What Harold was suggesting could best be considered controversial, to say the least because of the power structures of most sects, especially martial ones.
Despite having elders and elites and everything in-between, the sect master tended to be the end all be all authority that controlled essentially every aspect of the sect, or at least had the most say in how to guide it.
As a result, they tended to have access to all the best, secret and dangerous stuff...correction, they had access to everybody else's stuff and determined how it got distributed and managed. Harold was essentially inviting the three other leaders of Stone Claw into becoming his vassals, in exchange for all of their stuff.
Every art, every treasure, every medicine, every business and their cultivation caverns.
It wasn't hard to see why when this proposal was made, two out of three of the invited leaders had rather ugly expressions on their faces.
