Originally Posted by
Ken Cheng
Many wuxia villains are motivated by power...specifically, power within wulin. Hence, they covet supreme martial arts skills so that no one could challenge them. That's why West Poison Au Yeung Fung risked everything to gain the 9 Yum Jen Ging, and why Dung Fong But Bai and Ngok But Kwun gave up manhood itself in an attempt to master the Qwai Fa Bo Deen. It's almost Wuxia Villain Cliche # 1.
Hence, in each wuxia story with this plot development, the good/heroic characters struggle valiantly to thwart these villains from achieving martial arts supremacy. The heroes typically are concerned about the villains' threat to *wulin*.
Think about that for a moment: wulin represented a very small portion of the overall population, and since people in wulin *chose* to adopt a career and lifestyle that they knew to be inherently violent and dangerous, isn't getting killed by a powerful martial artist just part of the deal? A natural occupational hazard that comes with the career?
It's not as if the likes of Au Yeung Fung, Kau Cheen Yan, Dung Fong But Bai, or Ngok But Kwun would become major menaces to the general population if they achieved martial arts supremacy. If any of these individuals became the most powerful martial artist in the world, their enemies might suffer...and *maybe* wulin in general might suffer (although that remains to be proven; the above individuals might not be heroes, but given supreme power, who says they wouldn't use it for positive ends?), but it's not as if Au Yeung Fung or Dung Fong But Bai would suddenly go out and eat babies and torture senior citizens after having mastered the 9 Yum Jen Ging or the Qwai Fa Bo Deen. These wulin villains posed very little threat to the general population no matter how powerful they became; the only people who really had to worry about them were their wulin enemies.
Now there's an exception for certain villains: Mo Yung Bok would have used his martial arts as a stepping stone for rebuilding his Yin Empire in a bid for world conquest, but that's because he had political ambitions that stretched way beyond wulin. Lee Mok Sau would have posed a threat because she was just plain cruel. Mui Chiu Fung would have been dangerous because she needed random targets for practicing her martial arts. For the most part, however, wulin menaces contained their troublemaking to wulin, and the scope of their menace was really limited.
That's why the heroic quest to "save wulin" doesn't impress me much; wulin, for the most part, can take care of itself. It's those who *can't* fight for themselves that I think should concern the heroes more.