Captured Hearts: The Substitute Bride's Gambit - Chapter 187 - Sheng Tingyuans Culinary Skills

[WARNING: MATURE CONTENT]

Ji Qingzhou was anthropophobic and foolish. She had no redeeming qualities, except for her face.

Once she transmigrated, she was bound to a Guide System to save the world. She was tasked with capturing Shen Rongyu, the sinister, beautiful, mighty, gloomy villain and Great Shixiong of Xuanyun Sect, and to prevent him from destroying the immortal cultivation world in the future.

Can Ji Qingzhou, who had been single for 20 years, learn how to capture a villain?

Of course not.

She started off terribly, and muddled through the tasks that the system issued.

- Description from Novelupdates

Crimson Vale Academy—where reputation is currency, and failure is a stain you wear on your sleeve.Behind gothic walls and spotless uniforms, students aren't just educated—they're measured, ranked, and pitted against each other in a brutal meritocracy. Privileges are earned, not given. The strong rise. The weak vanish.Enter Kairon Vale, a transfer student marked Rank D—the bottom of the bottom. No badge. Just a stitched black fang, branding him as “Obsidian”—a warning to others.In a system where points dictate your value, Obsidian-ranked students claw for every opportunity to ascend into the prestigious Golden or Platinum ranks—where comfort, power, and influence await. But for most, it’s a losing battle.Yet Kairon isn’t here to fit in, impress, or play by their rules. Cold, calculating, and impossible to read, he watches the system… and waits. Because while the academy judges worth by numbers and names—he understands something deeper:Everyone wears a mask. And every mask can be cracked.Let the games begin.

Mathew survived the entire two weeks of the apocalypse. A great score for someone blessed with brains over the brawn. Yet, even he fell after just fourteen days, giving his all to save the one person he cared for.

But why does a death looks like watching himself from the third person perspective? Is this the purgatory to watch over his own shoulders at the mistakes he made? A punishment for Mathew's sins to repeat those mistakes over and over again?

But wait, what are the three clocks in the corner of his vision, one of which only five minutes away from ticking out?