Against the Heavens

Chapter 14 - A Letter From Xiao Sect

It was early morning. The sky had barely begun to brighten when the master of the Xiao Clan, Xiao Yunhai, was woken from his deep sleep by the sound of urgent knocking on his door. “Clan master! Clan master, are you awake?”

Xiao Yunhai opened his eyes, took a glance at the light outside and then asked, with a frown: “This early in the morning, what happened?”

“It’s… it’s the Xiao… Xiao Sect! A letter from the Xiao Sect!” From outside the door came this excited, trembling voice.

“What? The Xiao Sect?!”

This master of the Xiao Clan, one of the most powerful people in Floating Cloud City, sprung up from his bed as if stabbed by a dagger on the butt. He haphazardly threw on his clothes and, not even bothering to straighten his hair, threw open the door hastily, grabbing the Xiao Clan disciple that was outside. He bellowed with wide eyes: “You said the Xiao Sect? The Xiao Sect?!”

“Yes! It’s definitely the Xiao Sect!” That Xiao Clan disciple swallowed with great difficulty, nodded with all his strength, and then presented the letter in his hand to Xiao Yunhai. “This letter has the eagle seal of the Xiao Sect! In this Blue Wind Empire, no one would dare to forge the Xiao Sect’s insignia.”

As soon as he saw the sky hawk seal on the letter, Xiao Yunhai’s entire body shook. He fiercely grabbed the letter, then, with violently shaking hands, quickly but carefully tore it open to reveal the paper within.

Although the Xiao Sect’s name had only one word of difference if compared to his Xiao Clan, that one word was like the difference between the clouds and mud! The Xiao Clan barely counted as the leading presence in Floating Cloud City, but on the Profound Sky Continent as a whole, it was simply a nameless existence. However the Xiao Sect is one of the four strongest sects in the Blue Wind Empire! They have the same level of prestige as the Heavenly Sword Villa, Frozen Cloud Asgard, and the Burning Heaven Clan. They were an existence that the Xiao Clan could not even hope to look up to.

To put it bluntly, a useless servant in the Xiao Sect would not even find it necessary to respect the Xiao Clan’s master.

However, there was a connection between the Xiao Clan and the Xiao Sect. That is because the person that founded Floating Cloud City’s Xiao Clan one hundred and sixty years ago, Xiao Bieli, was at the time a person from the Xiao Sect… To be more precise, he was an abandoned disciple, and, as rumor had it, the son of one of the elders at the time. However, Xiao Bieli was the result of that elder raping one of the Xiao Sect’s serving girls while drunk. Since childhood, his appearance was ordinary and his talent was lacking. Furthermore he attracted a large amount of gossip, causing that elder a great amount of displeasure. Upon reaching adulthood, his profound strength was the lowest among all of his peers. To let him remain at the Xiao Sect would only cause that elder more humiliation so he found an opportunity to send him to that piece of shit place, the rural Floating Cloud City and helped him establish the Xiao Clan. From then on he paid no more attention to Xiao Bieli and cut off all contact between them and the Xiao Sect.

But Xiao Bieli nevertheless was born in the proud Xiao Sect. He spent his entire life painstakingly cultivating his profound strength, hoping to gain recognition, and thus one day earn their approval and one day return to Xiao Sect. After he died, this desire was passed down through the Xiao Clan from one generation to the next, and became ultimate goal of every generation of the Xiao Clan. Especially among each generation’s clan master, all without exception hoped that they could rely on the tiny bit of Xiao Sect blood in them to establish a relationship, no matter how fragile, with the Xiao Sect. But after all these years, the Xiao Clan never produced a person that could fulfill this wish. Talk of the Xiao Sect to them was like that of the Celestial Palace, something that they couldn’t even hope to reach.