xss_clean() truncating data

XSS protection are only supposed to be done on output (rendering) not input (saving to database).
Filtering on the other hand should be done input, checking that you are only accepting numbers etc. from the user.

And on output, you are showing it as is? What are you doing with that <range> field?

It is just a simple value for one of the field.
I want to achieve , Whatever I have placed on UI like 

 '<value_range>Test</value_range>'

Should keep same but because of xss_clean() my values are getting altered.