This was Xi Guo Lao’s best chance at finally getting the cultivation powers he needed to surpass his sister Hei Mei and finally have an incentive to leave his rural farming home village (the treehouse town of Ghebville). He was just... SO EXCITED!

The Giant Red Carp was one of the foremost, interesting, utterly unremarkably cool things in existence, and by existence all I mean is the myopic limited viewpoint of these simple rustic villagers with their provincial lifestyles and inability to see beyond the place in which they lived, partially due to the remoteness of it all and partly due to the fact that the narrative basically required them to be myopic and distant so that later they could discover more parts of the world and come to a better understanding about all of the planet of Wuweizi (AKA the Mortal Realm) by meeting other cultures and races and ways of life. The three of them were such heterosexual white boys (besides Kiwi who was ambiguously dark-skinned since this is an anime but probably Black if played in live-action) that they had no idea how anyone outside of their extremely specific viewpoint lived. Not much popular media in Ghebville was produced that didn’t openly cater to their demographic, so they had little trouble connecting to it all. Soon, though, they would definitely come to experience a lot of media that would not connect well to them at all, which would help open their eyes to a wider experience of life that they would otherwise not have been privy to.

They chased the Giant Red Carp down the river for one very important reason: the Giant Red Carp was a mythical beast! It was one of the most important beasts in the cosmology of the Babylon Sisters and their immense, steely power over all the world. Capturing and killing the Giant Red Carp not only gave one access to its Soul Palace, which could be utilized to great effect, but its carcass would also produce some of the finest meat there ever was. Rumor had it that if you ate the meat of the Giant Red Carp, you would gain immense, EXTREMELY awesome strength. OP to the highest degree.

Sadly, this was not an OP MC story. Readers hated those (but secretly loved them, shhh, don’t tell anyone), and we couldn’t let people complain about this story since it has been perfectly designed to have no flaws.

So when our three heroes—Xi Guo Lao, Budou, and Kiwi—arrived at the mouth of the river, waiting to find the massive fifty-foot-long mythical beast, they instead found a much more heinous sight:

A fight scene underway.

That’s right, our heroes who had been waiting the ENTIRE story for a ridiculously over-written action scene had been beaten to the punch, with a dozen or more beings furiously fighting the Giant Red Carp as it splashed around and jumped high in the air and took huge damage while the warriors fighting it hit its weak point as if it were a giant enemy crab.

This Giant Enemy Red Carp stood no chance, and it was clear from the moment they reached the river to watch the scene. These warriors, whoever they were, were tearing the dang thing apart!

This was... an unexpected twist!!!!!!