A "wulin" nominally still existed during the eras of Jin Yong's Qing Dynasty-era stories, DUKE OF MT. DEER, FLYING FOX OF SNOWY MOUNTAIN, and BOOK & SWORD: GRATITUDE & REVENGE. There were still martial artists who fought for chivalric causes, followed a code of honor, and resisted the latest foreign invader, but still...the *character* of the Qing Dynasty wulin in Jin Yong's world seems different from that of its counterparts in earlier eras. In DGSD, the CONDOR HEROES TRILOGY, and SPW, there were many different wulin sects and distinct martial arts systems, and these sects often had conflicts among themselves that had nothing to do with national politics. Moreover, the wulin of the Sung, Yuan, and Ming Dynasty eras bothered with such infrastructure as occasional all-wulin conventions and the selection of a wulin director, and everybody seemed to be interested in becoming the # 1 martial artist in the world or making his her sect the # 1 sect in wulin.
By the time of the Qing Dynasty, things had changed considerably. Although there were still active martial artists, there didn't seem to be an organized wulin anymore. Among the martial sects, only the oldest and the most powerful of them (e.g. Shaolin, Mo Dong, and Ngor Mei) still existed. There were no all-wulin conventions, and nobody spoke of aspiring to or electing an office of wulin director. Everything seemed geared towards resisting/overthrowing the Qing Dynasty; nobody was interested in becoming the # 1 wulin martial artist or making his/her sect the # 1 wulin sect anymore. Wulin as it was known during the Sung, Yuan, and Ming era seemed to no longer exist by the time of the Qing Dynasty.