I've recently gotten interested in the Three Kingdoms Time period, and the Sengoku period in Asia. While reading it, I've come across many stories of people that were renowned in their combat ability. However, my knowledge of ancient warfare mainly comes from the Romans, and fighting there was described as "Two masses of people shoving each other." When one got tired, they would run, and most casualties would happen when the routing happened, rather than the actually fighting.
I was wondering how Asian combat was different, in that it allowed people to actually be feared on the battle field.
The Three Kingdoms is... Interesting. The most popular work about it, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", is actually a novel, and a lot of its depictions of historical figures became ingrained in popular culture here in Asia, even though it is definitely not historical. However, many other stories, novels, movies and video games use Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a historical source, which is why most of what you hear about the Three Kingdoms sound fantastical and larger than life - because it is fiction.
Take anything you read about the Three Kingdoms era with a grain of salt, especially non-scholarly works.