With Yang Kai's help, Xiaoxiao set up a memorial hall at their home, and all the hunters from the village came to pay their condolences.
Three days later, a new grave appeared on the mountain.
Before the grave, Xiaoxiao knelt for a long time, unable to rise. A heavy sorrow enveloped her. Though both her mother and father had passed peacefully — one could say they lived together and died together, far happier than most ordinary people's lives — they were gone in the end.
Across heaven and earth, there seemed to be signs of a sudden shift in the wind and clouds.
Yang Kai, who had been standing behind Xiaoxiao, raised his gaze skyward. As the Master of the Small Universe, he was especially sensitive to changes in the world around him.
Before the grave, Xiaoxiao bowed three times, kowtowing as a final farewell.
As she rose, the Power of the Red Dust that filled the entire Small Universe surged inward from all directions, flooding toward Xiaoxiao and being entirely devoured and absorbed by her.
Xiaoxiao's aura underwent a tremendous transformation in the span of a mere dozen breaths.
Yang Kai felt his own Small Universe tremble ever so slightly, and his expression grew solemn.
After all, his Small Universe was currently spread out in its deployed state, and furthermore, there was a sapling of the World Tree within it. Under normal circumstances, his Small Universe should not experience even the slightest tremor — unless there was some power within it that exceeded Yang Kai's own strength.
Fortunately, the trembling subsided quickly.
Yang Kai bowed respectfully and said in a firm voice, "Welcome back, Ancestor!"
Xiaoxiao remained still, her gaze fixed on the fresh grave before her, and spoke. "My entire life, from the moment I set foot on the path of cultivation, has been smooth sailing. Above me, my Master protected me; below, my fellow disciples looked after me. My cultivation advanced by leaps and bounds every day. I rose from nothing to Emperor, broke through to Open Heaven, and became an Ancestor — achievements that others might never reach in an entire lifetime, I attained with ease."
In his heart, Yang Kai praised the Ancestor for her commanding presence!
The Ancestor continued, "However, there was always one regret in my heart. Before I joined my Master's sect, I was nothing more than a small orphan. I never saw my birth parents, never knew where my mother and father were, and naturally never experienced the joy of being held in their care."
"This life was something I had never known before. I suppose I have you to thank for that — and I'm afraid you've seen something laughable."
Yang Kai hurriedly said he wouldn't dare.
But hearing the Ancestor's explanation, he finally understood why she had sealed her own cultivation back then, and had instinctively tried to prevent him from concealing his appearance.
She had obviously sensed something the moment the hunter approached her.
Living through this life of regrets she had never known was enormously helpful to her recovery.
Though Yin-Yang Pass had a marketplace where countless Open Heaven cultivators helped the Ancestor heal, those cultivators knew her identity. Everything they did was deliberate and purposeful, bearing an artificial quality.
The century spent living within Yang Kai's Small Universe was different.
The hunter couple had never known that the child they had found in the mountains and raised was a Ninth-Order Supreme. The couple poured all their love and familial affection into this child, and the Ancestor, with her cultivation sealed, lived like an ordinary little girl in the hunter couple's care.
This stretch of life's experience filled the void in the Ancestor's heart.
The last great battle with the Ink Clan's King Lord had left the Ancestor severely wounded. Because she had planned from the start to fight to mutual destruction, she had held nothing back when she struck.
That level of injury was arguably the most serious the Ancestor had ever suffered in her entire life — otherwise she wouldn't have remained unconscious in Yang Kai's Small Universe for so long before finally awakening.
Such injuries, even in the Yin-Yang Pass marketplace, would require several hundred years of recovery.
The healing environment within Yang Kai's Small Universe was superior to the Yin-Yang Pass marketplace, but recovery still would not have taken less than two hundred years.
Yet now, after only a century, the Ancestor's injuries had fully healed. All of this was, naturally, the benefit brought by this stretch of life's experience.
If that was the case, then having the Ancestor experience things she had never known before could help her recover quickly.
Yang Kai's mind churned with thought.
"From today on, I am called Xiaoxiao!" the Ancestor declared. "It's been so many years since anyone called me by my name that I've nearly forgotten what it was."
Yang Kai was stunned, but naturally wouldn't argue. You're the Ancestor — whatever you say goes.
Taking on this name from a hundred years of lived life was not merely an act of remembrance. It was gratitude toward the hunter couple, who had filled the void in Xiaoxiao's heart with a lifetime of love.
They were mere mortals, and Xiaoxiao was a Ninth-Order Supreme, yet these two mortals within Yang Kai's Small Universe had played a critical role in the Ancestor's recovery — one that could even influence a battle concerning the lives of billions across two races.
This was something the hunter couple could never have imagined.
But knowing their temperament, even if they did know, they would probably just laugh with joy. For them, the more accomplished their daughter was, the better.
While Yang Kai was lost in thought, he suddenly sensed a will pierce through the barriers of his Small Universe and reach the outside world — it was the Ancestor's will.
World Fortress. The human armies rested and recuperated.
Ever since arriving at the Ink Clan's King City, the armies had been resting and recuperating. Aside from being dragged out by the higher-ups each time to put on a show, they had not engaged the Ink Clan in direct combat at all.
Still, no one in the armies complained. The strategy the higher-ups were implementing was admittedly underhanded, but the results were clear for all to see.