After Being Reborn, My Love Rival Turned Out to Be Me

Lin Heyan never imagined he would die while on his way to catch his fiance cheating.

The good news: He would never again be kept like a caged canary by his fiance.

The bad news: He had been targeted by some inexplicable System.

[Would you like to load your most recent save?]

Before he could figure out what the System meant, he woke up again, reborn just like that.

He had been reborn as an utterly ordinary university lecturer.

The good news: He had a chance to get revenge on the scumbag.

The bad news: The scumbag and his past self were madly in love.

Watching his own face make lovestruck eyes at the scumbag gave him a feeling most people couldn't understand:

He was putting horns on himself.

And doing it with his own hands.

He had two choices:

1. Expose the scumbag's true nature and make sure his revenge succeeds.

2. Accept the fate of a hopeless romantic, do nothing, and start over with his new identity.

But he never imagined there would be a third option.

To steal his other self back from his fiance.

That day, when someone exactly like him cornered him against a wall and stroked his most vulnerable lower back, he felt his whole worldview collapse.

The man had the exact same face as him, but his eyes were deep and gloomy, drawing him into the depths with him.

He pressed close to his ear, whispering and nuzzling against him. His voice was bewitching and seductive, like intoxicating aged liquor. Every breath and every word hit precisely where it could affect him most.

"Normal people don't fall in love with themselves."

"Too bad I'm not normal."

"Luckily, neither are you."

With a sly smile, Tan Chuyu found the most flexible point and struck back in kind.

Everyone else's love for them was false. Only they themselves were eternal.

He could trust everything about him. He knew every weakness and dark corner, knew exactly how to make him lose control and fall. After all, they were the same person.

But not everything went as they wished. Falling in love with yourself always came at a price.

His fiance wouldn't leave them alone, and the existence of his other self was in grave danger.

After another accidental death, they finally understood the cause and decided to expose the truth and fight back...

Lin Heyan (before being reborn) x Tan Chuyu (after being reborn)

A calculating seme who seems sweet but is secretly dark x a forced-to-be-unstable uke

Narcissism, both are the same person

Content warnings:

1. Both leads are virgins and grow throughout the story.

2. The ex-fiance gets a fair amount of screen time early on. Neither of them truly loves the other; he mainly serves as a romantic plot device.

3. Set in a fictional world. The main cast, including the older brother, are not entirely good people.

4. Includes narcissism, teacher-student romance, age gap with the seme younger, rebirth, revenge (?), and other elements.

5. The romance is painful at first. Later on, the story includes some crime-investigation elements.

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Li Nianyang has dealt with many haunted and paranormal incidents, but no one knows he's actually a fake Taoist priest in name only.

But he has unbelievable luck, with natural yin-yang eyes. Even his casual doodles and written apologies can be used as talismans.

Then one day, a single misstep led an unknown force to carry him back to the turn of the millennium, an era when electronic technology was just beginning to flourish.

[Once night falls, do not linger outside, unless you want to remain in the darkness forever.]

[If you fail to make it home in time, find the nearest apartment block. Go inside. Every "person" here welcomes you.]

No matter how much experience he had driving out ghosts, he had never encountered anything like this. He became a high school student again, bound by all sorts of bizarre rules. Although he followed them and survived, he could never return to his original world.

Only later did he realize that the rules' idea of "survival" was not what he wanted. They were both a means of staying alive and invisible shackles.

If you asked Xie Changci, a ghost, what he liked most, the answer would naturally be Li Nianyang...

The food he offered him every day.

Everything from ordinary white rice to all sorts of little ghosts.

But the human had never imagined there could be ghosts even his yin-yang eyes couldn't see, and he cheerfully went about his life.

Except at midnight.

By day, Li Nianyang feared nothing. But at night, even the slightest sound left him frozen with fear. The ghost that had always followed him took the chance to manifest physically, wantonly unleashing the desire he had restrained for so long.

"This isn't normal."

Li Nianyang tried to calmly figure out what was going on, but he and the ghost only became more entangled, until they could no longer separate.

Li Nianyang: I know I got you killed. Could you spare my life, just this once?

Xie Changci: Don't worry. We'll never be apart, never...

A gloomy, scheming ghost seme who is secretly a doting husband x a seemingly carefree but actually timid and pitiful human uke

Theme: Know yourself, give up your hopeless romantic ways, and fight evil