What happens with transformed imps that leaves you and can you ever get them back?

[De_faulty]

I purposefully let a humanized imp escape from my gourd. What happens now? Do they just wander the world forever now? Can I even get them back into my gourd? How does it benefit me that they are out in the world?
I tried searching for answers, but nowhere seem to have discussed this, so here I am, asking.

[The Grand Mugwump]

The few imps I've humanized had 5 hearts of affection with me. I guess it's useful if you need lots of people who are easily convinced to help you in some manner.

[Razhell]

Imps will always accept to join your sect, even on smaller branches.

[Razhell]

And no, you cannot capture them again. However your imp in the guard role will never leave the gourd.

[reaperspirit]

I had an issue where the released humanized imp couldn't breakthrough, I gave it all the materials needed, but it wouldn't work.

When I check the bottleneck tooltip, it would show the wrong realm (I had to break throught from nascent to the next realm, but the tooltip would say qi condensation). Giving a set of materials for the shown realm in the tooltip also didn't work.

This would essentially make the imp stuck in the realm I released it at.

Not sure if they fixed this issue yet.