"I'm afraid in all the time I've spent rebuilding this ship, I never gave much thought to accommodations for guests." Murasa said as we stepped off of the cloud and onto the deck. "We don't really have a reception room, and I can't bring you into Mother Byakuren's chambers..."

"Well, it will have to be your room then, captain. Nowhere else has enough space." Ichirin remarked.

"I don't have four chairs through."

"Then I suppose you and I will stand."

With that decided, the captain lead the way, showing us to a simple cabin with only a bunk, a desk and a large sea chest in it. Pulling out two simple, unornamented chairs, she offered them to us.

"Well then," she said, looking slightly flustered. "You wanted to know about Byakuren... Ah, it's difficult to know where to start..."

"How about beginning with telling us how such a magnificent sailing ship came to be found in the depths of the earth, far from any water?" Renko suggested.

"Alright. It's an epic tale, and it begins with my first encounter with the holy mother."

-.-.-.-.-

I'm afraid for the sake of brevity I can't reproduce the whole of the captain's story here. It would easily take up several chapters and be a major diversion from the main narrative of this Incident. She told the story well, a gripping tale of loss and redemption that kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was far too long for me to memorize the whole thing verbatim, and I worry I wouldn't do it justice if I were to record it here. Instead, let me offer you this brief summary, along with my assurance that there are many interesting details, nuances and informative examples to this story that can be found should you ever have the opportunity to talk to Murasa yourself. In brief, the story went like this:

Once upon a time there was a very wise and famous monk named Myouren. His sister, Byakuren had learned the Dharma at Myouren's side and become a nun as a result of his teachings. Sadly, Myouren died of old age eventually, leaving his younger sister behind. Seeing that a lifetime of service, devotion and temperance hadn't spared even a great man like her brother from the ravages of age and mortality, and that the world was still so full of sin and ignorance, Byakuren came to fear that in time, she too would die and her life's work would all be for naught. Although it was taboo, she therefore used sorcery to restore her youth and travelled around all of Japan spreading Buddhist teachings.

As she travelled, her power grew. She learned more in the ways of magic from the lands she explored and the people she encountered. Eventually, her pursuit of magic and eternal youth caused her to leave her humanity behind. Still though, she continued in her mission, wandering the world, spreading the light of the Dharma and the wisdom of the Buddha's teachings. Despite her good intentions, however, she found that some humans ostracized or even feared her because of her newly acquired status as a youkai. Moreover, she found that some youkai, while dangerous, were persecuted unjustly, and hunted even if they weren't the sort to eat or torment humans. Due to her Buddha-like nature, she felt the need to save and educate both humans and youkai alike, and envisioned a world where both could live in harmony under the wisdom of true egalitarianism and the light of the Buddha.

As such, she eventually founded a temple in the mountains, not far from what would eventually become Gensokyo, founded with the purpose of helping humans and youkai alike. It was during this time that she encountered Ichirin and Murasa, two youkai who now saw themselves as having been saved by Byakuren.

Murasa was a ship phantom, a malevolent ghost who had died as a result of an accident at sea, and had been taking out her grief and fury at the world by sinking every passing ship to come across the stretch of ocean that she haunted. The very ship that we were now sitting on was apparently a vessel that Byakuren had constructed with the express purpose of using it to sail out and find Murasa and show her the light of redemption. The ship had been constructed as an exact replica of the ship Murasa had originally died on in order to allow her to take up a new residence and move to haunting this vessel rather than her wreck at the bottom of the sea.

Ichirin was another human who had become a youkai unintentionally. According to her, she was once a travelling warrior and adventurer, who had heard a tale about a rampaging nyudo and set out to exterminate it. Upon confronting the creature, rather than slaying it, she had subdued it. Impressed by her skill, the nyudo had sworn to become her protector and the two had begun to travel together. It was only a half-century later that she came to realize that she had left her humanity behind at some point, and by then the two of them had become an inseparable pair, working together almost as one entity, their personalities entangled. It was a story right out of the sort of game or manga Sanae might enjoy, a hero setting out to slay the Demon King and only to become the next Demon King themselves.

Thus, Byakuren's temple opened its doors and taught Buddhism to humans, while secretly welcoming and sheltering youkai behind the scenes. Ichirin and Murasa even joined the temple as disciples, trying to pass as human and blend in with the other monks and nuns. Byakuren had learned to suppress her inhuman aura by this point and also presented herself as a regular human. To the humans living in the land, she appeared to be a living saint, invested with divine power by the Buddha himself, but no less human than any of them.

In time though, the ruse fell apart. The youkai members of the temple, including Byakuren herself, never aged and eventually stories of their supernatural abilities began to leak out. When confronted about this, Byakuren revealed the truth unapologetically and proclaimed that yokai were equally deserving of salvation. Seeing this as blasphemy, the people of the surrounding human communities rallied an angry mob and surrounded her temple. As the situation was on the verge of becoming a vicious slaughter in which numerous lives would be lost, the Hakurei miko of the time called forth the Yama to act as an arbitrator. Murasa and Ichirin didn't seem to have ever met the Yama, but from their description of her appearance it sounded like it must have been Shiki Eiki, the same Yama we had met during the flower Incident. Similarly, the two had no knowledge of what had been discussed between Byakuren and the Yama, or what agreements might have been made as, following Byakuren's instructions, they had both escaped while the mob surrounding the temple had been distracted by the Yama's appearance.

The two fled the scene, but eventually returned to find that the temple had been burned to the ground. They were discovered by humans and chased into the depths of the earth, where those pieces of the temple that could not be destroyed by fire were also thrown. They had spent the following centuries here in exile slowly rebuilding the temple in the form of the ship it had once been. During that millennia of isolation, rumors had slowly trickled down to them which lead that to believe that Byakuren had been sealed away in Makai as punishment for her part in the whole affair.

-.-.-.-.-

"Aside from us, Mother Hijiri had two more youkai disciples. One was Shou Toramaru, a youkai tiger and devotee of Bishamonten. The other was Nazrin, a mouse youkai and the temple's watchman. They both escaped with us, but we split up. We haven't seen them since, but I would hope they're both still living on the surface somewhere." Ichirin concluded.

"My dream would be to escape from this hell somehow and return to the surface. If possible, we'd then travel to Makai and release Mother Hijiri from her imprisonment, but I'm bound to this ship and can only stray so far. I don't see any way it could ever happen, to be honest." Murasa replied, allowing her shoulders to droop once more, as her face returned to the same lifeless mask we had first seen her with.

"Well, you managed to come here by bringing pieces of the ship down into the Underworld. Couldn't you just do the same to return? There's at least one huge shaft that leads to the surface. That's how we got down here." Renko replied.

"It's no good. The hashihime who guards the bridge won't let us leave. She says we're earth spirits now, and belong underground. We might be able to sneak or fight our way past her, but that wouldn't be enough. We need to get this ship out too. If it is possible to release Mother Hijiri from her imprisonment in Makai, this ship will be necessary to do so. It was created by her and holds some of her power. In the time we've been rebuilding it, we've actually found it contains quite a bit more power than it used to. I think before Byakuren was sealed away, she must have placed a great deal of her magic into it, in the hopes that we might one day use it to release her."

"Hmm, I see your problem. Getting a ship this big out of that shaft would be tricky, nevermind all of the narrow tunnels it would need to pass through to get there. Moving it out in pieces would take weeks, so it wouldn't be feasible with any sort of resistance in your way. I assume you've considered the possibility of digging a new shaft to the surface already?"

"Yamame told us not to, as it might destabilize the cavern over the city. Aggravating the oni wouldn't help our cause at all."

"I see..."

"So what's the world of the surface like now?" Ichirin asked. "I understand that Mother Hijiri hasn't been released yet, but what's become of human society? When Yamame and Kisume came down here, they told us that all the lands nearby had been sealed within an enormous barrier, but that's the last time I heard any news from the surface."

"Merry and I are newcomers to Gensokyo, so I'm afraid we can't tell you much about the history of the surface world since you left it, but we've been there a few years now and can tell you about the current state of things." Renko then proceeded to lay out a brief and general description of what life in the human village was like, which I will omit here as I suspect my readers will already be quite familiar with such things. Ichirin and Murasa asked several questions, which Renko did her best to answer. The thrust of these questions mainly seemed to have to do with the nature of human-youkai relations in Gensokyo.

"So then it sounds like humans are more tolerant of youkai presence now. You said that tengu are seen in the village and there are even youkai living among humans?"

"Well, there's a clear line in the form of the wall around the village. Any youkai that wants to cross that needs to be able to pass as human, though a lot of the times, a fig leaf of plausible deniability seems to do the job as long as they don't cause trouble. Ran is the only youkai I've ever heard of coming into the village without concealing their presence or disguising their nature, but everyone knows she's the shikigami to the youkai sage, so it's kind of a special case. Many of the youkai who come into the village only do so to buy things they can't get elsewhere, then leave. There are some people, like our boss, miss Keine, who are half youkai, but they're treated like regular humans for the most part. There's still some discrimination there, but she's worked hard to win the village's trust. The village Chronicler, the current Child of Miare describes Gensokyo as being at peace at the moment, so all in all I would say the trend is slowly bending toward a peaceful, if segregated, co-existence between humans and youkai."

At Renko's words, Murasa and Ichirin looked at eachother, smiling, then fell into an embrace.

"Ichirin! It's finally happening! Mother Byakuren was right all along! The hand of the Buddha truly does shape the world." she said, sniffling as she held back tears.

"It wasn't all in vain then. Even if humanity wasn't ready to understand in her time, Byakuren was still able to make a difference."

Having just spent more than an hour listening to the history laid out by the two of them, seeing their elation at the current state of things brought a tear to my eye as well. Renko sat stoically beside me, but produced a handkerchief from the pocket of her trenchcoat and offered it to me. "It's a good story." she said, averting her eyes. Despite all the trouble she put me through, my partner can be a good companion to have around from time to time.