When the Mongols finally destroyed the final remnants of the Southern Sung Dynasty and established their hegemony as the Yuan Dynasty of China, one of the policies they implemented was extreme suppression of wulin activity. After all, in the Jin Yong wuxia universe, the Chinese wulin resisted the Mongol Empire's attempts to subjugate southern China for several decades. A purge would only make sense.
And yet, in HSDS, it seemed that wulin had thrived and grown during the century since the end of ROCH. The Greats were all dead, and such great L/ROCH-era wulin powers as the Cheun Jen Sect and the Beggar's Union had disappeared from wulin (Cheun Jen) or were greatly diminished (Beggar's Union). Further unlike the L/ROCH era, there were only two known Greats (Cheung 3 Fung and Cheung Mo Gei) rather than a dozen of them. Nevertheless, with a resurgent Shaolin Temple, the founding of the Mo Dong and Ngor Mei Sects, the re-emergence of the Ming Cult, and notable activity from Kunlun Sect, Hung Dung Sect, Mt. Hua Sect, etc., it seemed that wulin enjoyed a renaissance rather than suffered suppression during the Yuan Dynasty. The wulin of HSDS was arguably more active and diverse than it had ever been during L/ROCH.