I'm interested to get people's opinions about protagonists leaving or retiring from Wulin during their respective time. I will make two examples below and perhaps present my opinion on them.
1. Yang Guo leaving wulin with Xiao Long Nu at the end of ROCH. The situation as we know was that the threat of Mongol invasion had been temporarily halted by the death of Mongke Khan in the hands of Yang Guo and it was assumed that the mainland China would be in temporary peace. IMHO, YG and XLN deserved their retirement and peaceful seclusion from wulin after what they had been through, 16 years separation and all that. But then again, Mongol invaded sometime later between the end of ROCH and HSDS and YG's decision not to help the Song's efforts (led by Guo Jing) in defending Xiang Yang was severely criticised by a number of 'patriots' (hence the perceived bias against YG in this forum). Well, maybe JY intended that YG survived the fall of Xiang Yang so that his descendant or someone related to him and XLN could appear later as a plot device in HSDS. But nonetheless, YG got a lot of criticisms for his early retirement plan.
2. Zhang Wu Ji leaving wulin with Zhao Min. Well, perhaps it can be said that ZWJ's retirement was mostly caused by Zhu Yuan Zhang machinations. ZWJ never wanted to have anything to do with wulin from the beginning. He was somehow thrust into the thick of things through the actions of others in his life, parents, his Godfather, Wudang uncles. And through witnessing their sufferings, he had often thought of nothing else but peaceful life somewhere away from it all. So when at the end of HSDS, he decided to leave Ming cult with Zhao Min, not a lot of people question his decision, some perhaps supported and felt happy for him. But if we consider the situation at his time of leaving, the Ming offensive was reaching its zenith and the Yuan would probably be overthrew very soon. Ming cultists still needed someone to unite all the strong different personalities between them and I would guess ZWJ still have most of majority support to command and rule them all once they have removed the Mongols from mainland. Should ZWJ have stayed and finished the job and perhaps retire later after peace is truly in place?
If you guys wanted to retire from wulin, how would you guys do it?