Girls do their best now and are preparing.

And then they had one utterly MASSIVE clash, as if they headbutted each other with the force of the Big Bang.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!

The brightest flash of white blinded the shrine maiden, giving way to a layer of a flash of black, giving way to another flash of white, over and over, flying right into the shrine maiden like they were walls.

The air itself cracked open, splitting itself in two. One side black, one side white. Makai looked like it was behind stained glass as the crack in the air demanded focus.

And then… they appeared.

“I can spy with my eye a mortal that shouldn’t be here.”

“To what business does this maiden have with interrupting our heated battle?”

“My god, it’s like I’m talking to biblical angels…” Their calm, yet commanding voices definitely annoyed her.

“Believers of Aristotelian and Ptolemaic astronomy would believe otherwise to the idea that someone like me would be an angel.”

“I don’t even believe that this maiden knows anything of the sort beyond the surface level knowledge of a biblical angel’s design…”

“…Wasting our time like this… Why do you interrupt?”

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You’re messing with what gives Gensokyo life. I’m here to knock you both down a peg before the barrier breaks!”

“Have you not thought that Gensokyo’s way of life has gotten stale though? The countless amounts of danmaku fights I’ve had to bear witness to have now grown boring to me.”

“We must break tradition and let the brutality of fights make their necessary comeback. Let the land populate with more and more youkai so that there shall be entertaining bloodshed at every hour.”

“I do agree with the thought that Gensokyo’s way of life has become unfulfilling. However, I do not wish to let the brutal battles of life become a new constant.”

“With how the population of this land would not give up on letting go of danmaku battles so easily, the best solution is to thin out the people and youkai so that the land becomes more quiet. The thought of a battle only happening every two weeks brings me joy.”

“That joy would not join harmoniously with me.”

“Of course it would not, for you are a fool.”

“The fool is also within this dimension, floating right next to me.”

“…Okay, hold on, let me get this straight.”

“This whole thing started because you two dumbasses deluded yourselves into thinking that you have any control over how Gensokyo works?”

“DO NOT SPEAK TO US WITHOUT RESPECT.” A blinding flash of black and white boomed from behind the two, covering lots of Makai in a sheet of light and dark. The ground burned red hot on one side and gleamed ice cold on the other side. Even through reality, the ground burned and gleamed.

The flash only lasted for a second, but the shrine maiden could feel her entire body burn and freeze in an instant. “FUCK!”

“Really?! Two embodiments of concepts can’t stand a basic insult?!”

“…Ingetsu. This maiden does not respect me, the embodiment of the concept of Yang.”

“Nor does she respect me, the embodiment of the concept of Yin, Taiyou.” The two looked to each other and nodded heads.

“The stillness of Yin…”

“The activeness of Yang…”

It really doesn’t look like it should be here. The land that holds the weak river where nothing floats on it, Ruoshui, that surrounds the base of the mountain looks like it’s been brought in from somewhere else, molding Makai’s land into its own. That same river was actively creating a vast abyss around the outside of itself.

A massive amount of spirits flew around it. Some floated down the four other rivers that flowed down the mountain. The red river, Chishui, the yellow river, Huanghe, the black river, Heishui, and the oddly boiling yang river, Yangshui.

Many different fairies and spirits flew down the mountain, as Reimu took flight, wishing to stop her ascent up the mountain out of jealousy for themselves not being able to reach the top of it. It’s said that those who reach the top of the entire mountain would become fully immortal. The palace that’s also said to be right at the top of the mountain would have whoever comes up become gods in heaven if they come near it.

When it comes to scaling Liangfeng though, merely scaling the entirety of the tier is said to give mortals supernatural powers. The harsh and earthy terrain that permeates throughout Liangfeng makes this a hard task though.

It almost makes Reimu feel bad for them, but it’s not her who has to deal with the Liusha quicksand, the flame mountain on the side that’s got a ferocious feline deity messing with people, or whatever resurrected zombie god’s lurking beneath the different colored pools of water.

As the shrine maiden flew up the mountain, blinding flashes of white and black would spontaneously appear incredibly high into the sky. It didn’t happen too often, but each one rippled and warbled the land of Makai. It prompted her to move faster up the mountain.

Already, this mountain already surpassed that Mount Everest that Sanae’s told her about before. It’s only been one tier and she already finds it hard to even see the five rivers at this height.

As she rose up higher and higher at blistering speeds, she’d make it up to Xuanpu, the second tier of the mountain. A mysterious, hanging garden that acts as a hovering paradise where immortals live. It practically serves as a connection between Heaven and Earth. The five cities and twelve pavilions here seemed to bustle about happily.

There were man-eating, four-horned sheep who tried to follow her, but failed to since they couldn’t fly, along with bee-shaped birds that would try to dive bomb her and lethally poison her with their beaks, but they were easily taken care of just like the fairies and spirits below.

At this point, the shrine maiden was actively being pushed away from rising higher by extreme wind. The only way up now is to fly up the trunk of the massive tree that’s in the middle of Xuanpu. The blue-leaved, purple-stemmed, side branch-lacking, trunk-winding world tree, Jianmu.

The moment she got close to the tree’s entrance though…

In a flash of lightning, down came one of the nine heads of the Kaiming Beast that guard the Kunlun Mountains. Wonder why the other eight heads aren’t here.

“You shall not be allowed to go any farther unless you get past me. Ready yourself.”

Yaksha Sign 「Thunderclap of Kaiming, the Nine-Headed Beast」

Two sigils appeared far beside her. Hard-to-see lines would show, jutting out from the sigils and telling the trajectory and position of what would come out from them. They were positioned to the sides of Reimu, following her. If Reimu didn’t move, she’d be fine.

Then, the lasers shot out, continuous, thin and white. They’d then rotate outward. When the lasers hit the side and top borders of the field, sharp bullets would sprout out from the side and top borders, slowly raining down. The sigils stopped firing, retreating to her sides.

As they rained down, two giant, vertical, telegraphed sword slashes coming from her katana sliced the field, leaving behind transparent, widely-spaced dotted lines that look like they split the field into thirds. The dots were sharp, each line pointing their dots diagonally right and diagonally left respectively. The lines grew wider and wider as she began sheathing her katana. The moment it was fully sheathed, lightning swiftly crashed down the field, disappearing shortly thereafter, leaving those dots to shoot out bullets in their direction continuously at high speeds, leaving less room to dodge the slowly falling bullets.

Once the falling bullets have mostly left the field, the dots disappear with an unsheathe of her sword, cleansing the field further, leaving the spell card to start from the beginning again.

Easily though, Reimu beat her without a second thought and began ascending up the world tree’s trunk. She was practically a midboss. Maybe she’d be a full boss if more emphasis was put on this mountain from the start.

Higher and higher she ascended up the winding trunk, trying to follow the light that was shining from the end of the tunnel that was the tree trunk.

More fairies that were all busy trying to fly up to the final tier of the Kunlun Mountains would stop to try and stop the shrine maiden’s ascent themselves, easily failing to do so.

Higher and higher and higher up into the sky she goes.

Finally, she makes it up to the third and final layer of the Kunlun Mountains, Tianting. The land of deities. Those who make it all the way up here gets to become truly immortal.

Normally, this layer should be so far up high that the layer practically leads someone into Heaven, but Makai doesn’t really have its own Heaven. It’s as if the existence of this layer in general creates its own version of Heaven in this world.

There’s hardly many people here. It was a very rural place. Despite that, the few people here did their best to make this place seem utterly majestic.

The shrine maiden saw a palace close to the center of Tianting, the only thing in the way of it being the emerald-green water of the Jade Pool.

As she flew above the Jade Pool, someone tending to the trees next to the pond that held peaches of immortality decided to fly up from below and greet this new face. Those trees were notable in their own right, being made up of pearls, sandalwood, and luminous jade.

“Hey, you in red-and-white. Ain’t seen you here before.”

“Oh, hello. I was told to come up this mountain. Took a while, it was like 7 minutes just to fly up the entire thing.”

“Wow. That’s craaazy. Most people don’t even get all the way up here in their lifetime. What’s putting you in such a rush?”

“Well, Gensokyo’s been split in half. One side’s black, other side’s white. It’s really messing with the Gensokyo Barrier.”

“Ohhhh, that? Yeah, that’s just Yin and Yang itself fighting. I’m pretty much buds with them, but even I can’t get in their way when they start fighting.”

“That being said, they haven’t fought like this in so many years. They had a lot more room to fumble around before that barrier came up and locked them in… and then I had to seal their energy in the conceptual design of the orbs that you’re pulling around.”

“…What..?”

“…What, you didn’t know Yin and Yang were people? You’re a shrine maiden, aren’t you?”

“They never even spoke to me, how was I supposed to know that?”

“Anyway, you said that you’re friends with them. Can you go and stop them already?”

“Ehhh, I could… but I don’t really want to, I don’t feel like exhausting myself with trying to stop ‘em. I mean, you’re welcome to go stop ‘em if you want, they’re dueling way up high in the sky.”

“…Gladly.” She’s about to fly straight up, but…

“No… hold on, I forgot, you people fight with danmaku.”

“Yeah, they’re not gonna care to fight like that with how ferocious they are right now, they’ll just deck you until you’re a bloody pulp.”

“That doesn’t matter, if they wanna cheat like that, I can just float away from reality.”

“Now I know you’re getting too cocky. They’re the embodiments of the concept of yin and yang, they’re abstract enough to where they’ll…”

“…Ugh, you look like you don’t care. You’re gonna try to kick their butts anyway.”

“That’s definitely the plan, yeah.”

“Alright, whatever. I’ll grant you a bit of immortality just to use for getting them to calm down… but you’re gonna have to earn it. You gotta show me how good you are, not just with dodging and shooting danmaku, but also with close-combat and switching between the two fighting styles on the fly, as well as just… thinking fast in general, they can pull some cheap shots.”

“So you can just give immortality away? I thought it was rarer to come across such a method these days.”

“They don’t call me the Queen Mother of the West for nothing.”

“…Oh, yeah, I guess I never introduced myself.”

“Good day. I am Seika Saionji, also known as Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West.”

“I congratulate you for getting to this point. To be the one I issue a battle with.”

“Please do make sure not just to entertain me, but also convince me that you’re someone who truly needs my support.”

It really doesn’t look like it should be here. The land that holds the weak river where nothing floats on it, Ruoshui, that surrounds the base of the mountain looks like it’s been brought in from somewhere else, molding Makai’s land into its own. That same river was actively creating a vast abyss around the outside of itself.

A massive amount of spirits flew around it. Some floated down the four other rivers that flowed down the mountain. The red river, Chishui, the yellow river, Huanghe, the black river, Heishui, and the oddly boiling yang river, Yangshui.

Many different fairies and spirits flew down the mountain, as Reimu took flight, wishing to stop her ascent up the mountain out of jealousy for themselves not being able to reach the top of it. It’s said that those who reach the top of the entire mountain would become fully immortal. The palace that’s also said to be right at the top of the mountain would have whoever comes up become gods in heaven if they come near it.

When it comes to scaling Liangfeng though, merely scaling the entirety of the tier is said to give mortals supernatural powers. The harsh and earthy terrain that permeates throughout Liangfeng makes this a hard task though.

It almost makes Reimu feel bad for them, but it’s not her who has to deal with the Liusha quicksand, the flame mountain on the side that’s got a ferocious feline deity messing with people, or whatever resurrected zombie god’s lurking beneath the different colored pools of water.

As the shrine maiden flew up the mountain, blinding flashes of white and black would spontaneously appear incredibly high into the sky. It didn’t happen too often, but each one rippled and warbled the land of Makai. It prompted her to move faster up the mountain.

Already, this mountain already surpassed that Mount Everest that Sanae’s told her about before. It’s only been one tier and she already finds it hard to even see the five rivers at this height.

As she rose up higher and higher at blistering speeds, she’d make it up to Xuanpu, the second tier of the mountain. A mysterious, hanging garden that acts as a hovering paradise where immortals live. It practically serves as a connection between Heaven and Earth. The five cities and twelve pavilions here seemed to bustle about happily.

There were man-eating, four-horned sheep who tried to follow her, but failed to since they couldn’t fly, along with bee-shaped birds that would try to dive bomb her and lethally poison her with their beaks, but they were easily taken care of just like the fairies and spirits below.

At this point, the shrine maiden was actively being pushed away from rising higher by extreme wind. The only way up now is to fly up the trunk of the massive tree that’s in the middle of Xuanpu. The blue-leaved, purple-stemmed, side branch-lacking, trunk-winding world tree, Jianmu.

The moment she got close to the tree’s entrance though…

In a flash of lightning, down came one of the nine heads of the Kaiming Beast that guard the Kunlun Mountains. Wonder why the other eight heads aren’t here.

“You shall not be allowed to go any farther unless you get past me. Ready yourself.”

Yaksha Sign 「Thunderclap of Kaiming, the Nine-Headed Beast」

Two sigils appeared far beside her. Hard-to-see lines would show, jutting out from the sigils and telling the trajectory and position of what would come out from them. They were positioned to the sides of Reimu, following her. If Reimu didn’t move, she’d be fine.

Then, the lasers shot out, continuous, thin and white. They’d then rotate outward. When the lasers hit the side and top borders of the field, sharp bullets would sprout out from the side and top borders, slowly raining down. The sigils stopped firing, retreating to her sides.

As they rained down, two giant, vertical, telegraphed sword slashes coming from her katana sliced the field, leaving behind transparent, widely-spaced dotted lines that look like they split the field into thirds. The dots were sharp, each line pointing their dots diagonally right and diagonally left respectively. The lines grew wider and wider as she began sheathing her katana. The moment it was fully sheathed, lightning swiftly crashed down the field, disappearing shortly thereafter, leaving those dots to shoot out bullets in their direction continuously at high speeds, leaving less room to dodge the slowly falling bullets.

Once the falling bullets have mostly left the field, the dots disappear with an unsheathe of her sword, cleansing the field further, leaving the spell card to start from the beginning again.

Easily though, Reimu beat her without a second thought and began ascending up the world tree’s trunk. She was practically a midboss. Maybe she’d be a full boss if more emphasis was put on this mountain from the start.

Higher and higher she ascended up the winding trunk, trying to follow the light that was shining from the end of the tunnel that was the tree trunk.

More fairies that were all busy trying to fly up to the final tier of the Kunlun Mountains would stop to try and stop the shrine maiden’s ascent themselves, easily failing to do so.

Higher and higher and higher up into the sky she goes.

Finally, she makes it up to the third and final layer of the Kunlun Mountains, Tianting. The land of deities. Those who make it all the way up here gets to become truly immortal.

Normally, this layer should be so far up high that the layer practically leads someone into Heaven, but Makai doesn’t really have its own Heaven. It’s as if the existence of this layer in general creates its own version of Heaven in this world.

There’s hardly many people here. It was a very rural place. Despite that, the few people here did their best to make this place seem utterly majestic.

The shrine maiden saw a palace close to the center of Tianting, the only thing in the way of it being the emerald-green water of the Jade Pool.

As she flew above the Jade Pool, someone tending to the trees next to the pond that held peaches of immortality decided to fly up from below and greet this new face. Those trees were notable in their own right, being made up of pearls, sandalwood, and luminous jade.

“Hey, you in red-and-white. Ain’t seen you here before.”

“Oh, hello. I was told to come up this mountain. Took a while, it was like 7 minutes just to fly up the entire thing.”

“Wow. That’s craaazy. Most people don’t even get all the way up here in their lifetime. What’s putting you in such a rush?”

“Well, Gensokyo’s been split in half. One side’s black, other side’s white. It’s really messing with the Gensokyo Barrier.”

“Ohhhh, that? Yeah, that’s just Yin and Yang itself fighting. I’m pretty much buds with them, but even I can’t get in their way when they start fighting.”

“That being said, they haven’t fought like this in so many years. They had a lot more room to fumble around before that barrier came up and locked them in… and then I had to seal their energy in the conceptual design of the orbs that you’re pulling around.”

“…What..?”

“…What, you didn’t know Yin and Yang were people? You’re a shrine maiden, aren’t you?”

“They never even spoke to me, how was I supposed to know that?”

“Anyway, you said that you’re friends with them. Can you go and stop them already?”

“Ehhh, I could… but I don’t really want to, I don’t feel like exhausting myself with trying to stop ‘em. I mean, you’re welcome to go stop ‘em if you want, they’re dueling way up high in the sky.”

“…Gladly.” She’s about to fly straight up, but…

“No… hold on, I forgot, you people fight with danmaku.”

“Yeah, they’re not gonna care to fight like that with how ferocious they are right now, they’ll just deck you until you’re a bloody pulp.”

“That doesn’t matter, if they wanna cheat like that, I can just float away from reality.”

“Now I know you’re getting too cocky. They’re the embodiments of the concept of yin and yang, they’re abstract enough to where they’ll…”

“…Ugh, you look like you don’t care. You’re gonna try to kick their butts anyway.”

“That’s definitely the plan, yeah.”

“Alright, whatever. I’ll grant you a bit of immortality just to use for getting them to calm down… but you’re gonna have to earn it. You gotta show me how good you are, not just with dodging and shooting danmaku, but also with close-combat and switching between the two fighting styles on the fly, as well as just… thinking fast in general, they can pull some cheap shots.”

“So you can just give immortality away? I thought it was rarer to come across such a method these days.”

“They don’t call me the Queen Mother of the West for nothing.”

“…Oh, yeah, I guess I never introduced myself.”

“Good day. I am Seika Saionji, also known as Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West.”

“I congratulate you for getting to this point. To be the one I issue a battle with.”

“Please do make sure not just to entertain me, but also convince me that you’re someone who truly needs my support.”