The Bitterness Ends in Sweetness

Douluo Continent.

This was a world belonging to Martial Souls. There was no flashy, dazzling magic, nor Battle Qi developed to its peak. There were only... diverse and ever-changing Martial Souls!

Night. A bright moon hung high in the sky.

Gentle moonlight spilled into a small courtyard.

"Ah, twenty-six years since I transmigrated, and I've accomplished nothing..."

A young man dressed in white, his hair tied back in an immortal cultivator style, sighed at the moon, his face full of despondency.

His name was Ye Cheng, and he was a transmigrator. In his previous life, he had come from a water-blue planet. After dying in an accident, he had been reincarnated into this world and become the young master of the Ye Family in White Cloud City.

The Ye Family of White Cloud City was merely a middling small family on Douluo Continent. Their inherited Martial Soul was the Flying Rainbow Sword, a sword-type Martial Soul with decent offensive power. It could not compare to a top-tier Martial Soul like the Seven Kill Sword, but it could barely be considered a high-grade Martial Soul.

The strongest person in the entire Ye Family was Ye Cheng's biological mother in this life, Ye Lisha. She was over forty years old and at the Soul Emperor rank.

With a Soul Emperor mother protecting him, Ye Cheng had been showered with affection from the day he was born. Even when he awakened his Martial Soul at the age of six, and it underwent a malignant mutation into an ordinary Iron Sword with no Innate Soul Power, no one in the family dared show him any disrespect. He still lived quite comfortably.

If things had continued like that, it actually would not have been too bad.

Ye Cheng would have safely lived out his life under his mother's protection. So what if he was useless? It was not as if he were the only useless person in the world.

But soon after he awakened his Martial Soul, all of that turned into nothing but bubbles.

The Ye Family's enemies came knocking.

That night, corpses covered all of White Cloud City.

Everything had happened far too suddenly. The enemy had clearly planned it long in advance and appeared to have joined forces with other family factions. In just one night, they uprooted the Ye Family of White Cloud City and slaughtered them all!

Only Ye Cheng narrowly escaped because his mother sent him into a hidden underground passage.

Before he left, his mother gave him a Storage Ring containing more than half of the Ye Family's resources, along with a mysterious jade pendant. It was an exquisite Seven-Colored Glazed jade pendant shaped like a miniature pagoda. She told him to seek protection from the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect!

Ye Cheng had been confused, but his mother's explanation quickly made him understand his origins. His biological father in this life was actually Ning Fengzhi, the current sect master of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, one of the Upper Three Sects.

However, although his biological father held a prestigious position, that womanizing old man perhaps still did not even know he had a son. Even his mother had only been a fleeting lover from a chance encounter.

In other words, he was an illegitimate son who could not be acknowledged openly. And Ning Fengzhi had many, many illegitimate sons like him...

But it did not matter. As long as he carried this jade pendant and gave his mother's name, he could definitely prove his identity!

When the time came, for the sake of their blood relation, no matter how poor his talent was, he would at least receive proper arrangements.

Afterward, Ye Cheng was pushed into the underground passage.

Though he was deeply saddened, he also knew he could not change anything. So, he could only do his best to flee...

After that, he did not follow his mother's instructions and seek protection from the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect.

Because he knew he could not become a Soul Master. Even if he went there, he would never receive any importance. At most, he would be raised as a freeloader for the rest of his life.

That was absolutely not what he wanted, and the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect would never avenge him, a useless person.

So if he wanted revenge, he had to rely on himself!

As a transmigrator, he still retained a certain degree of wishful hope back then. He believed that perhaps, with knowledge from his previous life that differed from this world's, he could carve out a path for himself here. Or perhaps he could create an entirely new path!

For example, practicing martial arts or cultivating immortality... Then perhaps he could be called the Martial Ancestor or the Immortal Ancestor or something.

It could only be said that this was pure transmigrator arrogance and inexplicable self-confidence.

And now, he was twenty-six years old.

After wasting twenty years, he had still accomplished nothing.

He should have realized it long ago. In this world where Martial Souls determined everything, if your Martial Soul was poor, then everything about you would be poor. Having no Innate Soul Power had already blocked every path available to him. How could the rules of the world be changed by human effort?

In countless sleepless nights, he had cursed the heavens. Even a trace of Innate Soul Power would have been enough! At least then he could cultivate. Even if he cultivated his entire life and likely never reached Soul Grandmaster, he would at least have a direction to work toward. He would not be like this, accomplishing nothing and remaining an ordinary person.

And what made him feel even worse was that this world, which he had originally known so well, had somehow developed another bizarre twist.

Around six years ago.

Something called Random Q&A had suddenly appeared throughout Douluo Continent. It would randomly select people within a certain area and make them participate in some sort of prize-based Q&A.

These questions could be multiple-choice, short-answer, or other open-ended questions. In short, those who answered correctly would receive all sorts of rewards, while the price for a wrong answer was losing something important on their person: their Martial Soul, Soul Rings, Soul Power... or, worse still, dying on the spot!

Once, someone answered incorrectly and was stripped of eighty years of lifespan. That young man, who looked less than twenty, immediately had his black hair turn white and aged to death in mere breaths!

It was simply terrifying.

At the same time, every intelligent being on Douluo Continent, whether human or soul beast, as long as their intelligence was above the minimum threshold, would be pulled into an enormous Chat Room or Live Stream Room where they could communicate with one another.

In the six years since this mysterious Q&A appeared.

There had been dozens of Q&As in total. Their times and locations were extremely random, while the questions were generally about things that had happened in the past or would happen in the future. After the questions were answered, regardless of whether the answers were right or wrong, videos related to the questions would begin playing.

At first, people did not believe it. Only after they gradually verified that the videos broadcast in the Live Stream Room truly depicted events from the past and events that would happen in the future did they become convinced that the mysterious Q&A was real.

The people of this world guessed that this Horror Q&A might be the work of gods in the heavens. As for why the gods had created such a thing, that was beyond what mortals like them could know. In any case, mortals like them could not resist it. Since that was the case, they could only accept it.

But unlike this world's natives, Ye Cheng had read this kind of spoiler fanfiction before transmigrating in his previous life. Some of those novels were purely ensemble stories, with no mastermind behind the Q&A; it was just a simple mechanical Q&A mechanism. But in some novels of this type, there was a protagonist manipulating everything behind the scenes.

Ye Cheng did not know whether the Q&A in this Douluo Continent had a protagonist controlling it from behind the scenes. Thus, he had remained very low-key for the past six years. Even when there were questions without designated respondents, questions that anyone could answer, he, the one who knew the truth after reading the original Douluo story, never stepped forward to try and gain some benefits for himself.

After all, if there really were a transmigrator mastermind controlling this Q&A, then if he answered questions that the local natives could not possibly answer correctly, would he not completely expose his identity as an outsider?

But as time passed and he watched many people obtain benefits by answering correctly and change their fates, Ye Cheng gradually found himself unable to resist the urge to answer at all costs.

He wanted to gamble on it, gamble that there was no mastermind behind the Q&A.

If he won, his fate would change from then on.

If he lost, at worst, he would die.

So Ye Cheng decided that the next time an open Q&A appeared that anyone could answer, he would definitely seize the chance to answer first!

"Ding!"

A crisp sound suddenly rang in his mind.

Ye Cheng, who had been sighing at the moon, froze. He thought he had somehow been selected by the Horror Q&A and needed to answer a question when a mechanical notification suddenly sounded in his mind, leaving him utterly stunned.

...Acting System successfully activated!

The expression on Ye Cheng's face gradually changed from stunned disbelief to wild ecstasy!

A golden finger!

His transmigrator cheat had finally arrived!!!

And that was not the end of the changes.

Very quickly, the system notifications rang out one after another.

Other systems detected in the current world...

Upon inspection, remnants left behind after another system's destruction have been identified. Confirmed as the ownerless External Plugin, "Live Stream Spoiler System"...

Capturing and absorbing... 1%... 10%... 16%...

Absorption failed. Insufficient system energy.

Current absorption progress: 50%. Low-Level Authority acquired.

Notice: To completely absorb the system and obtain the Highest Authority of the "Live Stream Spoiler System," the Host must work hard at acting, collect energy, and assist the system in upgrading its version. Only then can this ownerless Plugin be completely absorbed.

For details, please enter the System Interface.

After that barrage of dazzling notifications.

Ye Cheng took several deep breaths and finally calmed down.

Then, using his thoughts, he opened the System Interface.

Acting System—Create a persona. The more people believe in it and feel shock, admiration, fear... and all kinds of emotions toward this fictional persona, the more that persona will eventually become real!

Current Acting: None.

Completed Acting: None.

External Plugin: Live Stream Spoiler System—50% (Current absorption progress is insufficient. Only Low-Level Authority is available. You may freely ask questions, fabricate and alter videos, and set Q&A Rewards and punishments. However, you cannot obtain Q&A Rewards. Only after obtaining 100% Highest Authority can you control everything within the system.)

After studying the panel carefully for a while.

Ye Cheng finally more or less figured out the whole situation.

First, this Acting System was probably his transmigrator golden finger. Its function was simple: it allowed him to create a persona and act as that persona. For example, if he created a persona for Sun Wukong, then the more people believed in that persona and believed that he possessed all of Sun Wukong's abilities... once the acting progress eventually reached one hundred percent, he would gain every ability Sun Wukong possessed in other people's perception.

And without a doubt, the more powerful the persona he created, the more people would need to acknowledge, accept, and believe that the persona existed. Honestly, the system's power was certainly powerful, but how to make others believe in a persona he fabricated during the early stages was indeed a difficult problem.

Moreover, if the created persona did not reach one hundred percent, he himself could not use that persona's abilities. Therefore, if he were an ordinary person, trying to act as an unrivaled expert would definitely expose him in minutes. He would end up beaten to death on the streets.

But now, things were different.

After the system unexpectedly obtained Low-Level Authority over the "Live Stream Spoiler System," Ye Cheng suddenly realized that these two systems were simply a perfect match!

Was it not easy to make others believe in the persona he designed? If he fabricated a "Future Video" and broadcast it to the entire world, would the persona's progress not soar upward?

Although it was only Low-Level Authority, and he could not obtain the rewards of those who answered questions or the various things stripped away as punishment, it was enough for him right now. Combined with the Acting System, it was simply like a tiger growing wings!

This transmigrator who had suffered for twenty-six years had finally seen the bitterness end in sweetness!

As for the Live Stream Spoiler System that had suddenly appeared in the Douluo World six years ago, Ye Cheng also learned about it through his cheat. This thing had originally had an owner, but it apparently provoked someone it should not have in some extremely high-level world. Then the system's Host was blasted into complete annihilation!

The once-intact Live Stream Spoiler System was also caught in the aftermath. It was shattered to pieces, most of its functions destroyed, leaving only its most core functions to flee into the Space-Time Turbulence before arriving in this world by a fortunate coincidence.

And in order to repair itself, this incomplete system had spontaneously activated its live spoiler function, using it to collect the wishes of all living beings, as well as the "things" stripped away through punishments, converting them into energy to repair itself.

Once the repairs were complete, the Live Stream Spoiler System would choose a Host again.

But unexpectedly, Ye Cheng's cheat awakened at precisely this time and captured the incomplete Live Stream Spoiler System, so this thing ended up benefiting him.

"So, I've been playing mind games with thin air for the past six years?" Ye Cheng said with a bitter laugh.