Yuding.

Numbered 12, Yuding is the Crescent Blade Puppet and the guardian of Mirage Estate's training ground.

Her build is that of a Vessel-class puppet: decorated armour, white hair flowing behind her, and a long-hafted blade engraved with Loong designs. Four puppets share names drawn from jade vessels, and she is one of them, together with Yuzan, Yubi and Yucong, the other Great Puppets.

You run into her late in the game at the Training Grounds of Mirage Estate. The battle cannot be skipped, and you are paid with the weapon she wields.

Prior to becoming a puppet, she was enchanted by the legendary generals of the opera stage. Her master gave her the blade, and from then on nobody could match her in combat.

Arena of the Training Grounds

The path across Mirage Estate takes you by the garden, the Nuo Mask Altar, Back Hill and the Shaded Bamboo Path, ending at the bell by the Opera House. Right after that comes the training arena and the battle against Yuding. Your weapon skill is what she tests, through a mix of cleaving swings, sweeps, guards, lifting moves, twists and thrusts. If a gap appears in your guard, her blade catches your neck in a lock, after which she swings the pole around her own back and slams it downward.

With her gone, the bell at the Training Grounds can be lit. On the altar in the Training Grounds' northern section lies the Opera Ticket, which grants entry to the Opera House and to Qiu Feng, the boss after her.

Weaknesses, Resistances and Drops

Her base stats are 11,000 HP and 2,400 Sha-Chi, and she drops 6,000 Remnant Dust. Those figures come straight from the game files and scale up with difficulty and in later playthroughs.

Lightning does extra damage to her. Ice and Water are resisted at 30 per cent, and Poison, Bleed and Blood Burst do not work on her at all, so rely on another source of damage if you usually favour those.

Crescent Blade

Once she is beaten, you take her weapon, now a lengthy polearm topped by a crescent head that is carved with a dragon. Guard-breaking is its purpose, and charging it produces a form whose strike splits weaker foes in half.

Mirage Estate's Training Grounds

She rules over the Training Grounds arena. Afterwards, search the area's east edge, on a raised platform by a chest, where a Memory Flower of the Aberrant Three-Faced Puppet rests. Collecting it begins part two of the Triple-Threat side tale.

A Quick Hand Zhang treasure, the General's Bronze Mirror, sits inside a building past the following combat arena. Reaching it requires beating Yuding and then clearing out the enemies that watch over the area.