Sectarian prejudice had remained unchanged since ancient times, and so the Sword Sects throughout the world were divided into two kinds.
One kind was the unorthodox Sword Sects. Of course, these Sword Sects looked down on the Unorthodox Sects themselves, so they dropped the word "unorthodox" and called themselves only the Sword Sect.
The Heavenly Mountain Sword Sect, Helan Sword Sect, Xiling Sword Sect, Qilian Sword Sect, Taibai Sword Sect, Guangyuan Sword Sect, and others all belonged to this category. Because these schools pursued the same Great Dao and practiced similar methods of cultivation, they had formed a loose alliance much like the Haoran Alliance or Orthodox Unity Alliance: the Sword Sect. Not every unorthodox sword school belonged to the Sword Sect; to claim that name, a school had to be at least a major sect. Otherwise, it was not part of the Sword Sect, but merely one of the Unorthodox Sects.
There was another kind of Sword Sect whose origins lay not in the Unorthodox Sects, but in Daoism and Buddhism. They meditated and expounded scriptures, counted prayer beads and chanted, yet were also highly accomplished in the Sword Dao, using swords to defend their path. Thus, people sometimes habitually called these schools Sword Sects as well.
These schools also happened to stand upon famous mountains and numinous peaks: Mount Lu in Yu Zhang, Yellow Mountain in Qingzhou, Yandang Mountain in Kuaiji, and the Eastern Peak, Mount Tai; the Western Peak, Mount Hua; the Southern Peak, Mount Heng; the Northern Peak, Mount Heng; and the Central Peak, Mount Song. Together, they were known as the Three Mountains and Five Great Mountains. Without question, all eight were at least major sects. Geographically, the first kind of Sword Sect was concentrated mainly in the northwest, while the second was concentrated in