Phoenix's Requiem - Chapter 426: Challenge

[Cute Baby • Sweet & Satisfying • Contract Signed]A missing billionaire lands—half-dead—on her couch.Five years earlier she crawled out of a fire her own blood set. Now she’s back, four-year-old sidekick in tow, to save the stranger she found on her doorstep.He looks harmless, eats her snacks, then—snap!—shreds the white-lotus neighbor, gifts hugs, kisses, and a life that suddenly runs on easy mode.Wait a minute, why are those people respectfully calling him CEO…?!

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

My GPA is lower than a slime’s mana.My name is Atheron il Ataraxia, and I’m the walking disgrace of the Royal Academy of Magic.I’ve been held back twice, my essays are used in class as examples of how not to cast spells, and professors sigh in relief when I don’t blow something up during morning lectures.Truth is? I don’t even like this world.I was summoned. A girl from this world pulled me in like a card from a cursed deck, and now I’m stuck living here. Attending classes, battling evil spirits, and dealing with stuck-up nobles whose names are longer than my backstory.But something’s off. My mana doesn’t behave like theirs. The world listens when I speak. And the whispers I hear at night? They’re getting louder.They say evil spirits wander through Ashgrad under the light of the moon. And I think they’re looking for me.They think I’m a failure.Maybe I am.But if this cursed academy wants to survive the next full moon, they might just have to rely on me — the last-ranked summon with a dangerous secret.

It has been six years since the country stopped admitting college students, and no one knows when the college entrance examination will resume. Su Xiaoxiao, who was an outstanding student, was now humiliated after not being able to attend university.

She was too high for the people in the village and too poor for the people in the city. Due to this, she became a “leftover girl.”

An educated youth said he was willing to try. When Father Su then asked the educated youth when he planned to marry his daughter, the educated youth said it was Su Xiaoxiao who took the initiative to pester him before agreeing to give it a try, and he wanted to go back to the city in the future and did not plan to marry a country girl.

Su Xiaoxiao couldn’t take this humiliation anymore and decided to jump into the river to commit suicide. This made her reputation become even worse. The matchmakers had to go around when they passed by the Su family’s house. Mother Su and Father Su were so angry that they almost rode a crane to death. They decided to marry their daughter in the city regardless of the dowry.

Han Cheng, who had lost his wife for a year, went back to the city to visit his sons on his vacation. His two sons, who were once white and chubby cubs, became skinny and gloomy after living with his teacher’s wife. He was so angry and immediately asked the matchmaker to go to the countryside and find him a match. The only requirement he asked for was, that she must be literate.

The matchmaker went to the Su family’s house, and there, Su Xiaoxiao, who came from the 21st century, didn’t raise any objections and accepted it.

However, the unreliable matchmaker actually invited another girl besides Su Xiaoxiao and arranged their dates at the same time.

Han Cheng asked Su Xiaoxiao, who looked like a good match for him: “Are you literate? Do you mind taking care of my two sons?”

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