Was the Golden Wheel Monk operating on bad/outdated intel on Gwok Jing?

[Ken Cheng]

When the Golden Wheel Monk first arrived in China, I think he sincerely believed that he would have no difficult defeating Gwok Jing. The monk seemed a bit concerned about the possibility of having to face the senior Greats, but he went to the Heroes' Conference in Dai Sing Kwan fully confident that he could take whatever Gwok Jing could dish out against him. After their palm clash at the conference, however, the Golden Wheel Monk realized he could *not* be certain that he could take Gwok Jing one-on-one, and spent the rest of ROCH avoiding direct one-on-one confrontations with Gwok Jing.

Could the Golden Wheel Monk's early overconfidence/underestimation of Gwok Jing have been the result of his working with bad/outdated intelligence on his enemy? I wouldn't be surprised. The Golden Wheel Monk *might* have known that Gwok Jing fought East Heretic Wong Yerk See and North Beggar Hung 7 Gung up to 600 moves twenty years earlier (did word of that get out throughout wulin, as far away as Tibet?), but the monk would not have known about Gwok Jing's confrontation against West Poison Au Yeung Fung at the inn in Gong Nam just a few years earlier (the first confirmation that Gwok Jing had attained Greats-level martial arts). Other than that, Gwok Jing had been away from wulin and not involved in many fights over the years since the end of LOCH for wulin to get a real measure of his martial arts level. Fok Do and Dat Yee Ba encountered Gwok Jing at the Chung Yeung Temple a few years earlier, and they witnessed how Gwok Jing dismantled the Big Dipper Formation before thoroughly thrashing the two of them and their cohorts as well. That's the only other data that the Golden Wheel Monk would have had on Gwok Jing.

Did the monk get caught off guard because he expected Gwok Jing's martial arts to be at around the level they were during the Second Mt. Hua Sword Tournament? Was the Golden Wheel Monk errantly relying on intel that was nearly twenty years outdated?

[shadow8899]

I don't think GWM had any intel on GJ.. Who would have let word out regarding his contests against the 2 greats at Mt. Wah? Certainly not the four people in attendance. GJ would not have mentioned anything, he is too humble. H7G, was probably too busy eating to say anything. HYS would have been too proud to say that he couldn't beat his son-in-law. WY probably wouldn't want to publicly shame both her father and master.

GWM was full of himself and probably thought he could beat everyone. He didn't know who Lo Wan Tung was when they met him at Passionless Valley, I think he didn't really know who else was out there. So, when he first appeared, GWM probably didn't know what type of competition was out there and was probably shocked to realize other that there was someone else around that was on the level of the Greats.

[Ken Cheng]

I wonder about the extent to which the Golden Wheel Monk did his homework on Chinese wulin before throwing his wheels into the ring (so to speak). His information always seemed incomplete. Coming into China, he faced five potential threats (Gwok Jing, Wong Yerk See, 1 Deng, Chow Bak Tung, and Kau Cheen Yan) and, had it not been for some fortuitous timing, two more (Hung 7 Fung and Au Yeung Fung). Just what was the Golden Wheel Monk's gameplan? He was outnumbered five Greats to one (himself), and his two disciples, though decent martial artists, couldn't take on the whole of Chinese wulin by themselves. That best-of-three tournament at Luk Family Manor was a somewhat flimsy plan to hang the hopes of the Mongol Empire on, and it didn't work anyway.

It doesn't seem like the Golden Wheel Monk thought his strategy out very well before committing himself and his charges to this mission.