An Extra Villain in Cultivation World-Chapter 74: Dual Began

"Junior brother Xuanyan, since Mother asked us to compete, we might as well make it interesting. How about adding a wager? Otherwise this duel would be rather meaningless."

"Hehehe." Xuanyan chuckled. "Senior sister, aren’t you being a little shameless right now? Challenging your junior brother who has never even refined a Gu before. Still... I suppose I can accept this unfair match, as long as the wager is interesting enough."

Yanmei felt even more confident when she heard that. After all, she had spent years assisting in alchemy and practicing refinement under Mei Lingyao’s guidance. Against someone who had never refined a Gu before, how could she possibly lose?

"Then don’t go back on your words. Mother will be the witness for our bet," she said confidently. "As for the wager... you may ask anything from me. As long as it is something I possess, I will give it to you. But if I win, you must follow several special rules set by me."

"That’s very generous of you, Senior Sister Yanmei... but are you sure about anything?" Xuanyan asked, his eyes glinting with mischief.

Yanmei’s lips twitched slightly. She hadn’t expected that reaction. For a brief moment she hesitated, but her confidence quickly returned.

"Yes. Anything," she said firmly, though the tips of her ears had already begun to warm.

"Then let’s begin. The final winner of this contest will be me." Xuanyan laughed lightly, his eyes shining with excitement.

The wager had already been set. Mei Lingyao, who had been watching the entire exchange without interrupting, finally stepped forward. With a simple wave of her hand, several identical sets of materials appeared on the refining tables before them.

"To keep things fair," she said calmly, "you will both use the same materials and the same Gu recipe."

The chamber gradually fell silent. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Xuanyan lowered his gaze to the materials in front of him and immediately picked up the jade slip containing the refinement recipe. Even for a Rank-1 Ember Breathing Gu, the instructions were far more complicated than he had expected. The recipe described every stage of the process in careful detail, from the order in which materials should be added to the exact rhythm required to control the flame during fusion.

Although Mei Lingyao had already explained much earlier, Xuanyan still needed time to properly understand the entire sequence.

He read the recipe slowly from beginning to end, occasionally glancing at the ingredients arranged on the table as he matched them with the steps described in the instructions.

Nearly an hour passed before he finally lowered the jade slip.

Only then did Xuanyan begin examining the materials themselves. The Blazing Ember Beetle shell, Crimson Flame Grass, Ash Heart Seeds, and the other ingredients were all prepared in identical portions. Some of them he already recognized from Mei Lingyao’s explanation earlier, while others he inspected more carefully, observing their spiritual fluctuations and elemental properties.

Across from him, Yanmei was also reviewing the same recipe. However, after reading through it once, she couldn’t help narrowing her eyes slightly. For a moment, she felt that this refinement test favored Xuanyan more than she had expected.

Most of the key steps in the recipe required extremely stable spiritual flame control. If the heat fluctuated even slightly during those stages, the materials could easily collapse or burn away before fusion was complete.

Yanmei slowly lifted her gaze toward Xuanyan. If his spiritual flame control was truly as stable as she had described earlier to Mei Lingyao, then this type of refinement might actually favor him more than she had expected.

Yanmei did not rush to begin.

Instead, she inspected every ingredient laid out before her, checking carefully for even the smallest defect. In Gu refinement, a single flawed material could collapse the entire process, and she had no intention of losing the duel because of a careless mistake.

Although their preparation orders were slightly different, the gap between them remained small, when the refinement finally began the gap between them was small. Yanmei started only about ten minutes earlier than Xuanyan.

At first, their refinement methods looked almost identical.

Both ignited spiritual flames beneath their refining vessels, maintaining a steady temperature while the first material—the Ember Beetle shell—slowly softened inside the container. Under the heat, the shell gradually melted, turning into a thick crimson liquid.

Yanmei calmly added the Crimson Flame Grass next, carefully adjusting the flame so the herb dissolved smoothly without triggering the violent fire energy stored inside its leaves.

Across the table, Xuanyan followed the exact same steps.

From the outside, their techniques appeared nearly indistinguishable. The flames beneath their vessels flickered with the same rhythm, the materials melted at almost the same pace, and even their hand movements seemed almost identical.

However, as the refinement continued, a subtle difference slowly began to appear.

Xuanyan relied on a basic alchemy flame-control technique he had seen inner sect alchemists use when refining pills. It was a simple method designed to keep the reaction between materials stable and prevent sudden bursts of unstable energy.

But Xuanyan’s control over spiritual flame was far deeper than the technique itself.

Whenever the molten materials inside the vessel showed even the slightest instability, his flame shifted almost imperceptibly—sometimes burning a little hotter, sometimes cooling just enough to steady the reaction.

These tiny adjustments were nearly impossible to notice from the outside.

Yet over time, those subtle changes gradually accelerated the refinement process.

Because of this, Xuanyan slowly began to pull ahead of Yanmei... even though she had started the refinement earlier.

A faint trace of surprise appeared on Yanmei’s face as her eyes shifted toward Xuanyan’s refining vessel. The molten materials inside had already begun forming the initial structure of the Gu embryo, something that should not have happened so quickly.

It did not take her long to understand the reason. Xuanyan’s control over the rhythm of his spiritual flame was far more precise than she had anticipated, allowing the heat inside the vessel to remain perfectly stable while the materials fused smoothly.