Murim's Weakest Princess-Chapter 231: Family Support Each Other In Times of Trouble

Startled by a young voice, Aunt Wine turned around and dropped her ladle.

"Little cutie! Is that really you?"

Smiling shyly by the entrance, Anji nodded. She was warmly welcomed by the kitchen staff, who had no idea she was already out of isolation training.

Whipping up a quick menu, Aunt Wine got to work as Anji studied the pots of medicine brewing. From the herbs, she could tell many were blood-nourishing soups. It made sense, seeing how it was a war. Many cultivators must have sustained severe injuries. Even with advanced healing, only the wounds were taken care of. Lost blood could not be recovered easily.

"What happened while I was in isolation training?" Anji asked the nearest kitchen assistant. "Shifu told me the war worsened. Is Mystical Qilin Sect the only medical branch available?"

Although nobody truly wanted to involve a child in the war, they could not refuse to answer their official successor’s request. Seeing how their sect leader never gave them the order to keep Anji away, the kitchen assistant reluctantly summarised what had happened in the past few months.

Although the shock was still very real, Anji shoved the feeling of despair down. It made sense for their sect to become an emergency base. Not only was the Mystical Qilin Sect unaffected by the ambush attack, but it was also the best equipped when dealing with curses and miasma.

"The Black Tortoise Sect is busy holding the fort outside and providing assistance to the injured cultivators seeking a safe place for retreat and recovery. However, they are unable to handle advanced dark arts that our trained researchers participating in the war cannot deal with. Senior researchers and even elders are the only ones capable of dealing with them. However, our sect leader forbade anyone in the senior researcher ranks from participating in the war. Hence, we can only bring them here."

It wasn’t as if the senior researchers and elders of the Mystical Qilin Sect were cowards. Anji and everyone knew better how valuable they were. They could not risk losing their sect’s foundation and experts to the war. If anything, Senior Researcher Ke Xing was newly appointed to the role of a senior researcher thanks to her breakthrough in point-to-point teleportation without arrays. If someone like her joined the war, who would create the weapons they needed to turn the tide? Apart from her, nobody else could match her ability to calculate complex simulations.

However, the under-skilled and understaffed members of their sect were proving a problem. Thanks to their extreme selectivity of sect members, the Mystical Qilin Sect’s population was even smaller than the Celestial Dragon Sect, which was the newest cultivator clan to be founded in recent years to join the Rainbow Alliance. Not to mention, while they were advanced in arrays and spells, the average cultivator in the Mystical Qilin Sect is at least two cultivation levels below other sects in terms of martial arts. The training camp bridged that gap as much as it possibly could. However, with the ambush attacks, the scattered members of the attacking squads had to be recalled. There was no way to protect the weak spellcasters in squads. Yan Ping commanded that they either return to the sect to assist with the mass curse cases or seek refuge in one of the Rainbow Alliance Sects. Most combat researchers opted to assist other sects, but even they could not dispel the more advanced curses.

"Thank goodness Senior Researcher Ke was able to develop a method to provide mass teleportation to a fixed array using scrolls. The combat researchers outside the sect have set up similar arrays for less severe cases. However, we have to deal with the bulk of the severe cases that they could not handle."

When Yan Ping offered to host the more severe cases for cursed cultivators, she did not expect an overflow so quickly. Although the hidden palace was able to host hundreds of cultivators for the training with top-tier facilities, the casualties during the war quickly exceeded the bed occupancy.

Anji listened as the kitchen assistant described the horrific scene. As the casualties grew, even senior researchers were ordered to stop all research and help with dispelling the trickier curses. Some curses spread, and the miasma had to be contained at the training ground. Other cultivators suffered ruptured spiritual meridians from the aftereffects of the curse and had to spend more time recovering. Due to the manpower shortage, only a few researchers in prominent fields that would contribute to the war were allowed to continue with their projects with an unlimited budget. Senior Researcher Ke was one of them.

"We stopped transporting books months ago, and the moving platforms were used to rush emergency patients to and fro. It’s chaotic, and even the more accessible research labs were repurposed to house patients. All district kitchens double as an apothecary under the doctor’s orders. We make more elixirs and medicine than food now."

Even with Doctor He, Doctor Yun and Senior Researcher Mo overseeing the medical arrangements, it was still too much work for three people. Yan Ping has to coordinate communication and strategy while assisting in research. Anji understands that her shifu barely has time for anything else. She also has to make personal trips outside the sect frequently enough. Even so, she placed Anji’s successor training as her top priority and personally took time out of the strategy meeting to fetch her yesterday.

"Thank you for telling me this," Anji bowed. "It must have been hard on everyone while I was absent and unaware of the troubles."

Aunt Wine placed a warm bowl of congee with some side dishes before Anji.

"Little Cutie, none of us expected this to happen. Your training has nothing to do with this. Even if you did not go for isolated training, there is not much you could do around here. It was better that you were not disturbed during the critical time. I heard that you insisted on going for isolated training right after recovering from a high-risk surgery. We were so worried that you were pushing yourself that we could barely sleep!"

Anji smiled and thanked the elderly cook for the warm meal. It smelled divine after living in the dark for half a year with only fasting pills for rations. She dug in quickly, forgoing etiquette. After a whole night of writing her report and reflecting on herself, Anji knew what she needed to do.

Even if her shifu told her that it was a waste of time to help, Anji refused to sit around doing nothing. Even if she could not save every single life in this war, she could maximise the number of lives she could help.

As it was, the sect was in chaos. Everyone was too busy surviving one more day to think about the future. However, Anji was different. She had been living in isolation and had a clear overview of what should be done.

Finishing the meal quickly, Anji thanked the kitchen staff.

"Where can I find Senior Researcher Mo?" she asked. "I need to discuss setting up a more efficient Triage System with him before I find shifu."

Surprised that Anji knew what a triage system was, Aunt Wine pointed her in the direction of the medical headquarters. However, she halted Anji and insisted that the young successor take with her some extra food.

"The doctors have not been eating well or resting with so much work," she explained. "I hope you don’t feel too pressured trying to solve their problems. After all, we adults have our pride, and it would not be right to rely on a child we should be protecting instead."

Anji blinked. Was that how everyone saw her? Was that how shifu saw her as well?

"Before I am a child, I am the ninth successor of the Mystical Qilin Sect and the fourth daughter of the Celestial Dragon Sect," she explained. "Even children will try to reduce their parents’ worries and burdens if they can. That’s what it means to be a family. I can’t just watch as others work while idling in comfort. Family support each other in times of trouble like this."

Unable to retort, Aunt Wine watched as Anji smiled and bowed before leaving with a basket of food in her hand. Although the child was still small, her back stood straight without signs of wavering. Watching her figure disappear into the distance, a strange thought ran through her mind.

Was she really talking to an eight-year-old child?