The legend of this style attribute the creation of this style to the legendary General Yao Fei who lived in the Song dynasty, however, there are no documents to support this claim. In China, people like to give credit for their work to historical figures or their ancestors.

Most Xing Yi masters agree that Xing Yi came from a style called Xin Yi. The founder of Xin Yi was called Ji JiKe, he lived around 400 years ago. Note that different versions of the story exist as well. Ji JiKe was from Shanxi province, he found a training manual in one of Yue's temples. After studying this manual he was able to develop a new style called Xin Yi since he was already an accomplished martial artist.

Around the 1840s a martial artist called Li Luoneng traveled from Hebei province o Shanxi province to study Xin Yi from the Dai Family. After years of study and innovation, he created his style which he named Xing Yi. Li Luoneng taught in Shanxi as well as Hebei. He had 4 disciples in each province, resulting in two main branches of Xing Yi. Like any other Martial art, new sub-styles emerged with further development resulting from contributions of generations of practitioners, for example, Li Cunyi, Zhang Zaodong, Xue Dian, Sun Lutang, and many others. In this book, we will focus on the Hebei branch.