Xiao Yan thought about it. Even if Old Yao did not reveal himself, Soul Hall would still move against the Xiao Family.
The difference was that they would act quickly to capture Old Yao, preventing his friends from learning of his whereabouts while he was alive; their handling of the Xiao Family would be far more covert, using other factions to do the dirty work.
After all, Old Yao could gather a group of Dou Zuns in a short time, whereas the Xiao Family might not produce even a single Dou Zun in a hundred years.
Moreover, Xiao Yan's teacher had always been a "Pill Tower Elder," which did not fit the persona of Venerable Yao—the free-spirited man who had abandoned his position as a Pill Tower Elder and gone off to establish Starfall Pavilion.
At most, Soul Hall would know that Xiao Yan carried a Dou Zong-level Soul Clone. They would never connect it to Venerable Yao.
As for the Xiao Family's predicament, Gu Yuan had said that the space tunnel would open here within a year at most. Several months had already passed. As long as the Jia Ma Empire launched a war abroad next and diverted Soul Hall's attention, then given Soul Hall's bloated system, it would likely take them quite a while to make a move against the Xiao Family—
Soul Hall would harvest souls alongside the war while stirring up trouble behind the other nations and factions, urging them to join forces against the Jia Ma Empire and destroy the Xiao Family.
That way, any major move by Soul Hall would take at least several years. By then, the Xiao Family would already have the Pill Tower at its back, so there would be little to worry about.
If even the Pill Tower could not