Long Story short, I've been cross training Xing Yi with a friend for ~2 months and recently just finished learning the 5 element fists (i think that's what it's called: pi, zuan, pao, beng, heng).

For the record, this isn't my primary art, but I have heard great things about the 5 element fist even to the point that some of the original famous fighters of XingYi only knew these fists and did not know the 12 animal forms (not sure how true this is though but i can def believe it). That said, I was wondering how different is the linking form from just knowing the 5 fists? Of course I realize that even my understanding of these 5 fists is very small and must grow, but is the "linking form" a "cut and paste" of these 5 fists in a certain order?

and for the sake of being more specific, i think i remember my friend saying that the XingYi we've been training is Shanxi Che style.