Two Worlds, Starting with Kaguya of Penglai Mountain

Nijika Ichi: "Sister, you've misunderstood."

Ijichi Hoshika: "Is it a misunderstanding? Isn't the person you're referring to Pochi?"

With a frown, Xingge's expression turned serious.

Her gaze swept over the remaining three people in the room.

It's not impossible for Yamada Ryo to have a relationship with someone like that. Maybe she has a wealthy fiancé who just wants to play around with her.

Ichiji Nijika: "So I said no!! What on earth are you thinking, sister?!"

The blonde girl picked up the paper fan that was placed next to her and hit her silly older sister on the head.

Ichika Hoshika: "Huh? Otherwise, who would give away money like this?"

Xingge, a mature adult, casts a disdainful glance at her foolish younger sister.

These kinds of contracts that seem like free money are the kind that rich people in the entertainment industry give to women when they're pursuing them. Who would give you money for nothing if you don't have that kind of relationship?

Ichichi Hongxia: "..."

Faced with her sister's words, Hongxia opened her mouth, but for a moment she couldn't find a way to refute them.

The contract is merely a superficial way of paying wages.

Their real work is in the other world, where they need to cooperate with Kurokawa and Mi to promote it.

These things are not written in the contract.

Kurokawa and Yaya deliberately did not use any contractual clauses to bind these girls:

After all, when it comes to real benefits, revealing the existence of another world to others is the true way to maximize those benefits.

His strategy for the girls who had left the band was to appeal to their emotions while simultaneously using the allure of the other world to motivate them to work.

The "relationship" here doesn't refer to romantic feelings between men and women, but rather to binding their dreams of success to another world, making them operate everything related to that other world as their own secret and career.

Teenagers are always persistent in their ideals, feelings, or other things during their youth. In the process of growing up and maturing, they gradually understand the vicissitudes of the world, gradually see the mundane realities of life, gradually lose themselves, gradually accept their fate, and gradually drift with the tide.

Adults call this maturity, but adults themselves know that they don't actually want to be mature, they just have no choice.

Kurokawa and Miya can help them preserve these things and even find ways to make them a reality for them.

— Through a miracle from another world.

This is Kurokawa Kazuya's strategy, or you could say it's a deeper level of mutual benefit.

Once the girls have completed the first stage of creating clones, Kurokawa Kazuya will take it a step further and have the girls move around in another world.

The main role of the band in his work was to conduct an experiment in the transmission of faith between two worlds.

The End Band, located in the real world, becomes famous in another world, attracting believers from that world to flock to the real world.

Before these beliefs from other worlds flood into the real world, can some special procedures be performed?

Unlike the real world, the other world allows for the interference, modification, and manipulation of faith through various rituals and spells.

On Kurokawa Kazuya's side, it's like using the other world as a testing ground, constantly experimenting with various kinds of beliefs with different properties, throwing them into the real world, and observing the reactions they produce.

Of course, all of this is for after the band ends and things pick up again; for now, we need to take it one step at a time.

Kurokawa Kazuya has discussed the follow-up matters with them, and they will sign a completely new contract. The current contract only applies to the present situation.

Ichi Nijika: "Anyway, sister, you just need to know that there is actually another reason behind our relationship. For now, we really only need to do what is stated in the contract. If there is an opportunity in the future, we will sign a further contract."

Hongxia summarizes her current situation.

Ijichi Hoshika: "Is that so?"

The older sister looked at her younger sister.

She wasn't too worried about her sister having any tendency to become self-destructive, since these people seemed to be in a pretty good mood right now.

It can't be that Nijika just became a magical girl, right? Wait, what are you thinking... It's more likely that a certain fan is supporting it.

With these thoughts in mind, Xingge scanned the scene.

Of the four people present, Kita Ikuyo's expression was relatively normal, but Goto Ichiri and Yamada Ryo's...

The former couldn't hide his smugness at all, and the latter's eyes... well, let's just say they didn't quite work.

It's roughly like this: classical music looks down on jazz, jazz looks down on rock, rock looks down on folk, and folk looks down on electronic music.

Yamada Ryosuke looked at Iji Tomoka with a condescending and superior gaze.

Ichika Hoshika: "Isn't the way you're looking at me a little strange right now?"

She started complaining to the people around her.

Goto Ichiri: "Nothing at all, nothing happened."

Boqi Jiang quickly waved her hand.

Kita Ikuyo: "It should be considered a good thing."

The red-haired girl thought for a moment before giving her answer.

Ryo Yamada: "The grand plan to end the band has exceeded Hoshika's comprehension."

The blue-haired beauty held her head high, making no attempt to hide her smugness.

Yi Di Zhi Xing Ge: "..."

……

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Illusionist's Workplace

Heian-kyo, the market district, is a newly developed area belonging to the Saigyouji family.

The small house has the words "Dream Pavilion" written on its signboard.

On either side of the plaque hung a string of couplets.

The world is a difficult road, and fear makes one shrink back; all day long, one feels lost and confused.

[Dreams are intoxicating, I'd gladly throw myself into them, to live this life in a blissful intoxication.]

The writer of the couplet was none other than Saigyouji Yuyuko, the eldest daughter of the Saigyouji family, who volunteered to write it.

Perhaps because she was directly rejected by Kurokawa Kazuya, Yuyuko became lazy and less serious in her subsequent interactions with Kurokawa Kazuya.

Having ensured that Kurokawa and Miyako's arrangements for the Saigyouji family were all satisfactory, she often slept until late morning.

After waking up, she will be dragged away by Hanami to conduct all sorts of food experiments.

The young lady seemed quite interested in the food that Banami mentioned. In short, the two girls inexplicably hit it off without Kurokawa and Mi understanding what was going on.

To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that she had promised Kurokawa Kazumi beforehand about the couplets, Kurokawa Kazumi doubted that she would have been too lazy to go out at that time.

"No, really no, I can't squeeze any more out. You should go find someone else."

In this area, the occasional complaints of illusionists, exhausted from continuously using illusions, could be heard as they collapsed on the ground.

"Hey, is this even possible?!"

"So the illusionist I queued for has stopped again? I should have queued for the one next door, it's much more stable there."

"How about we go check out the 'game experience store' first?"

A commotion arose from the surroundings after the illusionist stopped, accompanied by a commotion of varying sizes.

Are all cultivators supposed to dedicate all their time to cultivation and gamble their entire lives on it...?

It's obvious that it's not true at all.

Would you give up everything in your life to make money?

Don't mention that cultivation is about returning great power to oneself, or that it's something one should be obsessed with because it's entirely for one's own benefit.

When we were in school, we were studying for ourselves, and I didn't see many people who actually enjoyed studying.

Those with great perseverance and who enjoy learning will always be a minority in the population.

Entertainment is an eternal theme for humankind.

At this moment, within the "Dream Pavilion" area, as a large group of illusionists ran out to customize illusions for people and create scenes for "Tsukihime", a certain active thought began to spread around.

Even the illusionists themselves didn't expect that the scenes they created would be so popular.

Those who paid to participate, after experiencing the illusionist's customized scenarios, even went so far as to ask if they could go further.

For example, 18X, 18X, and 18X~

Anyone who has played the game and become fully immersed in it will find it hard not to fantasize about the game's heroine, Arcueid.

Unfortunately, this thing was banned by Kurokawa and Miyabi.

He ultimately intended to spread these fan-made creations widely online. While the eroticism was appealing, excessive eroticism or the abundance of erotic content hindered its spread.

It was precisely because of Kurokawa and Mi's limitations.

At this time, the most popular scene in the Heian-kyo community became battle.

Using Tohno Shiki's Mystic Eyes of Death Perception from the protagonist of "Tsukihime" in the illusion to kill those incredibly powerful enemies in the game is an absolutely exhilarating experience.

You ask them why they don't fight in real life?

In reality, it hurts, you get tired, and you feel uncomfortable. It takes a long time to recover from injuries, and you might even have an accident. It's nothing like the thrill of fighting in a game.

Playing as them in the illusion allows Tohno Shiki to use the legendary Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

Most Onmyoji have limited power in reality.

Who has ever slain someone as powerful as Arcueid? That being can materialize an entire city, and when it goes berserk, it can grow into a giant the size of a city.

"Actually, I'm quite puzzled. This thing seems to be quite popular. Before me, didn't any Onmyoji specializing in illusions think about making money by doing this?"

As Kurokawa Kazuya passed through this area, he turned to Youmu Konpaku beside him and asked her a question.

Actually, before launching this model, Kurokawa Kazuya had some concerns, but now everything seems to be going smoothly.

Recently, as Saigyouji Yuyuko is frequently taken away by Hanami, Youmu Konpaku has been specially left by Kurokawa Kazuya to explain everything about Heian-kyo and protect her.

With a stern face, Youmu followed Kurokawa Kazuya's gaze and looked at the group of people.

She lowered her head, thought for a moment, and then answered:

"I've heard of people who provide specific illusion scenarios, but they usually only do it for a short while before giving up. After all, doing this kind of thing is too much of a waste of energy, so much so that people don't have time to cultivate."

It's roughly like how modern people look for jobs.

This job can pay little, but it absolutely cannot be unprofitable.

Kazuya Kurokawa: "Can't they still use illusion magic to earn money and faith, just like they do now?"

Making money is not considered cultivation, but for those who follow the path of divinity, earning faith is essentially a different kind of cultivation.

Youmu Konpaku: "Illusions are not like stage plays, where everyone can see them just by performing. Illusions, which are achieved by controlling other people's five senses, require the illusionist to use Yin-Yang techniques on each individual. Each additional person adds to the burden. Basically, the number of illusions an illusionist can use each day is limited."

The meticulous young samurai shook her head at this point:

"If it weren't for the fact that 'Tsukihime' provided by you, Young Master Kurokawa, has become quite famous recently, so many people wouldn't have come here to experience such illusions firsthand. Not to mention, the illusions of the past were actually not very pleasant to experience."

Illusions built on the basis of reality are fine if they replicate real-world scenes one-to-one, but if they try to create scenes that never happened in reality out of thin air, they will basically look fake at first glance.

The difficulty level is based on drawing pictures on paper that are exactly the same as reality, and then combining these pictures into a film that is exactly the same as reality.

A skilled illusionist can spend a great deal of effort to do this, but a meticulously crafted illusion cannot be created simply to entertain others.

That is the foundation of the illusionist's own path; they will only meticulously craft scenes related to their own cultivation.

A highly accomplished illusionist is one who infinitely approximates reality with their illusions, using reality to absorb the various emotions that all beings experience in the world regarding a particular thing, refining the illusion into reality, and giving their illusions the ability to influence reality.

Given the time required to construct a realistic illusion, they wouldn't waste their energy on anything other than their own core.

But now, Kurokawa and Miro's thing is a little different.

The two-dimensional world depicted by Tsukihime is not reality.

Creating related scenarios does not require the same effort as building real-world scenarios.

The difference in effort required to draw a two-dimensional character versus drawing an exact replica of a real person is like night and day.

This gives you a lot of creative ideas to do.

Youmu Konpaku: "Even so, if it weren't for your promise, Master Kurokawa, to share the faith of 'Tsukihime' with them, they wouldn't be so enthusiastic. Perhaps a large part of it is because they were attracted by the promise you made, Master Kurokawa, after all, the path of pure illusion magic is really difficult."