Ever since the Kyoshi novels came out, the bending style practiced by its well known characters weren't exactly the same ones practiced by the ones we know from the original series. Their origins can be rooted to Avatar Kuruk, who had his backstory fleshed out. The new style is what I'll try to explore in this blog. But before I get into the details of what I'm about to write, the following are only observations and my personal interpretations of what we're described and isn't some kind of Bible.

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Avatar Kuruk's idea of the four elemental arts & bending

Avatar Kuruk is one of the most unique benders in the franchise’s history. His major appearances in the Kyoshi novels gave an impression about how he’s an extremely talented bender. But there’s more to it. Kuruk's hard work in honing his arts were of the highest quality one could get, a trait he shared with each of his companions. They all learnt from one another and improved, incorporated benefits of other arts into their own.

What I mean by this is, Kuruk's water/earth/fire/airbending incorporated elements/aspects from every other elements, which really was his philosophy for bending, eventually adapted by his masters.

Detailed information about airbending from Kuruk's era are hard to find, so I’ll focus mostly on earth and firebending in this post, with some stuff on waterbending.

With the point about his skill flowing from one element to the other out of the way, let’s look at his bending and how they are still used by certain benders from Aang’s time, during the war.

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Jianzhu’s customized style of earthbending – An amalgam of the four bending arts:

The only style of bending highlighted to a large extent in the novels was Jianzhu’s personalized earthbending, which has evidences of aspects of other elements in earthbending.

From the information we could gather from the novels, mainly from the final battle between Yun and the Flying Opera Company, Jianzhu’s personalized style involves liquefied use of earthbending, something Yun learnt from his master. The novel even remarks how Yun’s movements mirrored that of another waterbender – The Pirate Queen Tagaka, and earth moved like a wave of liquid.

Such fluid movements are mostly a common trait shared by waterbenders.

This clearly establishes the influence of Kuruk’s waterbending, in Jianzhu’s style of earthbending. While not as clear cut as water, there are instances which depict the shades of firebending methods in Yun’s earthbending. After Yun had failed to make a single puff of flame during Hei-Ran’s classes, he disintegrated marble into dust and simulated firebending with it.

With this information about the three elemental arts conjugated with one another, the possibilities of bending fire/water the way a water/fire or an earthbender does can’t be ruled out, given all four of Kuruk’s companions trained a lot with one another, improvising their skills, despite their higher levels of mastery over them.

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Known and possible users of conjugated bending style developed during Kuruk’s time:

Yun:

The most well known practitioner of this style was the False Avatar, Yun himself. He has achieved finesse over earthbending that would possibly rival the likes of the Blind Bandit, the Mad Genius and possibly, Avatar Kyoshi, during his later years. This was on full display during his final battle against the avatar and her friends. Although he hadn’t displayed the firebending simulation he did during his training days, Yun made earth flow like a liquid all through the struggle, which even made Kyoshi consider the possibility of him being able to bend two elements.

Gallery

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Avatar Kyoshi and the Dai Li:

Despite not having seen Avatar Kyoshi in her physical prime, the glimpses we got during her later avatarhood, around the time she had to train the Dai Li for the Earth King.

Earth kingdom was hit with a peasant revolution, to which Kyoshi’s proposed solution as a part of a deal was to train an elite force of earthbenders – The Dai Li. The Dai Li are amongst the elite police forces in all of avatar and could rival the technologically aided threat that Amon and Kuvira had at their disposal. Most of what made the Dai Li so feared was their lethal and precise modes of operation, as mentioned by Kyoshi herself when she trained them.

It’s not a coincidence that these elements are directly taken out of the gravedigger’s book. Jianzhu even received the name 'Architect' for his precision, which was in full display when he killed his friend Kelsang, by precisely navigating a shard of earth through the airbender's wind.

Even beyond the stress on precision, their bending movements mirrors that of Yun. The most striking example of that was shown in the show, during the Day of Black Sun, when the Dai Li were protecting Azula. In all the showings in the collage below, the agents' stances are low and wide compared to the Southern Praying Mantis style of Toph and Aang, while their hands are far looser relatively, in line with Jianzhu's style of bending.

It isn’t a coincidence that their trainer has lived during the era of the man that invented the style, Avatar Kyoshi herself. Precision was something she had greatly struggled in her earlier years and had to resort to using metal fans to augment her in that aspect, to the point where she could precisely catch a tiny earth bullet shot.

From the small tidbits we've known from Kyoshi's later life when she trained the Dai Li, she seems to have mastered Jianzhu's style based on:

• The Dai Li's expertise in methods that Jianzhu specialized coupled with the fact that Kyoshi trained them.
• Kyoshi's take down of the earth kingdom guards involved Yun's trademark earth pulse.

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Jeong Jeong:

Unlike the other two sub-sections earlier, Jeong Jeong’s case doesn’t have factual proof or word of god, but rather similarities his unique firebending shares with Jianzhu and Rangi. So, I’m mainly connecting the dots rather than showing an already existing connection. First and foremost reason why I considered Jeong Jeong for this was that, his philosophy was entirely different from his contemporaries such as Iroh, Zuko or Aang.

Are you deaf? How can I teach you if you refuse to listen? Before learning firebending you must learn water and earth. Water is cool and soothing, earth is steady and stable, but fire, fire is alive! It breathes, it grows. Without the bender, a rock will not throw itself! But fire will spread and destroy everything in its path if one does not have the will to control it! That is its destiny! You are not ready! You are too weak!

Jeong Jeong

All this time, I thought firebending was destruction. Since I hurt Katara, I've been too afraid and hesitant. But now I know what it really is ... it's energy, and life.

Avatar Aang

Even beyond that, the manner in which he manipulates fire is entirely different compared to the others. Jeong Jeong is uniquely famous for creating huge walls of flame that mirror earthbenders raising defenses, moves flames like waves of water, similar to waterbenders or bends flame from thin air the way airbenders bend air currents. The dynamics behind Jeong Jeong’s bending are a far cry from the traditional and conventional fire bending shown by someone like Ozai, who manifests the aggressive mode of operation that positive jing oriented firebenders during the war show.

After all the similarities, the most striking one displayed by JJ is jet propulsion. Jeong Jeong’s jet propulsion, resembles Rangi’s jet stepping in the manner that, both of them levitate mid-air rather than propelling at sheer speeds shown by benders like Ozai or Iroh-2. Rangi developed the method to mimic dust stepping methods by her friends from the flying opera company. While she isn’t as advanced in firebending rank as her mother, when she was a Lieutanant, every knowledge of firebending has come from her mother, Hei Ran, who was one of Kuruk’s companions.

The possibility of Jeong Jeong bending similar style as Kyoshi’s friends could be attributed to him a part of the Sei’naka clan or to the art being passed down across generations through the white lotus group.

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Closing thoughts:

The innovative bending idea Kuruk and his companions developed show the level of skill one could hone themselves to, be it an avatar or not. Yun was the finest exposition of Jianzhu’s earthbending style, at least until we see further details about Kyoshi during her later years and his earthbending talent is better than any other earthbender not named Toph Beifong. In a similar manner, the Dai Li are peerless when it comes to elite groups of bending soldiers, with only the Earth Empire’s metalbending force approaching their levels on precision, lethality or skill. Jeong Jeong’s is himself hyped up to be a firebending genius which could attributed to the myriad of ways he bends it, as opposed to just the conventional manner.

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Sources

1. The Rise of Kyoshi
2. The Shadow of Kyoshi
3. Avatar – The Last Airbender
4. Escape from the spirit world.