearing something away from the surface by rubbing.
> Scrape: make/clean/level/smooth surface with a tool.
I thought this topic's been beaten to death by now...
If we keep in mind that the words that XF "wiped" were deeply carved into the stone surface, possibly a couple inches deep, and that XF made them completely disappear, and even turned the stone floor into a beach, then the everyday definition of the word "wipe" becomes irrelevent because we know for certain that XF didn't just "rub the surface".
> Also JiuMo Zhi wanted to give the ShaoLin Monastery a Xia
> Ma Wei (giving them a head-on blow at the first encounter)
> or XianShen Duo Ren (forestall one's opponent by a show of
> strenght; overawe others by displaying one's strength). So
> isn't it logical that he would do extra his best, and also
> he knew that a big martial arts school like ShaoLin wouldn't
> resort to a mass attack on 1 person. Also a lot of monks were
> crying when abbot XuanCi said they were to go (those Indian
> monks).
Still, the same old argument that if he wanted Shaolin to disband, he should've expected tough fights, and that gave him good reasons to conserve energy.
> About Ode to Gallantry I too find it difficult to believe
> that people in this novel would perhaps rank higher than
> characters from DGSD or even LOCH, ROCH and HSDS.
> Because there are not really any evidence or clues to link
> it to other stories.
Agreed that OtG and, say, the Trilogy don't have much common ground to link them together to allow a very detailed comparison. So in many times we have to go by our "impression" (which is subjective) when we're comparing SPT to, say, the Greats. This is actually one of the reasons there are less objections when posters claim that SPT is stronger than the Greats. More on this when I'm replying to TigerWong.
> Abbot TianMing said that no matter how powerful one's
> internal strength may be you cannot leave deep footprints
> behind in tiles.
But JueYuan "scraped" the lines with tools and Jin Yong wrote that he couldn't do it w/o tools. Whether leaving footprints is an impossible feat or not becomes irrelevent. And the way I interpret that paragraph, JueYuan didn't leave footprints, it's just that TianMing at first thought JueYuan left footprints and thought that it's impossible, but on closer inspection he found that JueYuan didn't. He only wiped away the lines with his chains.
> When Xiao Feng wiped away those characters
> no one not even the narrator (jin yong) wrote that this cannot
> be done by others. Only that writing characters on tiles is
> difficult but erasing them is even more difficult.
Well, of course Jin Yong wouldn't say it's an impossible feat, since XF just did it.
> Also Kenny why would you think that TianShan TongLao, WuYa
> Zi and Li QiuShui would belong to the same class as experts
> like Xiao YuanShan, MuRong Bo, Xiao Feng, JiuMo Zhi etc.
Maybe a good starting point is to discuss why the Three Elders should be ranked higher than XF, JMZ, etc.
Is it because they're "rumored" to be able to kill 1st-class fighters in one moved? Well, MRB could also do that...
Is it because they supposedly had super-high inner power? Higher than JMZ or XF? Maybe, but much much higher? If that's true, WuYa Zi should've just passed his inner power to his other student Su instead of XZ, since Wu + Su's inner power should suffice in defeating Ding. But the novel said it's not enough.
I would not disagree if you put them slightly above XF, JMZ, etc. But the distinction isn't big enough to put the three of them in a class all by themselves.
> The characters left behind by Duan YanQing were quite deep
> and Xiao had to wipe a few times in order to erase them.
Wipe a few times due to the total area of those 16 words. Imagine if each word is 1 sq ft. big, your leg would still have to go back and forth a couple times just to erase one word. Now you have a total of 16 words...
> Just because reverend YiDeng and JinLun FaWang stood about
> 5 metres apart from each other.
The novel said more than 1 zhang (10 feet). I interpreted it as roughly 11 or 12 feet.
> Doesn't necessarily put them in the LDS category.
> Can I say that the energy released by JinLun FaWang and
> reverend YiDeng can "travel" about 5 metres. (one zhang
> is ± 3 metres).
The book described the two as fighting from close distance at first, but their forces gradually pushed the other fighter away, until they were about 10 ft part. Can YD "shove" another person from 10 ft away? Possibly, but only against weaker fighters. Against JLFW, his "wind" seemed to lose effect beyond approximately 10 feet, or else the two of them would continue to split apart.
> If 2 palms combined can reach about 12 metres, then the
> energy of one palm is only the half so can "only" reach
> 6 metres. Right?
Not exactly, because by the time he threw his second palm, some of the energy from the first palm should have already dissipated. So it's not exactly correct to say what Ding had to face with was as strong as the total sum of three palms' strength, even though XF threw a total of three palms.
> That doesn't
> necessarily mean that the "Greats" in LOCH/ROCH are LSD
> experts, for all we know they might be LDA.
Don't believe it until I actually see it. <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">
Again, if one Great can do it, I believe the rest of them should be able to by association. But of all the fights they were involved in, I haven't seen it once that someone's injured from it.
To Moin:
> I must confess that I still have not thru any of your posts
> on this thread as a whole yet.
Don't blame you. I don't even go back to read mine... <IMG SRC="smilies/tongue.gif" border="0">
To TigerWong:
> Kenny: I'll just make some quick comments on a few points
> (These long posts are draining ).
... tell me about it! And I'm the one typing them!!!
> I'll try to respond
> to the LDA/LDS issue later... I see your points about inner
> power and am more inclined to believe LDA/LDS as a sort of
> Feat similiar to JY's scraping (i.e., mainly inner power),
Yes, this is my point. And I'm not sure if I've made it clear enough, it's also one of my main points that because it's so highly inner power dependent, it justifies "classification by association". The same thing cannot be said about gentle talking because it requires specific type of inner power with possibly specific training.
> but I'm not sure if that's enough to make an assumption like
> 6M = Greats (mainly due to the Overlay factor, the Strength
> of Opponent factor, and the huge range in LDS)...Why not 6M
> = one of the 3 Elders of Shaolin in HSDS?
No truly objective reasons, (which is common when comparing non-main characters.) Mainly because they were the strongests of LDS in DGSD, so it's more reasonable to say that they're in the, say, top-fifth of the entire LDS (close enough for me to say they're "roughly equal" to the Greats,) rather than the bottom-half of the entire LDS, where the 3 Shaolin Elders should belong.
> Are you using the 10 ft examples of YD pushing GLFW vs. 6M
> pushing others from that "same" distance as the basis?
Not when I'm just considering this example by itself. But couple this with the fact that they're among the strongests of fighters below XF's class in DGSD.
> BTW - Who do you consider the strongest Conventional fighter?
Honestly, I don't know. Since JY didn't give enough details about relatively weaker fighters for us to make an accurate cross-novels comparison.
> Even if you "ignore" their LDA capabilities, do you agree that
> they must be at the height of the LDS group?
Even if they never learnt 1MSJ, what they could do before they learnt 1MSJ was enough for me to believe that they're among the strongests below the the level of XF, JMZ's, and this is enough for me to put them at the top-5th or so in the entire LDS group.
> Unless you're
> saying that even people in the lower part of LDS can learn
> 1MSJ and injure people...in which case, LDA suddenly becomes
> more of an Art rather than a gauge of inner power.
6MSJ is probably the only technique that allows its practitioners to reach the LDA level before they gain as much inner power as other LDAttackers have. But its underlying principles are also much different from other LDA's. 6MSJ actually allows you to form an invisible "sword" with your inner power, where as other LDAttackers mainly rely on their "palm wind" (which something every strong fighters have..., it's just that only a few were able to injure others w/ it) to injure another person from long-distance. So overall, I consider 1MSJ somewhat of an exception to the norm when I'm using LDA/LDS to estimate the fighters' inner power, and that's why I've been reluctant to classify 6M as an LDA. (Note that I said 1MSJ. 6MSJ is different in that if you have enough inner power to learn all 6, you should certainly be in LDA anyway, so 6MSJ isn't an exception.)
But anyway, even if 6M didn't learn 1MSJ, they were nevertheless among the strongests below XF or JMZ's class.
> Personally, I'm starting to think LDA and LDS are essentially
> the same thing...
What do you mean by that?
If by that you mean LDA and LDS are "powered" by the same thing, then I would agree. LDS seemed to be the weaker version of LDA, the only difference is that LDShovers don't exactly have the strength to injure other fighters. For that they need to be even stronger. (I think I can actually explain it with physics... and it has something to do w/ inertia... <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0"> )
Or do you mean LDShovers don't really look weaker than LDAttackers? I think that's how Athena and Lav see it.
> You're the one that contends H_0 is 6M = Greats. The burden of
> proof should be on you to prove that is true. We can't just
> accept that and try to prove the opposite because the evidence
> is limited and it's impossible to get more than what is already
> in the books.
No. I'm suggesting that 6M and the Greats are roughly equal. And there's no obvious reasons to show that it's false. There's no clear evidence to show either the Greats > 6M or 6M > Greats.
> The Greats in that era, but not necessarily greater or equal to
> the Greats in the LOCH era.
Right. But many Greats-supporters argue that "they are Greats in LoCH, so how can you rank them outside of top-10 in other novels. I just don't see these Greats to rank so low in any era" or a variation of it. And I state that people like Duen Yin Hing could be consider a Great in the end of DGSD after the rest have either died or became hermit-like characters mainly as an counter argument.
> Has every one of them actually displayed LDA? Or are you lumping
> some in because they've shown themselves to be equal in some other
> manner and you assume that they must have the LDA ability.
In terms of actually injuring someone or killing someone from LD, XF has, DY has, XZ has, JMZ has, MRB has. Among those who hadn't shown the ability, WYZ didn't only because he's too injured and never fought in the novel. LCS and TSTL mainly fought only against each other, but they did fight long-distance. XYS hadn't shown but he didn't fight much either. And the Janitor Monk was the strongest of them all, but he never wanted to hurt or injure any other.
> Right. But my point was that KF, et al. seems so impressive but
> yet I see less pushback when someone mentions that SPT > Greats.
> Who doesn't even have LDA! I'm hoping he at least demonstrated
> LDS, otherwise things will start getting confusing...
No, you cannot "measure" the validity of a statement based on the amount of protest it receives. Like I said, a lot of Greats fans have the impression that they should also be one of the tops in other era simply because they're labeled "Greats". Since SPT literally dominated the entire novel, and there's a wide gap between him to the next best fighter, it makes accepting SPT > Greats a lot easier, especially they can still tell themselves that the Greats could be ranked 2-6 in that novel. On the other hand, if they accept KF or JMZ > Greats, they're essentially accepting that the Greats is out of the top 10 in DGSD, and they find it unacceptable because the title "Great" has too great of an impression on them.
Another thing is that the story OtG is not as well connected to the Trilogy as DGSD is, so most of the SPT vs Greats comparisons were based on the reader's own impression, so it's somewhat less objective from the beginning anyway, so people probably have less of an urge to argue about it even if they disagree.
There are even some readers who say that DFBB is the strongest character in the entire JY world, (even stronger than the JM), and although there're some protests and disagreements, overall this topic is actually less controversial than "KF > Greats" (in terms of the number of post debating it,) but I wouldn't say this hypothesis DFBB > JM is more valid than KF > Great.
Lav wrote:
> I agree with TristeCoeur. Jiumozhi when arriving at Shaolin
> behaved very politely and only when he had showed his skills
> he demanded arrogantly that Abbot Xuanci should renounce
> Shaolin's claim of the 72 Arts.
I disagree. The main thing is he asked Shaolin to disband BEFORE he fought Xuan Du, BEFORE he fought any of the high ranking Shaolin Monks. Simply showing off in front of them would not allow him to gauge how powerful the monks are. Remember, he's the one showing off skills, not the monks. Even after the Shaolin Monks admitted that what JMZ did was more impressive, JMZ still had very little information about how strong he himself is over the monks. So there's little reason to believe the idea of disbanding the Temple came up only then, and not something pre-planned.
> Then he "suggested" that Shaolin should disband. But anyone
> with common sense would realise that this is impossible.
> Jiumozhi's victory would surely humiliate Shaolin, weaken
> its' position in the martial arts world... but with so many
> monks and laymen disciples shattered all over China, the
> Shaolin school would never cease to exist. I think
> Jiumozhi is wise enough to realise that. He merely "suggested"
> this in order to mock Shaolin.
Impossible? Maybe to us. But JMZ actually wanted it.
The novel said after he said that Shaolin should disband, all of the other people there realized his true intention was to earn the fame of being the one personally disbanding the sect.
> About Jiumozhi preserving his strength... Golden Lion Xie Xun
> generated his power three times as a preparation before he went
> to kill Song Yuanqiao (he later met Kongjian), I think Jiumozhi
> would also have been fully powered up before entering Shaolin
> Temple.
Golden Lion was doing some warmup. Are you suggesting JMZ's gentle talking was also a form of warmups? If so, then there's little reason to believe that JMZ did his "gentle talking" at full force.
> The transmission of his voice, in my opinion, would not
> have weakened his inner strength.
It might have if he was going to challenge the entire sect.
> I personally feel that he is THE MOST POWERFUL of all male
> protagonists!!! Of course, I don't have any proof as
> usual, it's only my personal opinion.
This partly answered TigerWong's question of why not as many readers would object to the statement SPT>Greats. In general, as long as you state that it's just a personal opinion and that you don't have proof, people leave you alone.