Entry 3: On the Route to the Shrine

Gensokyo, the Land of Illusion, is perhaps one of the only places in the world where advancement of the spirit is valued more highly than advancement of material technology. Youkai, spiritual beings that might be termed "demons" or "devils" by most outer-world humans, coexist with humans and other creatures, though the occasional conflict inevitably springs up and brings the realm's many factional schisms into play. Of course, none of these skirmishes last for very long, or the realm would long since have reverted to the haunted, barren state it maintained long ago, before the Youkai came seeking refuge from the aggressive actions taken against them by the increasingly human-populated world.

It is hard to say how I arrived here, or whether I will return to normal human society again in the near future. But what I do know is that however I came here, I did so through the Shrine.

The Shrine is a humble and frail-looking structure, a stock building of stone and wood built on a crumbling foundation, and is perhaps one of the most physically unassuming in all of the realm, especially given the grandiose manner in which the Scarlet Mansion presents itself. Yet the role it plays in the realm's inner workings, and perhaps in the realm's very existence, is absolutely undeniable. For it is the Shrine that has kept the denizens of Gensokyo, human, youkai and other supernatural creatures alike, safe from the perils of the humans without.

I don't know the true details of what happened before the Shrine's formation, or what exactly led to Gensokyo's self-enforced isolation from the rest of the world. All I have gathered, after hearing bits and pieces from Patchouli, Sakuya Izayoi and a few others, is that there was some kind of war, and human society, the society we know now, won out. Thus, to protect the youkai and their few human allies, a powerful barrier was erected over Gensokyo, with the Shrine as its source. To destroy the Shrine would perhaps lead to the re-exposure of Gensokyo to the world, and with the advent of human technology, who knows what kind of horrors might be wreaked on the realm following such a revelation. Considering that the barrier's effects cause Gensokyo's time to lag behind the modern world's by several centuries, I doubt Gensokyo's inhabitants would be happy to find their peace shattered by the arrival of a much-improved and considerably more bloodthirsty enemy. Thus the Shrine stays, and I suppose the vast majority of Gensokyo are happy to leave it that way.

The guardian of the Shrine, a young maiden known as Reimu Hakurei, is a descendant of the one who created the Shrine's barrier. Perhaps I should pay her a visit next, in my quest to find out more about this world, and how to one day escape it, if I should escape at all.