The vines were coming for Xi Logo and Wifey. They were crawling, screeching (yes screeching) and twisting toward them. I'd tried running, but they were here. Stepping forward, they accepted their fate.

The California Raisins were attacking, and this was like taking on the ultimate David Byrne-level postgame boss while you’re still only level 40.

“Good luck connecting all this dude,” said some unknown voice whose identity would never become relevant the rest of the story. This entire paragraph was a pointless non sequitur meant mostly just to stretch the word count a tiny bit more.

The only people stronger on Wuweizi than the California Raisins, the only ones who successfully combined secretive, otherworldly vine magic with this world’s non-nefarious soul cystal system, were the almost completely decimated clan known as the Simpsons. Luckily, in the aftermath of the Great Ani Wars, the Simpsons were almost completely wiped out, with only one family remaining. Now they only exist to provide us with good examples of logical fallacies.

The husband and wife duo were being thrashed around the world back and forth with vines wrapped around their legs or otherwise lunging in their direction.

Wifey sighed and cried a little bit. “This... this is my second encounter with the California Raisins, you know,” she explained to her husband Xi Logo. “I remember the first encounter clearly. I’ll recount it to you in one simple line: ‘We don’t talk about what’s under the bed, but we know it has leaves.’ They stalked my family, hunted us to the ends of Wuweizi. Then, finally, they killed both of my parents. Every time I thought about descending into that cavernous pit, I would shudder and pull myself back from the edge. But always the curiosity remained.”

“Curiosity, like sexual attraction?”

“...Yes. But now, now that I’ve seen them up close, I realize that they are not attractive. They look like overripe grapes that have sat too long in the sun.”

Xi Logo declined to point out the fact that, yes, raisins were in fact exactly what she just described.

“We’re going to attack the crap out of you, just like we did Hardee’s almost 35 years ago!” the California Raisins all shouted in unison.

“Don’t you mean Carl’s Jr.?”

“No!”

One more vine attack, one so fearsome that it mirrored the way that the California Raisins once destroyed an older man in the eighties.

In this world’s LitRPG system, they were down to just 1 HP each! Oh no!

“Stop this!” XI Logo shouted. “You can’t kill us!”

“Why? We’ve killed all other foes we’ve ever come face to face with.”

“Because we’re the protagonists! We have plot armor!”

“...Oh. OH SHIT.”

The California Raisins fled, but they weren’t fast enough.

The plot armor kicked in, and out of nowhere, a deus ex machina destroyed the foes and saved everyone from the brink of destruction. Gosh.

This time it was a temporal vortex that rippled directly in the timespace blip where the California Raisins currently stood. It tore them to shreds on a quantum molecular level and they ceased to have ever existed.

Retroactively, both of Nan Gua’s mothers (both heterosexual; vines are often hermaphroditic plants as you botanists are probably aware) came back to life, albeit way back in the Alabaster Vine Village which I had planned on naming, I am sure of it, but already forgot the name of.

Out of this time ripple emerged two beings of cosmic, otherworldly power.

These two beings radiated, shining with cultivated souls that had all but ascended to a higher plane. Their daos were absolutely off the charts, just yinging and yanging all over the place.

Guess who it was?

C’mon, guess. Try it.

Yeah, that’s here. Leave the guesses in the comments, right now, before scrolling down to see the answer.

...Please? Will you do it?

Come on, it’ll be fun!

...

...

...

...

Did you leave a guess?

You did?

Okay, awesome.

Then scroll down a little bit for the answer...

...

...

...

...

...

These two extremely powerful, extremely cultivated Level 999 warriors gleaming and glowing like Naruto’s final form sort of, were none other than Budou and Kiwi, two friends that Xi Logo and Waifu had seen just a couple hours ago when they got off the pirate ship, but were separated from unfortunately.

Now, though, it was clear that it had not simply been one or two hours from the perspective of these two. It had been much, much, much, much, much longer.

“What’s up?” Kiwi asked with a toothy grin. “Wanna go on an adventure?”

(Did you guess right?)