Practitioners of beast-taming were not unheard of, but they were exceedingly rare—perhaps even rarer than talisman cultivators.
In places like the Near-Sea Archipelago, where people had fought the Sea Race for generations, there was a tradition of capturing Sea Race members, binding their Sea Lord True Forms, placing seals on them, and destroying their minds so they could serve as guardian Sea Beasts for the islands.
It was a way to wring as much value as possible from the impoverished Sea Race.
But that could hardly be called beast-taming. It was no different from enslaving people.
True, orthodox beast-taming meant a meeting of minds between human and strange beast. Their relationship was that of partners, of comrades-in-arms.
This art had a long history, dating back as far as the Ancient Era.
In the Ancient Era, there were very few Human Race cultivators born with Dao Veins, and their fighting strength was woefully inadequate. So the sages of old created beast-taming, training strange beasts to serve their tribes and bolster their strength.
The extra strength provided by strange beasts was substantial, at least in the short term, so the art naturally flourished for a time. It was one of countless attempts made by the sages of the Human Race during those arduous years.
The problem was that common Wild Beasts had almost no ability to interfere in battles on the transcendent level, while strange beasts with transcendent power were few and far between.
Besides, these strange beasts were generally powerful. Many even possessed intelligence, making them exceedingly difficult to tame.
The legendary Dharma Beast Xiezhi, for instance, could also be considered a strange beast.
In the Ancient Era, beings called "strange beasts" often possessed some kind of divinity. Some were even worthy of being called divine beasts.
Beast-taming usually involved forming