The Longevity Hall attached great importance to Li Ling's visit. Of the five Nascent Soul Great Cultivators within its ranks, all had come in person except the elder Lei Heng of the Transmission Hall, who was in secluded cultivation, resolved not to emerge until he had fathomed the mysteries of spirit transformation.
After chatting and laughing with them, Li Ling also met the Longevity Hall's elders in the Core Formation Realm.
Most were hall masters, peak masters, or stockade chiefs of various villages and clans.
The Longevity Hall had risen through beast-taming methods, gradually replacing ties of blood and geography with divine abilities and techniques to establish its supremacy over the Gathering Grotto Continent. In certain respects, it resembled the Incense Accumulation Sect.
Unlike the Incense Accumulation Sect, however, the Beast-Taming Art was a technique rather than a Dao. It had yet to develop a systematic method of cultivation, passing down only experience and skills. The people of the Longevity Hall also divided their spheres of influence by mountain stronghold and clan, each governing their own affairs. They lacked the foundations of a sect in the strict sense that the Incense Accumulation Sect possessed.
As a result, they remained an alliance of cultivators, a community formed by the many villages, stockades, and clans across hundreds of thousands of miles.
Furthermore, the Longevity Hall was constantly contending with the demon race of the Gathering Grotto Continent for territory in which to survive. Its circumstances were far from peaceful.
They faced a struggle for survival in which those not of their kind were bound to have different hearts. Demons ate humans, and humans killed demons in turn.
All these factors had shaped the distinctive rules and customs of the cultivators here.
Li Ling made note of some of the names and places,