Leadership of the sect will go to the sect leaders' head disciple. Alliances are... formed more with similar ideologies or debts. Most of the big sects act independently, relations are made more through trade and knowledge in what can be shared.

[Which was quite normal for cultivation stories. Sure you might have people who were once in one sect in another or other pasts where people were connected, but... it was far stranger to set up connections through blood as a primary source.]