My Cheat Was Actually Me

Chapter 1: My Cheat Was Actually Me

A frail little boy suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, his sleepy eyes still clouded with confusion.

"What's going on? Wasn't I just arrested while getting a foot massage at a bathhouse? Where am I now?"

Lin Ye stared around in a daze. He was in a shabby little dormitory, with a dozen beds lined up against the walls like a row of bunks and a narrow aisle down the middle.

The whole dormitory reeked of sweat and stinky feet.

Dawn was breaking, and light filtered through the window into the dormitory. Lin Ye saw more than a dozen children, all five or six years old, fast asleep and snoring like thunder.

Wait... why were they all children?

As if struck by a thought, Lin Ye suddenly threw off the covers. The next moment, he was dumbfounded.

These tiny arms and legs... were they his?

As Lin Ye sat there in a daze, a flood of memories poured into his mind.

It took him more than ten minutes to absorb them.

He had been reincarnated. This was Douluo Continent, in Fasinuo Province under the Heaven Dou Empire.

Lin Ye was in the local town's orphanage.

As for the child he'd reincarnated into, apparently a teacher had found him abandoned at the orphanage's gate five years ago.

Lin Ye was five years old, which meant he'd been abandoned at birth.

Well, none of that mattered. What mattered to Lin Ye was that this was Douluo Continent. He knew this world all too well. Besides the original story, he'd read dozens of fanfics set in it.

From his memories, Lin Ye learned that Spirit Hall had clashed fiercely with the Clear Sky Sect five years ago, forcing the sect to seal its gates and retreat from the world.

The conflict had started when Tang Hao of the Clear Sky Sect had beaten Spirit Hall's previous Pope to death. The incident had made Clear Sky Douluo famous and won him countless admirers.

Once he'd figured out roughly when he was, Lin Ye breathed a little easier. He was the same age as Tang San, so it wasn't too late. He could find a way to make plans for Dugu Bo's Immortal Herbs later.

But first, he had to wait for his Martial Soul to awaken.

Life at the orphanage was dull and regimented. Every morning, the children got up, washed, ate breakfast, and then began a day of lessons and activities.

Day after day passed like this. Then, after more than half a month, the peaceful routine was broken.

That day, after lunch in the main cafeteria, Lin Ye was taking his usual walk around the orphanage to help digest his meal.

A figure flashed before his eyes. Lin Ye focused his gaze and saw two women who had appeared out of nowhere, one tall and one short.

The taller woman had long, snow-white hair that fell behind her and reached all the way to her feet. Her sky-blue eyes were ethereal and clear, as though they could see through everything in the world.

A long, exquisite white dress wrapped around her slender figure, showing off her flawless shape to perfection.

Her skin was as crystalline and smooth as jade.

Her beauty was breathtaking, as if she were heaven's finest creation, perfect in every way. She was like a plum blossom in the depths of winter: cool, noble, and proud against the snow and frost.

The girl beside her had a completely different look. She was petite, only about a meter and a half tall, with the appearance of a little girl.

She was beautiful, too. Four emerald-green markings adorned each side of her lovely, fair face, and her dark-green hair fell to her shoulders.

Her skin was as white as snow, with a translucent quality, and a faint green glow seemed to shimmer beneath it.

The temperature dropped sharply as the two appeared. Lin Ye felt as if he were standing in a frozen wasteland, and couldn't help shivering.

"W-who are you looking for?" Lin Ye asked, instinctively stepping backward. The two had appeared before him without a sound, and he realized they were no ordinary people.

"You," the little girl said, pointing at Lin Ye.

The white-haired woman took out a piece of parchment and handed it to Lin Ye. "Read this, and you'll understand."

Lin Ye was at a loss. What was going on? He was certain he didn't know either of them.

Seeing that they didn't seem hostile, Lin Ye relaxed a little and accepted the parchment from the white-haired woman.

It was yellowed and darkened with age, giving it an antique look. It seemed to be a very old document.

Curious, he slowly unrolled it. The instant he glanced at the first line, his expression changed.

The parchment was covered in densely packed writing. More importantly, it wasn't written in the language of Douluo Continent, but in the Chinese characters of his previous life.

The first line read:

"To my past self, hello. I'm Lin Ye—or, to be precise, you, eighteen years in the future. Verification code: (456798)."

At first, Lin Ye had been deeply skeptical about the truth of what he was reading. But when he saw the "verification code," all his doubts vanished.

In his previous life, he'd had an encrypted folder on his phone full of all kinds of educational material: Japanese, Korean, European and American, men fighting dogs, anime photoshoots—you name it.

456798 was the folder's password, and no one but him could possibly know it.

There was no need to doubt the parchment's authenticity.

What puzzled Lin Ye was why it had appeared at this point in time, if it had been written by his future self.

Curious, he continued reading.

"Here's what happened. My Sixth Soul Ring came from a Dark Demon Evil God Tiger. After absorbing its Soul Ring and Dan Pearl, I gained its six elemental powers: evil, darkness, time, space, wind, and lightning.

"At twenty-three, I successfully broke through to Rank 99 and became an Extreme Douluo. The breakthrough deepened my understanding of time and space, so I tried fusing the two powers together.

"I succeeded, but I couldn't control the fused Power of Time and Space. It carried me through time, to a point roughly a thousand years in the past.

"I ended up in the Core Circle of the Star Dou Great Forest and happened to run into the Sacred Beast Three-Eyed Golden Leopard while she was out hunting. She wasn't friendly at all. She tried to bite me, so I had no choice but to use my family's secret art, the Eighteen Styles of Cat Licking. In the end, I successfully made the Three-Eyed Golden Leopard submit beneath me."

Lin Ye's mouth twitched as he read that. Was "submit" meant in a wholesome way?

"The Three-Headed Red Demon Mastiff who guarded the Three-Eyed Golden Leopard, known as the Scarlet King, got beaten black and blue by me and cried for his mother..."

What the... How had his future self learned to pad out his word count? Had some hack writer possessed him?

He skipped the useless parts.

"All right, back to the point. I don't belong in this time, and the power of time and space in the world is constantly rejecting me. Before long, it'll send me back to my original point in time.

"But since I'm already here, I figured I should make some preparations in advance, so you can get a head start.

"I found the Ice Fire Yin Yang Well in Sunset Forest and took all the Immortal Herbs inside. They're for you, so make good use of them.