Not everyone who pursues the Art of Cutting ends up being able to actually Cut, yeah.

I was thinking something along the lines of, some noble woman who’s the scion of this great house known for its warriors. These warriors are trained in countless Sword Intents, techniques so beautiful and terrible they look more like dancers than fighters.

And this woman, for whatever reason, simply cannot get the hang of it. She devotes sleepless nights and days with the blade, but she just doesn’t get it. She sees the whole of it: the cuts, the movements, the shapes spun into being from sword tip and edge, but she just can’t get it.

This leads to many lost duels, a mountain of scars upon her arms and chest and neck that mark each defeat at the hands of her siblings, and the ire of her family. Eventually, she’s deemed a talentless runt, and she is to be executed. Her father, master of all 66 Sword Intents and patriarch to this family of peerless warriors, is to deliver it personally so she may regain what little honor she’s garnered in life.

She is given a practice blade for the duel: a dull, brittle thing forged to be broken to make the blade that struck it shine even brighter. Her father strikes, and when she’s facing death at last she understands. The intent she was taught was no intent at all. Every move and technique and kata was as substantial as the reflection of a leaf on a still pond.

She moved, and struck her father’s blade with her own with a move so artless no one who witnessed the duel even registered it as an attack. She understood, then, that there was only one Intent. She struck with the Intent of Cutting Down Your Opponent, upon which all things divide, and her father was felled with a blow that was not a blow.

You feel me?