Murim's Weakest Princess-Chapter 270: Housekeeping Matters

Even after deciding she should make haste, Anji spent an extra week in the labyrinth meditating. Inheriting all her past memories, including Bi Yao’s knowledge, meant one thing. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

She had housekeeping matters to attend to.

More importantly, Anji finally knew more about the lazy golden dragon who gifted her his scale when she was younger. Grandpa Jin was still a respectable golden dragon to Anji. However, after inheriting all the memories from many lifetimes, Anji wondered how she should treat her old friend from the time when she was actually Zhong Kui. In a way, Anji was nothing but a hatchling compared to Grandpa Jin. However, if she were to embrace her identity as Zhong Kui, the golden dragon was nothing more than a snotty brat.

After reassembling all her memories and identifying what belonged to the past and what belonged to the present, Anji was inclined to think of herself as a child with an extensive knowledge of history. It almost felt unreal that everything she knew happened to her. Memories were, after all, only things that mattered when it was useful. In this life, Anji felt no attachment to the people she met in her past lives. She might remember them, but her body had never experienced interacting with them enough to miss them or mourn for them. She respected the memories but not enough to visit the graves of hundreds of fallen comrades. Bi Yao and Grandpa Jin might be the only exceptions because they were now directly involved in Anji’s present life.

Grumbling a little, Anji hiked her way back to Lady Mang Yuan’s cave. Bi Yao left some unfinished business for her future self, and now, Anji had to clean up after the mess. She wondered if her new reincarnation would hate her for what she was about to do because, like Bi Yao, Anji’s hands were circumstantially tied.

The secret behind the powerful barrier surrounding the mountains was finally revealed to Anji. Bi Yao drew not only on soul arts but also on celestial powers to create the barrier. Before finding Lady Mang Yuan, who was almost ready to become a deity herself, Bi Yao was the anchor for the formation and was confined within the barrier to uphold it. Her self-isolation quickly became a culture that members of the Mystical Qilin Sect adopted out of respect for her. Bi Yao never corrected that misunderstanding, even after Lady Mang Yuan took over as the new barrier anchor.

However, the difference between using a fallen celestial soul and a demonic soul with celestial qualification was tremendous. Unlike Bi Yao’s soul fragment, which was weaker but stable, Lady Mang Yuan’s souls will sometimes become unstable according to her demonic nature. Even if Lady Mang Yuan was skilled at controlling her natural impulses through karmic practice, the tumultuous clash of opposing energy signatures would destabilise the barrier for a while. It usually happened during lunar eclipses, lasting about two hours each time. Fortunately, it only happened two to three times a year. During lunar eclipses, the absolute barrier that did not allow even a single fly, much less a ghost, to pass through will bend and become unable to differentiate between the living and the dead. If anyone possessed by a ghost were to enter the sect, the barrier would not stop or deter them. Infiltration was highly possible during the short window period, and with knowledge about Song Min, the Ghost General and mastermind behind every chaos in the world, Anji refused to take any chances.

Thanks to the fusion of past karma and memories, Anji’s soul cultivation was already deep into the advanced divine core territory. However, her golden core and weakened physical self, especially from an unplanned three-month coma, struggled to keep up. Hence, her physical core was only at the advanced solid core at its peak. Given a little more time, Anji would have no problems pushing it into the Enlightened Core realm. However, she refused to do it now. Time was of the essence. She was already ten years old.

With the development of new spells and technology, Anji borrowed the concept of an artificial core that had been implanted in her meridians and drew a secondary spell around Bi Yao’s original array that preserved Lady Mang Yuan’s celestial body. Although she cannot change the nature of a great snake spirit or purify its demonic origins, Anji knows how to contain and control the balance of its fluctuations.

Similar to dam gates that controlled water levels during times of monsoon and drought, Anji built a reservoir of artificial energy storage that will last up to an entire day should an eclipse happen. The artificial gates had two functions. The first was to store spiritual energy and increase its potency through environmental integration, to help prevent Lady Mang Yuan’s celestial body from becoming exhausted. It also helped to restore the body from disintegration and depletion over time. The second was to compel demonic energy signatures to attack the higher purity energy in the reservoir and lure it outside of the array back into the environment so it could be purified naturally over time after the eclipse was over.

In other words, it was an improvement of the system that Bi Yao set up many years ago. Yet, it was not perfect. Without Lady Mang Yuan’s soul to regulate the energy dispersal from her body, the energy that anchored the barrier was very inefficient. However, Anji was not skilled enough, nor did she have enough time to resolve this issue.

"I hope my future self will not blame me too much for leaving the work unfinished," she prayed, imbuing qi into every word that will be embedded in her artificial regulatory core spell. "To my future self, I’m leaving because of an emergency that will soon happen and a promise to keep. I, Zhao Anji, have decided to live my life differently from my past selves. I want to be a little more selfish in this life because I worked very hard to stay alive. If you have inherited memories like me, I wish that you would also hold those close to you even closer than I did because they won’t remember us forever, but we will."

Sealing the final section of the supplementary reservoir spell, Anji observed her masterpiece for any energy leaks with her second vision. Even after an hour, nothing seemed amiss. There was not enough time to fully test it, so Anji got up and hobbled her way out. It would have to work. If it did not, it was not as if her shifu would allow the sect to crumble either. Someone else will fix it.

Thanks to Bi Yao’s soul lantern trial previously, Anji now knew where the exit was. The only thing left to do was climb the treacherous terrain once more and leave the trial chamber.

In her three-month coma, her sprained ankle had recovered. However, without a drop of water during her comatose state or food, Anji was now rather weak. Thankfully, she only suffered from malnourishment.

Anji could not wait to have a good meal and proper rest once she was outside.