Song Qingshu knew better than anyone what kind of people the Flower Between Sect produced. Put nicely, they were romantic and suave; put bluntly, they were nothing but flower-plucking bandits. Throughout its generations, only someone like Hou Xibai observed any rules. The rest were among the most despised people in the martial world.
He did not know whether Hou Xibai had existed in this world's history of the Flower Between Sect, but the appearance of Nian Liandan and the others meant that the other grandmaster-level experts from Master Huang's works were probably here as well. Thinking about it, that was only reasonable. The Jin novels were often written from the Southern Song perspective, so most of the grandmasters who appeared were figures from Southern Song. But that created a paradox: if Southern Song had so many peerless martial arts experts, why could they not send them to assassinate Temujin? The Mongol threat would naturally have been resolved.
Yet the Mongol Empire had conquered most of Eurasia, and its ranks were brimming with talent. It should not have had fewer experts than Southern Song. Prince Ruyang's Mansion and Kublai Khan's forces were packed with experts in the Jin novels. As the Mongol Great Khan, Temujin should have had even more under his command.
There had indeed been few experts around Temujin in The Legend of the Condor Heroes, but the Mongols had still been in their founding stage then. Now that they had campaigned east and west and destroyed countless states, who knew how many grandmaster-level experts had joined them?
One Shaolin Temple in the Central Plains alone was filled with masters. Historically, every sect in the world had paid tribute to the Mongols—the Pope of Europe, the various factions of the Middle East, Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, Chan Buddhism of the