Xiaoxiao ultimately entered the Shuiyue Mansion.
She herself had no desire to leave her parents, but the hunter's words changed her mind.
Once she achieved mastery in cultivation and could soar through the skies, she would not only be able to experience the customs and scenery of every corner of the continent, but also taste all manner of delicious food!
The hunter had once traveled through the surrounding region in his youth, and in his descriptions, the various delicacies Xiaoxiao had never heard of were truly enticing.
For Xiaoxiao, this was simply an irresistible temptation.
In the end, Xiaoxiao decided to join the Shuiyue Mansion. Her thinking was simple—she would cultivate there for a few years and then return. That way, she wouldn't have to be separated from her parents permanently, and once she had achieved some level of cultivation, she could take her parents along to all sorts of places and buy them plenty of good food.
The hunter couple harbored a thousand unwilling feelings in their hearts, but considering their child's future prospects, they could only bury all those emotions deep inside.
The half-incense stick was lit, and before long, Wenyuan arrived from the Shuiyue Mansion and took Xiaoxiao away.
Watching that small figure—the one that had never been apart from them for over ten years—finally disappear from sight, the burly woman could no longer hold back. She squatted on the ground and burst into loud sobs. The hunter stepped forward to comfort her, only to find his own eyes reddening.
Before the schoolhouse, Yang Kai raised his head and gazed into the distance, somewhat speechless.
If it were a matter of Xiaoxiao learning to cultivate, he could teach her without the slightest difficulty. However, considering that the Ancestor was here to gain experience and heal her injuries, it would be better for her to have more contact with the mundane world. That was why Yang Kai had never thought about involving Xiaoxiao in cultivation matters.
He hadn't expected the Shuiyue Mansion to throw a wrench into things.
He couldn't very well object, so he could only watch and see how things played out.
But judging by how things stood now, Xiaoxiao's future performance was likely to give the Shuiyue Mansion quite a shock.
After all, she was an Ancestor-level powerhouse. Even with her memories sealed away, that extraordinary aptitude for cultivation was something that simply could not be hidden. Wenyuan and that Elder had failed to see it—truly a failure of perception.
The mysteries surrounding the Ancestor were far beyond anything they could hope to perceive.
Because it was genuinely impossible to determine whether Xiaoxiao's cultivation aptitude was good or bad, Wenyuan, despite having brought her into the Shuiyue Mansion, simply placed her alongside the other newly admitted disciples with no special treatment whatsoever.
These new disciples ranged in age from seven or eight to over a dozen years old. Xiaoxiao, by contrast, looked the youngest of them all—like a three-year-old child.
Xiaoxiao's cultivation journey began with a tremendous setback.
It had nothing to do with her aptitude.
Simply put, ever since she could remember, she had never once been separated from her father and mother. This sudden parting caused her immense distress. Far from the mountain village at the Shuiyue Mansion, Xiaoxiao was consumed with homesickness, missing her parents, and often secretly wiped away tears.
This melancholy accompanied her for a full month.
Yang Kai could have resolved all of it effortlessly, but he merely watched and waited.
Because he had noticed something rather interesting. For ten years, Xiaoxiao had not grown a single inch in height. But starting from the third day after she left home and arrived at the Shuiyue Mansion, her stature had quietly begun to increase by a tiny amount.
The change was infinitesimally small—so slight that even the hunter couple would never have noticed it. But it could not escape Yang Kai's perception.
This finally put his mind at ease.
Based on his earlier observations, the reason the Ancestor's body had shown no change for so long was the severity of her injuries. Her body's mechanisms had been quietly devoting all their energy to healing, which was why she hadn't grown.
Once she began to grow, it meant her condition had started to improve.
So when Yang Kai discovered this, he knew the Ancestor would be fine. All that remained was time. Eventually, her injuries would fully recover.
This change could not have been a coincidence—there was no way it would have occurred so precisely at the right moment.
Yang Kai had initially assumed it was connected to the small mountain village where the Ancestor had been living. But after careful examination, he found that was not the case.
This change had no direct connection to whether the Ancestor was in the mountain village or at the Shuiyue Mansion. Rather, it was tied to her emotions.
Leaving the mountain village where she had lived for ten years, separated from her father and mother—the outpouring of this emotion of parting was what had spurred the Ancestor to begin growing.
The emotion of parting was, in its own way, a form of worldly experience.
Yang Kai hadn't expected that Xiaoxiao—the Ancestor's incarnation—joining the Shuiyue Mansion to cultivate would produce such an effect. It seemed his decision not to interfere had been the right one.
And by the same token, as long as Xiaoxiao experienced more extraordinary events, it should benefit her recovery.
Xiaoxiao's sorrow persisted for half a month. During that same period, her extraordinary talent in cultivation finally began to reveal itself.
In just half a month, she successfully sensed the flow of qi, drew it into her body, and formally embarked upon the path of cultivation, becoming a minor qi-refining martial artist.
Wenyuan, who had been quietly observing her progress, was beside himself with joy and immediately reported the matter to the Elder.
The Elder, however, was far more composed. He simply told Wenyuan to continue observing for a while longer and see how Xiaoxiao performed before making any further plans.
Two months later, Xiaoxiao successfully broke through the qi-refining realm and advanced into the Kaiyuan Realm.
Two months after that, she reached the Qi Movement Realm.
And two months after that, the Separation and Reunion Realm.
In the span of a single year, Xiaoxiao broke through multiple major realms in succession, her cultivation soaring from nothing all the way to the Shenyou Realm!
Such an absurd rate of advancement was something no one had ever heard of, let alone witnessed. Never mind the Shuiyue Mansion—even across the entire Void Continent, no one had ever heard of a genius cultivating this quickly.
It was simply unheard of.