"...I understand. Thank you." Watatsuki no Yorihime fell silent for a while and did not press further. Jiu Ming had gone so far as to all but admit that Eirin Yagokoro truly was in the Land of Illusions. Pushing any harder would yield no substantive answers and would only damage their relationship.
"Oh, right. Once you find your master, what are you going to do to Kaguya while you're at it?" Jiu Ming asked curiously. The Land of Illusions was now completely independent. Even if one knew where it had originally existed, anyone not permitted entry by the Land of Illusions itself would have to find the Great Barrier first if they wanted to get in...
"Her? Heh heh, naturally we'll bring her back while we're at it. A lunar princess who was exiled, then directly betrayed the Lunar Capital—heh heh, she'll have plenty to suffer through once she's back!"
All right, that tone alone made one thing perfectly clear: these two lunar princesses truly had a terrible relationship with Kaguya.
"Then I wish you swift success. Mm... there's something I wanted to say... forget it. We'll talk about it later." Jiu Ming shook his head. Gathering that last "Jeweled Branch of Penglai" felt like playing one of those games where you collected fragments—most of the pieces were easy to obtain, but a select few, or perhaps the very last one, were especially hard to get.
What exactly was the Jeweled Branch of Penglai?
Such a thing truly seemed to exist in other worlds, but in Yakumo Yukari's world, the Jeweled Branch of Penglai appeared to be something else entirely. Worldviews, worldviews... some things from different worlds could coexist with each other, their similarities remarkably high. Yet some things bore the same name while being fundamentally two entirely different things.