Expand:
In martial arts novels, proper nouns such as "Wulin master", "Wulin master", "Wulin congress" and "Wulin master" often appear. What is martial arts?
Wulin is not synonymous with Jianghu. The Jianghu society has a huge geographical area, and there are people with three religions and nine streams, fortune tellers, monks and wizards, and even beggars and gangsters.
Wulin is not a place full of martial arts schools, let alone a place where outlaws gather. Wulin is the collective name of all sects.
It mainly refers to a large group of people with martial arts background, not just individuals. If a person practices martial arts, we can say that he is a member of the Wulin, which means that individuals who practice martial arts are included in the Wulin group.
As for the "martial arts leader", it only appears in martial arts novels, and there has never been a person who truly unified the martial arts sects in real society.
However, in modern times, Huo Yuanjia in Cangzhou and Huang Feihong in Guangdong were regarded as spiritual "Wulin champions" because of their superb martial arts and both morality and art.
Since ancient times, "Wulin" has only the names of mountains, places and cities, and nothing else. This book was first used as a title by Zhou Mi in the late Song Dynasty. All the anecdotes in Hangzhou (also known as Wulin) have nothing to do with martial arts. A friend of Gong's, who has a good knowledge of martial arts, once recommended a book "Kung Fu" to Gong. Wan once taught at Beijing Agricultural University and was a direct disciple of Du, a "born door warrior". His books are all-encompassing, all true and well-founded, and are the authoritative works in the field of martial arts in China. Gong used this "Wulin Secret Book" to wander the rivers and lakes, and evolved his theory with literary ingenuity. So, nothing went wrong.
Gong, perhaps inspired by "Lin Wen" (generally referring to the cultural circle), created a relatively new word "Wulin".
Its definition is far broader than that of "green forest" —— Ma Wu and other heroes were designated as thieves in the green forest mountain in the late Western Han Dynasty, as contained in The Biography of Liu Xuanzhuan in the Later Han Dynasty, covering both black and white in rivers and lakes.
Gong created the word "Wulin" as a general term for martial arts, which has been in use ever since.