Not what I expected

-You perverted asshole. What is it with you and the pretty redheads? Can't you just complete a single mission without going out of your way to expand your harem?

-Eve, you know it as well as I do that it's not like that. It's some sort of side effect of karma that the interesting women around me turn out to be pretty redheads. You yourself prefer that look too, and I bet you even felt a bit dejected at not being born as a fire spirit instead of a metal type.

-You don't have to rub it in, you know.

Wow, it seems she was really sad about that.

-Ahem. Sorry. Anyways, she detected my scan, which means she should have a high comprehension of both spatial and perception skills, or practices some powerful concealment abilities that she was fully confident about until now. In any case, she's at least a bit interesting. Can you analyze her?

-Already on it. But based on the preliminary results... This should be interesting. You won't like the end results, of that much I can already be sure of.

She giggled, seemingly also interested on what the analysis turns out. I knew better than to ask the results, because if she found it amusing and a good idea to prank me with it, I would be thoroughly humiliated. It happened multiple times in the past, and it would happen now too, so I just decided to find out the truth for myself.

The first match was between her and a tough looking cultivator at the Intermediate Soul Severing realm - Soul Offense stage. The fourth stage cultivator launched a heavy offensive against her with powerful soul skills and strong fist techniques. She looked like she was barely holding her own, dodging the skills at a hair's breadth, but that was only if you looked at the surface. If one looked carefully, they'd realise that she actually had no chance of dodging these attacks, she was simply lucky to do so every time. But when it came to luck, being lucky one time was just that, being lucky twice was also plausible, but being lucky 40 times in a row, that was already beyond simple luck. It had to be some sort of skill. I theorized that she's either favored by the heavens with high luck, or has a powerful probability manipulation skill. Both would explain her earlier reaction too, since the heavens wouldn't allow me to scan her so easily, or my scanning should have failed, if she manipulated its probability. But this ability of hers was indeed concealed from my scan, and I only realised it existed, because of her surprise at me being able to see through all of her other abilities. In a sense, her ability was heaven-defying and effective even against me, its her own human nature that actually gave her away. Ironic.

Well, if it is this kind of an ability, then the outcome of the match is already decided. The brute fighting her just doesn't know it yet. And sure enough, after a few more moves, she brought out her spiritual armament, that was shaped like a ball, and threw it at her opponent. He tried to dodge it, but lost his footing for a brief moment because of a crack in the platform that he previously made with his high energy attacks, and failed to dodge successfully. The ball hit his right shoulder, dislocating it and pushing him back a few meters. He looked at her in shock, gritted his teeth, and tried attacking her again, with his left hand that was still fine. But the ball already returned to her and with her opponent weakened by the previous attack, he was no longer a match for her. She just threw the the ball directly at his face, and he completely failed to dodge it, since it came at a weird angle, essentially from a blind spot. He was knocked out instantly. The elder announced the girl as the winner, and I finally managed to find out her name: Crescent Moon.

This gave me an interesting idea, that I wasn't able to verify without Eve's analysis, that I couldn't currently access, nor would I have the guts to use myself, if she's a chosen of the heavens, so I could only put the idea to a side. Well, I can just ask her later, I suppose, during the final match.

It was my turn to fight, or to be more precise, bully the weak. I jumped on stage with my opponent, the elder announced the start of the fight, I sent my opponent flying with a sword qi, and my opponent landed in front of the teary eyed elder in charge of healing. The supervising elder sighed and announced my win.

-Congratulations to Miss Crescent Moon and junior Xiao Xia for reaching the final match of the Inner Trials. The both of you will have the option to enter the Heavenly Fate Sect, one of you as a top outer disciple, and the winner of your fight as an inner disciple candidate. Without further ado, let the final match of the Inner Trials begin.

I have the feeling that this guy just likes to hear his own voice. I looked over at Crescent Moon, who took a defensive posture, taking out her spiritual artifact, while gritting her teeth. She realised from my previous performance, how hard it would be to defeat me, so she was probably a bit scared of facing me, since she could easily wind up just like all my other opponents before her. But contrary to her, the spectators' and the judges' expectations, I didn't her send her flying immediately. Instead, I started walking towards her.

-Relax, I'd like to chat with you for a bit. I haven't found any interesting people so far, so I'd like to know more about you.

As I spoke, Eve started outright laughing in my mind.

-Oh, you're real smooth. This will be so much fun. Keep it up, Casanova!

I have a horrible feeling about this. Well, it's not like I'm trying to seduce her anyway. That just kind of happens along the way, most of the time. Yeah, it's all my karma's fault, not mine.

Crescent Moon looked at me with a complicated expression, and replied.

-Sorry, I'm not interested in men. Nor chatting for that matter.

She launched the ball hovering in front of her towards my chest. It came at an alarming speed, but it stopped five meters in front me, not being able to advance or retreat anymore. This was well within the range of both my domains and the area where I could exert my spatial abilities at their full power, so I was practically holding her spiritual armament as hostage at this time.

-Hey, don't be like that. I have no intention of courting you, I'm only interested in your luck.

The ball wiggled a few times, seemingly trying to break free of its confinement. No ability was perfect, and there would be a few weak ripples in my domains and spatial lock. Whenever these ripples reached the ball, it always tried to break free, but it was locked just too strongly for it to be able to move even a millimeter. It didn't even have a chance when the ripples from all my domains reached it at the same time, obviously as a result of her luck. Seeing this, she frowned and took out a talisman.

-Seems like I will have to go all out on you. Go, 'Time Stop'!

She shouted and threw out the talisman, trying to activate a time freezing field similar to my 'Time Shield'. Naive. With a simple thought, I conjured some elemental fire from the air and burned the talisman to ashes before it had the time to activate. She was shocked at this sight. I arrived 3 meters in front of her and tried to reinitiate our conversation.

-I'd advise you against using your powerful trump cards against me at this time, since it will only weaken you later on. What was the old xianxia saying? "In front of absolute power, all tricks are useless". Well, something like that.

-Xianxia? ... Wait! Are you a transmigrator as well?

I casually dropped a line, probing her, and it seems I was spot on with my theory. Her eyes lit up in surprise and interest, since nobody in a xianxia universe would actually call their world a xianxia universe, it was outsider knowledge, so the only ones who would know about this would be outsiders.

-Well, yes, but actually no. If you're asking me if I'm a person from another world that was reborn here, then yes. If you're asking me if this was accidental, as this usually is, then no, I came here on purpose. You can call me James, if that's more convenient for you.

There was no harm in telling her or anyone else, for that matter, about this. After all, they couldn't verify if it was true, and couldn't do anything about it. I didn't do it so far, because there wouldn't be any meaning to do so, but it was necessary at this time to earn her trust. Besides, I knew far more about the transmigrators than they themselves, due to my knowledge about reincarnation and the transdimensional beings governing it. It's the main reason I could be here, with all the memories of my past lives, after all. What wuxia and xianxia novels describe as transmigration, is basically these transdimensional beings holding a kind of an exchange program, whenever there is some sort of crisis in their universe. They send over a promising soul to one another, to help them deal with their problem using their otherworldly skill or knowledge, and after they die, they simply send them back. It happens fairly often too, and some of these transmigrators recall these memories as fantasy ideas. That is the basic source of some of the novels about transmigrators in xianxia universes, with the rest being based on these and are conjured purely out of the imagination of their authors.

-Oh. Wow. I didn't know there were others too. And you even have an English name. You're English, right, from Earth?

-Scottish, actually.

-Well, seems like it's fate then that we met. In this case, you can call me Thomas.

Wait, what? THOMAS? Eve, you bastard, is this what you meant by "so much fun"? That she is a dude?!