The red blur finally materialized, again, into a human being, and that human was really actually attacking Budou and Xi Guo Lao! Or rather, just Xi Guo Lao, who had been punched very distinctly in the face.

He toppled to the ground and from the shame alone he lost a level. Now he was down to a Level 14 cultivator.

Level 14... Now he was tied with his younger sister Hei Mei, who he knew would be winking as someone spoke of her, because that was just the way into getting a fandom of absolute creepazoids and snaring them into an FBI trap. It was humiliating!

The red blur, now a person flash stepping at rapid pace, appeared in three places.

And everything became clear.

The red hair, the dark skin (compared to the not-yet-mentioned-until now light skin of Budou and Xi Guo Lao, who were both Caucasian), the hearty laugh...

It was just Kiwi.

Both Budou and Xi Guo Lao groaned.

“Kiwi, you rascal,” they said in unison.

“Hehehe,” Kiwi said. “I just wanted to give y’all a nice friendly attack-greeting with my cool flash stepping abilities.” He stopped moving and all three of the flash step clones disappeared... Actually, Kiwi was standing off to the side, a little bit away from his two friends. He approached them and gave a hearty laugh. “Don’t you love aggresive male masculine platonic bonding that involves play-fighting?”

“Not really,” said Xi Guo Lao, nursing the punch to his face, “but I understand that it fulfills a part of you to do it, so I respect that you are forced to do it to uphold your psychological stability.”

“I read in a big book about how it conforms to heteronormative standards to be aggressive and fight all the time,” said Kiwi, “and how it’s extremely important to present oneself as a bold, proactive masculine man if you want to come across exactly how you wish to be perceived. And I really want to be perceived as heterosexual.”

“Because you are?”

“Yes, of course! I’m straight. I like women,” Kiwi said. Kiwi was, of course, in no way related to “Kiwis by Beat,” the famous but long-lost webcomic website.

“I also really like women,” said Xi Guo Lao. “I have exclusively dated women in the past and I pretty much love every single one I come across, either platonically or sometimes romantically if they win me over enough. I kind of hate my sister Hei Mei, but secretly I love her too, in a familial way, because she is my sister after all.”

“I too really like women,” said Budou. “I treat them like objects and get unreasonably angry when they inevitably turn down my advances. I tried taking some pick-up artist classses but they didn’t work even though I stood outside bars on Saturday nights waiting to see if I could convince anyone into them giving me their number.”

“We don’t have phones in this world,” Xi Guo Lao helpfully reminded.

“Oh yeah, right. Well, none of them would go home with me, despite my physically attractiveness, which means that they must have been the problem and it makes me very angry.”

“Nice words!” Kiwi shouted. “I too have plenty of experiences with women in romantic and other situations and the only reason I’m not talking about them is because I’m just not the kind of guy who gives those kinds of personal details about the women I kiss, not because I have no experience kissing women or other reasons like that, definitely not.”

“That sounds about right,” said Budou.

“So, you called me here?” Kiwi asked. “For the fish thing?”

“Oh yeah,” Budou said. “Y’all want to go to the carp festival?”

“Sure thing,” said Xi Guo Lao. “It’s only once a year, so this is our best shot.”

“We are gonna catch some awesome fish, kill them, and get so many awesome Soul Crystals. I bet we’ll get the best Soul Quests, too,” Kiwi said. “I really hope this spurns on an awesome adventure where we find a harem of women together and save the world from some evil villain who is out there killing all the mythical beasts for reasons we don’t yet know.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Budou said, “if it wasn’t a load of crap. I have it on good knowledge that tghe mythical beasts are all completely fine and nobody is killing any of them.”

“Oh, really? Dang, I guess my feeling was wrong.” Kiwi slumped over. “You’re so smart, Budou... And I’m so dumb, lol XD.”

“Well, we can make you smarter with Soul Crystals,” Xi Guo Lao said. “Let’s go fishing!”

Little did they know, but this fishing event would completely ruin their lives.