Contract Marriage: The Replacement Groom - Chapter 45: Making peace with Valen

One day, You Huo and his famiIy was puIIed into an exam caIIed the GIobaI University Entrance Examination. Going through exams together with other unfortunate examinees, their Iives are put at stake and they can only Iive by passing each exam. However, something about these exams and the system controIIing it didn’t seem right — lt seemed to be trying to trap the examinees with ridiculous ruIes and strange questions…

Kai’s life was small—coffee-stained mornings, cracked recipes, and a system in his head that tweaked toasters and dough like it was nothing. Then the sky shattered. Aliens—Skraiths, jagged and brutal—invaded, tearing his city apart with green-glowing weapons and relentless claws. Superhumans rose to fight back, fire and lightning blazing through the chaos, but Kai’s world crumbled with them.Hiding in his apartment, Kai stumbles on blood—human and alien, smeared on his wall after a superhuman battle. His system, once just a tinker’s tool, awakens, offering him a choice: mimic their powers, temporary and wild, through the blood itself. Desperate, he takes it—stealing pyrokinesis, then electrokinesis, then kinetic energy, each power burning through him, fading fast. But it’s not enough. Armed with a humming Skraith weapon and a body tougher from alien blood, Kai joins a ragtag crew of enhanced fighters—Liv, Rylan, Jace, and Tucker—scraping to survive in a warzone where every shadow hides death.As Skraiths swarm and the city burns, Kai’s system pushes him deeper, analyzing, integrating, crafting minor enhancements—durability, strength, sparks of power that could make him a target or a savior. Government factions, rogue scientists, and the aliens themselves start sniffing around, drawn to his strange tech and blood-stolen abilities. By the time Kai crafts his first super-powered enhancement—an artificial strength boost—he’s no longer just a tinkerer. He’s on the edge of something bigger, something dangerous, where blood and sparks could forge a hero—or break him entirely.In a world unraveling, Kai’s fight for survival becomes a desperate race to master his system, outrun the Skraiths, and confront the truth: the power he’s chasing might destroy him—or remake the world.

Her birthday was marked as the day when her whole world flipped. She was rich, spoiled, and beautiful but all of it vanished when her cold body laid on the road, wrapped in her brother's arms. She thought it was her end but the young CEO finds herself at a loss when she wakes up in the body of Yu Mei Zhen, the illegitimate daughter of a rich family. She is married to one of her old university friends but he is no longer the gentle guy she once knew.

Enigmatic and wealthy, Jun Zixuan is the epitome of perfection. He has everything, including a suicidal and scheming wife whom he hates to the core until one day when she pours a glass of juice on him, her poison-laced words and countless insults following behind. That's where it starts. He could not take his eyes off his dumpling-like wife all of a sudden. Was he a masochist?

She decides to take one step at a time. Lose weight first, make money, get a divorce, settle the people who killed her unreasonably, and find a way to go back to her brother.

But wait...why is this cold and unapproachable husband acting like a white lotus?

...

“I want a divorce,” She indifferently said.

“Fine,” the man coldly responded without any shift in his expression.

One month later:

“When are we getting divorced?” She asked calmly, not wanting to deal with a moody husband anymore.

His gaze darkened, “The procedure is going on.”

Three months later:

“Jun Zixuan, where the heck is our divorce paper?!” She lost her patience and snapped at him.

One of his arms wrapped around her waist as he pulled her closer, “Are you that eager to leave me?” he asked, sadness flickered on his face despite that indifferent look.

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, so sad~” The man narrowed his eyes, his lips tilted up in a crafty smile before he continued, “The lawyers said that our case is a complicated one, it might take them a lifetime to draft the divorce papers.”

And in the next second, his lips descended on hers shocking the hell out of her existence.

Tang Qiu was a substitute bride–forced to take her half-sister’s place and marry the young master of the Jiang family, a deformed cripple with less than 6 months left to live.

“Who would have thought that even a sickly whelp like Jiang Shaocheng would find himself a bride?”

“I hear that he’s practically on his deathbed and he’s only marrying the Fengs’ daughter to improve his lifespan.”

Tang Qiu ignored the whispers around her and focused on her husband-to-be, who coughed violently in his wheelchair. At the altar, after they had said their vows, she lifted her veil and knelt in front of Jiang Shaocheng, pressing a hesitant kiss to his lips.

The marriage contract was signed. No matter his physical deformities, he was now her husband.

She wasn’t afraid of the scars that marked his face, nor was she repulsed by him being confined to a wheelchair. Every morning, she made him breakfast, attended to his needs, and thought of little else beyond her duties as a wife.

“Young Master Jiang is a cripple who can’t get it up,” her best friend argued. “When he dies, you’ll still be untouched. You should set your sights higher.”

“A sickly invalid like Jiang Shaocheng can’t give you happiness,” her ex-boyfriend insisted. “I’ll wait for you.”

But Young Master Jiang only scoffed. “I have plenty of time left to be with her.”

Later in their marriage, Jiang Shaocheng wanted to enjoy his little wife in all ways–the press of her lips against his, the brush of skin on skin; the way a husband and wife were supposed to. But Tang Qiu refused him, blushing. “No, we can’t. The doctor says you can’t exert yourself.”

Jiang Shaocheng’s desire was surging through him, a heat in his core that demanded to be satiated. He cursed, I should have gotten rid of that doctor and the wheelchair long ago.

But he yearned to make love to his little wife, and so he revealed his true identity. In the blink of an eye, the deformed cripple transformed into a powerful businessman–tall, dark, and handsome. He quieted Tang Qiu’s protests, his body positioned over hers, his arms caging her as she lay on the bed. His voice was low when he asked, “What about now?”