Since the calamity of that lightning tribulation, nearly five years had passed without the Yang Clan sending any news to the outside world.
Even at the most recent Pill Origin Ceremony, they had not formally dispatched any clan members to attend. Only Xiao Yao had appeared in a personal capacity.
Now, there was finally a new development—and it concerned the establishment of a sect and the acceptance of its first disciple. This inevitably stirred up a fresh wave of speculation among the various factions.
Some believed that, after the previous patriarch's death, the Yang Clan had finally put its own affairs in order. The new patriarch had completed the consolidation of the internal factions and was issuing a formal declaration to the outside world.
Yet others felt that the matter was far from simple. A little investigation revealed that Heaven-Clearing Academy's predecessor had been a sect within the Northwest's Tiger Chasing Dynasty, known as the Myriad Transformation Sect.
The reason it was now located within the Yang Family Sacred Land and had become a sect force subordinate to the Yang Clan was that, twenty years ago, the position of sect master had already been assumed by a cultivator of the Yang Clan's Ling generation.
Anyone with some understanding of the Yang Clan knew that, aside from the two ancestors who rarely showed themselves in public, the cultivators of the Ling generation were the most senior generation in the Yang Clan today.
The fate official Yang Lingrui, now renowned throughout Azure Waves, and the former patriarch Yang Lingqing, who was greatly revered by Northwest cultivators and had earned the admiration of many Central Region cultivators during the Northwest Anti-Demon War, were both among the earliest members of the Ling generation.
According to the public intelligence supplied by the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion,