Trident Maple Earth Layering Advice

[Kudo]

I've bought this trident maple online as a 3 years seedling. Apparently it is much older than that and, despite the scars and bad nebari, to me it has a nice tapering for a shohin bonsai which I wanted it to be.

First thig I want to correc is the nebari. I was planning to repot it as it shooting new spring growth and do something to correct the nebari. It has an ugly overgrown big root that fused on the left under side of the truk and goes to the background, but it helped to create a taper like effect.

My question is if it is better to do earth/air layering just under the aerial roots or just cut all the trunk under these aerial roots and pray for the best. I don't know the previous health of this plant but considering the size of shoots and leaves I think it is not a full strengh trident maple so maybe a earth layer would be safer. What do you suggest?

 

[Kudo]

So, at the end of October I decided to see how much roots was available upside the place of the trunk I would like to cut and I didn't find a considerable mass of roots. I also discovered a big tap root under the tree and decided to go easy on it cuttting the low part this. Maybe next year when the tree is recovered and fully growing I will do earth layering.

The tree lost some new leaves and is not happy, but recently stoped dying back (last photo).