Looked over that post, and yeah, I think it makes too many assumptions. In addition to what you mentioned above, I would also argue Yingxing's potential age. Even though he's a short lived species, the Xianzhou is also known for it's advanced medical services, and he works in an important high ranking position. So I don't think it would be surprising if he got the best medical services available, leading to a spry body at even 70-80 years old.
Dan Feng being 600-700 years old seems to have no support. Ok, I've found the reference to Dan Feng being ~600: "靡靡赤龙，森森青松 / 六百余年凡尘中 / 如梦尽是空". But this seems to be talking about his age at the time of death/forced molting. As we discussed before, it's very possible his trial took a long span of time to sort out. Or, it could even be possible that the poet is just using the average age of Vidyadhara and doesn't actually know (or bother to research) Dan Feng's age.
Then regarding the whole appearance thing, I found the image in question, which actually is interesting in that Dan Heng says Taoran looked close to the end of lifespan at the time of Dan Heng's exile. But, this guy is also a peer of Dan Feng and looked old at that time already. This brings up problems with Dan Feng/Dan Heng's timeline again... Did this guy reborn once soon after the Sedition, and then again after Dan Heng's rebirth (within the last century), and still hatched + grew up faster than Dan Heng? Or, did he rebirth several centuries after the Sedition, when Dan Heng was reborn a few centuries ago...and still matured faster than Dan Heng? Ugh... rather, it does successfully prove that we can't use visual cues to identify the age of Vidydhara, because there's a huge variation in the rate of maturation, lifespan, and egg-time.
Wrt to Sword Champion and the Wardance... My understanding is that Sword Champion goes to the person with the best swordsmanship ability on the ship. How that would be determined is likely via a tournament, or possibly also by regularly scheduled challenges by hopefuls seeking to take the title from the reigning champ. From Yanqing's character lore, it sounds like that after Jingliu, there were people who could've have taken this Sword Champion position. But it's just that they didn't want the official title used after her anymore.
As for the Wardance, it seems to be something that *could* potentially be used to determine a new Sword Champ, but doesn't *have* to be. After all, the Wardance has a lot of foreigners and non-sword-wielding participants who obviously wouldn't be competing for a title that's sword-specific and tied to a Xianzhou military position. My take is that if there's a Sword Champion, they could volunteer to defend their title in that tournament. Same with the high elder. So during the Wardance ~700 years ago, it's likely Jingliu and/or Dan Feng foisted the task off to Jing Yuan. My guess is that, if a Xianzhou swordsman wins the Wardance, they would they have the additional right to further challenge the current Sword Champion for that title (possibly ahead of whatever line exists for that challenge rights).
> Because if so, then it's very likely at the time Jingliu got her sword from Yingxing, that wasn't her first time as Sword Champion.
This I would think to be unlikely, unless she lost the position to someone else, and later regained the title. But given Jingliu's reputation and general level of ability that we know from her, that's unlikely to be the case.
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Dan Feng being 600-700 years old seems to have no support.Ok, I've found the reference to Dan Feng being ~600: "靡靡赤龙，森森青松 / 六百余年凡尘中 / 如梦尽是空". But this seems to be talking about his age at the time of death/forced molting. As we discussed before, it's very possible his trial took a long span of time to sort out. Or, it could even be possible that the poet is just using the average age of Vidyadhara and doesn't actually know (or bother to research) Dan Feng's age.Then regarding the whole appearance thing, I found the image in question, which actually is interesting in that Dan Heng says Taoran looked close to the end of lifespan at the time of Dan Heng's exile. But, this guy is also a peer of Dan Feng and looked old at that time already. This brings up problems with Dan Feng/Dan Heng's timeline again... Did this guy reborn once soon after the Sedition, and then again after Dan Heng's rebirth (within the last century), and still hatched + grew up faster than Dan Heng? Or, did he rebirth several centuries after the Sedition, when Dan Heng was reborn a few centuries ago...and still matured faster than Dan Heng? Ugh... rather, it does successfully prove that we can't use visual cues to identify the age of Vidydhara, because there's a huge variation in the rate of maturation, lifespan, and egg-time.
Wrt to Sword Champion and the Wardance... My understanding is that Sword Champion goes to the person with the best swordsmanship ability on the ship. How that would be determined is likely via a tournament, or possibly also by regularly scheduled challenges by hopefuls seeking to take the title from the reigning champ. From Yanqing's character lore, it sounds like that after Jingliu, there were people who could've have taken this Sword Champion position. But it's just that they didn't want the official title used after her anymore.
As for the Wardance, it seems to be something that *could* potentially be used to determine a new Sword Champ, but doesn't *have* to be. After all, the Wardance has a lot of foreigners and non-sword-wielding participants who obviously wouldn't be competing for a title that's sword-specific and tied to a Xianzhou military position. My take is that if there's a Sword Champion, they could volunteer to defend their title in that tournament. Same with the high elder. So during the Wardance ~700 years ago, it's likely Jingliu and/or Dan Feng foisted the task off to Jing Yuan. My guess is that, if a Xianzhou swordsman wins the Wardance, they would they have the additional right to further challenge the current Sword Champion for that title (possibly ahead of whatever line exists for that challenge rights).
> Because if so, then it's very likely at the time Jingliu got her sword from Yingxing, that wasn't her first time as Sword Champion.
This I would think to be unlikely, unless she lost the position to someone else, and later regained the title. But given Jingliu's reputation and general level of ability that we know from her, that's unlikely to be the case.