Strictly speaking, calling her a younger cousin was somewhat of a stretch.0

The ancestral homes of the Zhengyi Sect’s Xiao family and the Quanzhen Sect’s Pei family were both located in Qizhou, making them longtime neighbors of the Li family and the Dazhen Mansion.0

Within Qizhou, the Li family’s ancestral home was in Beihai Prefecture, the Xiao family’s ancestral home was in Langya Prefecture, and the Pei family’s ancestral home was in Lanling Prefecture.0

With a much longer history than the Pei family, the Xiao family was divided into six major branches—the Northern Ancestral Branch, Southern Ancestral Branch, Xijing Branch, Imperial Capital Branch, Beihai Branch, and Langya Branch. These six branches all originated from the same ancestor, but after more than a thousand years of inheritance, they had grown fairly distant from one another, each developing its own branch ancestor.0

Xiao Yuehua came from the Beihai Branch, while Xiao Yueru came from the Northern Ancestral Branch. From a bloodline perspective, they were not especially close relatives. However, the relationship between those two branches happened to be relatively close, which was why Xiao Yuehua and Xiao...0