"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 aningless."
"Hehehe." Xuanyan chuckled. "Senior sister, aren’t you being a little shaless 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."
Yani felt even more confident when she heard that. After all, she had spent years assisting in alchemy and practicing refinent under i Lingyao’s guidance. Against soone 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 . As long as it is sothing I possess, I will give it to you. But if I win, you must follow several special rules set by ."
"That’s very generous of you, Senior Sister Yani... but are you sure about anything?" Xuanyan asked, his eyes glinting with mischief.
Yani’s lips twitched slightly. She hadn’t expected that reaction. For a brief mont 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 ." Xuanyan laughed lightly, his eyes shining with excitent.
The wager had already been set. i 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 sa materials and the sa Gu recipe."
The chamber gradually fell silent.
Xuanyan lowered his gaze to the materials in front of him and imdiately picked up the jade slip containing the refinent 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 fla during fusion.
Although i Lingyao had already explained much earlier, Xuanyan still needed ti 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 Fla Grass, Ash Heart Seeds, and the other ingredients were all prepared in identical portions. So of them he already recognized from i Lingyao’s explanation earlier, while others he inspected more carefully, observing their spiritual fluctuations and elental properties.
Across from him, Yani was also reviewing the sa recipe. However, after reading through it once, she couldn’t help narrowing her eyes slightly. For a mont, she felt that this refinent test favored Xuanyan more than she had expected.
Most of the key steps in the recipe required extrely stable spiritual fla control. If the heat fluctuated even slightly during those stages, the materials could easily collapse or burn away before fusion was complete.
Yani slowly lifted her gaze toward Xuanyan. If his spiritual fla control was truly as stable as she had described earlier to i Lingyao, then this type of refinent might actually favor him more than she had expected.
Yani did not rush to begin.
Instead, she inspected every ingredient laid out before her, checking carefully for even the smallest defect. In Gu refinent, 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 refinent finally began the gap between them was small. Yani started only about ten minutes earlier than Xuanyan.
At first, their refinent thods looked almost identical.
Both ignited spiritual flas 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 lted, turning into a thick crimson liquid.
Yani calmly added the Crimson Fla Grass next, carefully adjusting the fla so the herb dissolved smoothly without triggering the violent fire energy stored inside its leaves.
Across the table, Xuanyan followed the exact sa steps.
From the outside, their techniques appeared nearly indistinguishable. The flas beneath their vessels flickered with the sa rhythm, the materials lted at almost the sa pace, and even their hand movents seed almost identical.
However, as the refinent continued, a subtle difference slowly began to appear.
Xuanyan relied on a basic alchemy fla-control technique he had seen inner sect alchemists use when refining pills. It was a simple thod designed to keep the reaction between materials stable and prevent sudden bursts of unstable energy.
But Xuanyan’s control over spiritual fla was far deeper than the technique itself.
Whenever the molten materials inside the vessel showed even the slightest instability, his fla shifted almost imperceptibly—sotis burning a little hotter, sotis cooling just enough to steady the reaction.
These tiny adjustnts were nearly impossible to notice from the outside.
Yet over ti, those subtle changes gradually accelerated the refinent process.
Because of this, Xuanyan slowly began to pull ahead of Yani... even though she had started the refinent earlier.
A faint trace of surprise appeared on Yani’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, sothing 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 fla was far more precise than she had anticipated, allowing the heat inside the vessel to remain perfectly stable while the materials fused smoothly.
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