Xiu Shihong - who was she? She was the 3rd daughter of the Xiu Dukedom! A resistance that was almost on par with a royal princess! Her forefathers land was the endless deserts, the sheer volume of land under their control amounted to almost twice the rest of the whole empire.

While the land was infertile and dangerous - with blasting heat, wild spirits, and sand devils, it also held plentiful bounty - rich spirit stone, gem, and iron mines supplied a large part of the empire! It was without a doubt true that the Xiu house was filthy rich

And while their standing and money did invite the ire and jealousy of many, the power of the Xiu house was not simple, they had multiple elders that had climbed to the heights of cultivation - guarding the family against any outside forces that would want to ruin them!

And Xiu Shihong was the scion of such a family, send to the far away ancient cloud sect! She was here to represent her clan - to make connections with outer noble houses - and grow in power in an environment that was not her sheltered home.

Ancient cloud sect was a neutral ground, here who you are did not amount to much - ability spoke louder then pedigree, and even a dirty commoner could fly above the noble blood.

Of course, most of the time the nobles would come out on top while using the commoners as grindstones for themselves to compete with their noble peers and bring prestige to their clan and further their power and influence.

Xiu Shihong - to the outside was a calm perfect little doll, but she had quite the temper - and keeping that in check in front of entitled peers with overblown egos was simply not something she was good in handling.

That was one of the reasons she did not take one of the mansions - she did not want to be anywhere near the other nobles for the time being, until she was older there was no need for her to attend to silly like parties were children played adults.

Yeah no thanks - she picked one of the lower class houses. Her first impression of her roommate was that the girl was rather wild, her hair was in orderly disorder, her robes were sitting wrong - she always looked somewhat suspicious and was easy to make nervous.

Seeing the other girl freeze and fidget about every time they interacted was kind of fun! Yun Kou was also really uncomplicated, if you left her alone she would leave you alone, aside from Hello, Bye and maybe a question here and there she would stick to herself and cultivate like a hermit.

While the other girl did at some point learn that Shihong was a noble, Kou did not do much differently just lowering her head from time to time - but more often than not the girl simply forgot about it - in her absentminded and introverted ways she was rather cute and Shihong found that quite endearing.

She had tried to get the other girl to open up a little more but Kou had always avoided any contact without being openly hostile, but one day she finally got the girl to do something with her, of course, it had to do with cultivation but she would not complain about it.

By now Shihong knew a few things about Kou so the progress the little street girl made was quite shocking to her, of course, she did never show any of it. She had never any big planes for her roommate - but seeing how naturally Kou used her Qi how quick she learned - all of that made her see Kou in a new light.

Quickly she declared herself as Kou’s friend to which the other girl seemed a bit nervous but Shihong did not fail to notice that her roommate was a little happy about this, and so was she herself - Kou did not push her away she simply accepted it.

Xiu Shihong felt that maybe the friendship with this girl would last, it was certainly more genuine then the superficial friendship to her cousins and other nobles.

Maybe around this girl, she could slowly shed her mask and be herself? She was looking forward to what the future would bring, they would spend a few years her together after all - and Xiu Shihong intended to show the world how brightly she could shine - and dragging her new scruffy friend with her seemed just fitting.