After a summer of commotion and earthquakes, peace had descended on Gensokyo. A peace that quieted the land and calmed the stormy hearts of the people of this world. After all of the chaos and disruption that had accompanied the threat of a devastating earthquake and the phenomena of unpredictable weather in the summer, the return to normalcy that followed was both welcome and deeply felt. As autumn settled in, people returned to their routines and the simple habits and traditions of everyday life revealed new comforts in their safe predictability. As the seasons turned toward winter, that peace seemed likely to stay as life returned to its normal rhythms.

And stay it did. Until one day, without warning, it was ended by a massive explosion that sent a geyser of water and steam rocketing into the sky, not far from the Hakurei shrine.

I suspect that, once again, many of the people in the village, and hence many of the people reading this volume, may be unfamiliar with the Incident I am describing. After all, the only part of it that was visible to most people was the emergence of a new hot spring which was filled by the sudden eruption of the geyser.

Even that event occurred in a place isolated enough that many might not have noticed. Even if you had witnessed it, you probably wouldn't have thought it was an Incident, though. The true Incident, after all, was hidden from sight, deep below the ground, far from the light of the sun, in a place that many feared to speak of.

There, an Incident was beginning that would reshape life in Gensokyo in countless ways. Even the Myouren Temple, which now, as I write this record, is quickly becoming a fixture of village life, would not have appeared if not for the events of this Incident. I'm getting ahead of myself though. That temple doesn't even feature in this story, but rather in the next one. At the time that the events I will relate here were taking place, far beneath the surface of the earth, most of that temple was buried in the Underworld, deep beneath Gensokyo, if you can believe it, but that's a story for another time.

The tale I want to tell you here is about the Incident that resulted in a hot springs bubbling up near the Hakurei shrine. The events that would come to be known as the Vengeful Spirit Incident.

-.-.-.-.-

The main stage of this Incident was the vast and mostly abandoned city that spreads nearly without end deep below the surface of Gensokyo. It was a place that was once simply called 'Hell' or 'The Capital' and is now the home to only the most reviled and hated creatures in Gensokyo. The vast breadth of that world is as large or perhaps larger and certainly deeper than all of the parts of Gensokyo we had seen above ground. In other words, it is a whole subterranean world -an Underworld, like the Hades of mythology.

Needless to say, as is always the case with the Hifuu club, my partner's recklessness drew us even there, beneath the ground of Gensokyo, far beyond the reach of the sun's rays. In short, this is the story of the time that the Hifuu Club went to Hell. Or at least to 'Former Hell,' the name given to the city by those residents still remaining in the mostly deserted capital.

And of course, once again, this record is the story of my partner's paranoid and grandiose delusions, as has become the hallmark of these books. Just as with the previous story, the ringleaders and their motives in causing this Incident are already well known. The mastermind behind the events that took place even publicly admitted their involvement in this case, without any need for my partner to concoct a convoluted reason for them to have been involved. Indeed, the tale, especially the parts relating to the motivations of the mastermind is a touching one, and I have no doubt that if someone were to simply and directly record the events of the Incident from their point of view and sell that book at Suzunaan, it would become popular in the village and become one of those beloved tales that everyone reads at one time or another.

All of that is only the visible part of the story, however. Just as the pool of a hot spring above ground is connected to some deeper, darker mystery beneath the surface, so too was the source of this mystery concealing a hidden truth that reached to a darker, more secret place. Therefore, I will provide for you again a tale of the mysteries that our detective agency uncovered, complete with one possible explanation, as dreamed up by my partner to account for the events we witnessed. As always, I make no claim that anything she proposes is true.

With that said, let us now begin the story. This will be the eighth casebook of the Hifuu Detective Agency, and it will take us to the depths of the snow-covered earth, to the city of Former Hell, the paradise of the despised.

There are eight suspects to meet in this tale. There is the oni who keeps the peace in the ancient city, commanding order from chaos with an iron fist. There is also the outcast hashihime who jealously guards the entryway to this hated realm, along with a popular but disease-bearing tsuchigumo and her friend a tsurbe otoshi, both typical residents of Old Hell, one boisterous and one reclusive. Next, there were two youkai sisters who dwelled in a mysterious western-style mansion perched over the entry to the bowels of the great inferno, reviled even among the damned. Finally there were the owners of a pair night-black raven wings and a pair of flame-red cat tails, who danced their carefree jigs amidst the towering inferno of the Hell of Blazing Fires itself.

If you, as a reader, wish to pit your mind against my partner's, then as we begin this tale, you must occupy yourself with this question: who among these eight suspects was the one for whom my partner's delusions would ultimately bring an unexpected happiness?