#40. Lin Fei

Lore

The Teacher

“Lin Fei’s encyclopedic ‘History of the Martial Arts’ may be the greatest literature to emerge from Song Dynasty China. The story that Lin Fei mastered every technique she described is, of course, impossible.” 

—Wikipedia, wrongly


“My own fighting style I named ‘Way of the Iron Dragon.” I failed to gain much popularity with my students - probably because the pre-requisites are a full-size cannon, an ancestral dragon-spirit, and the strength of ten men.” 

—Lin Fei

As the story goes...

Wu Shang tells of a time his Imperial soldiers raided a village for gunpowder, and a young girl challenged them. This girl fought with such perfect skill for her home and family that it caused him to question everything about his own life.

That girl grew up with a passion for martial arts. She traveled to distant and dangerous lands in search of ancient forms. It was deep in the long lost Library of the Seventh Empire that she freed her family’s ancestral guardian, the dragon Xiao.

She became a renowned teacher and scholar, often dealing out her lessons the hard way. She thrashed the marauding mountain giants, then taught them how to use their size to proper advantage. When the Emperor’s very first ninjas challenged her to open combat, she clobbered them, then she advised them that wearing black and tip-toeing might be more their thing.

In Valhalla, Lin Fei has not yet told Wu Shang that she was the girl from his fateful day. She has, however, told him how to improve his fist of Fire technique with a few breathing tweaks. Top legends seek out Lin Fei to refine their own styles or learn new moves. She taught Cassidy the Tornado, Azoth his Shrieking Skulls, and Roland the Flaming Horse. Volkov dedicated his first Asgardian Cup to her. The closest Thatch has ever come to gratitude was when Lin Fei taught him to tap his deepest inner lunatic to summon the Spirit Shark.

Connections

• (No mentions of Lin Fei in other legends' lore pages have yet been found)

Context

Lin Fei is modeled after the term "Wuxia" (WU-sha). What is Wuxia? Glad you asked. It is a Chinese word that means "martial arts chivalry" or "martial arts heroes." Ever heard of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? House of Flying Daggers? Kill Bill? The Matrix? Kung Fu Panda? Each of these films are either classic examples of, or heavily influenced by, the genre known as Wuxia.

Pieces of Wuxia fiction can take place just about anywhere (like the cyberpunk setting of The Matrix), but the classic setting—and the setting that Lin Fei calls home—is a sort of fantasy version of Imperial China (anywhere from 220 BC to 1912 AD). But, the mention of the Song Dynasty narrows it down further to between 960 and 1279 AD.

Lin Fei is part of the Lin family in her village (in China, surnames come first), and a fair amount of notable people in the real world share this name.

Lin Fei's weapon pairing, katars and cannon, is an unusual one (then again, cannon is an unusual weapon), but—like every other weapon pairing for every legend—there's a reason behind the madness. Katars are the closest Brawlhalla equivalent to daggers, a classic assassin weapon (the number of assassins and mercenaries in classic Wuxia films is staggering sometimes, just ask House of the Flying Daggers).

Remember Disney's Mulan? The film doesn't really have a definitive time frame for its plot, but the soldiers in the film used hand cannons, and Lin Fei's use of a cannon falls right in line with the first uses of gunpowder in China, which did indeed occur during the Song Dynasty. There may have been some rudimentary "fire lances" before that, but it was during Lin Fei's time when gunpowder and cannons really started to become a staple of the military force at the time.