I'll make you the furnace and the cauldron, so you can refine Yin and Yang and prove the Great

"Why did you agree?" Ye Shuanghua's voice rang out on the stone path at the southern foot of the mountain. The two had already left the area where the Elder Hall was located. The mountain wind blew from the direction of the bamboo forest, filling the silence between them with the rustling of bamboo leaves. The silver-white hem of their robes and the purple-gold robes were stretched and shortened in the twilight.

She stopped and turned to look at him, her eyes, unusually cold from the suppressed anger she had vented in the hall, meeting Li Hanshan's gaze directly. "The Immortal Alliance's territory isn't the Myriad Spirits Secret Realm. While the Myriad Spirits Secret Realm is dangerous, at least everyone competes under the same rules. The Immortal Alliance—their spiritual veins operate in a completely different way than ours. Every city and every market is filled with detection arrays specifically designed to target the spiritual energy fluctuations of demonic cultivators. Unless you refrain from action, there's a very high chance you'll be detected once you make a move."

Li Hanshan stopped in front of her, sensing the genuine worry in her eyes that she couldn't hide.

"I know," he said, his voice steady. "But we can't refuse. This time, the Ninth Elder came prepared. No matter what you say, he will probably insist that I go, unless Master comes out of seclusion again. But that would have too much of an impact on Master."

Ye Shuanghua naturally knew that Li Hanshan was right.

Even if they knew inside the Elders' Hall that the Ninth Elder had definitely rigged things, they couldn't do anything about it because they had no way to prove it. On the surface, the Ninth Elder followed the proper procedure, having everyone draw lots.

Ye Shuanghua wanted Li Hanshan to stay away, so the only option was to ask the sect leader to come out. However, the sect leader had emerged from seclusion ten years ago and was currently making every effort to break through to the Dao Integration stage. If he were to emerge from seclusion again, the impact would be enormous.

Ye Shuanghua's gaze lingered on his face for a couple of breaths, and the tense anger in his eyes loosened slightly, but it still didn't completely dissipate.

She turned and continued walking along the stone path, her pace quickening slightly. A voice came from ahead: "How much do you know about the Immortal Alliance?"

Li Hanshan followed her: "Not much. All I know is that the Immortal Alliance is a righteous alliance, and it has been in confrontation with the Holy Alliance for over a thousand years. They originally had one less Dao Integration cultivator than us, so they were always on the defensive. Now that they've filled that gap, the situation should change." He paused, "Also, they've laid down heavy defenses in the Southern Ridge Mountains, right?"

Much of this information was actually something Li Hanshan had just learned in the Elders' Hall.

Ye Shuanghua nodded without turning around: "The Nanling Mountains are the dividing line between the Immortal Alliance and the Holy Alliance. The entire mountain range stretches for nearly 100,000 miles, running from east to west across the central part of the Central Continent. The Immortal Alliance has set up tens of thousands of formations in the mountains, including hundreds of large-scale formations, each covering an area of ​​several thousand miles, specifically used to detect fluctuations in the demonic sect's spiritual energy. While Void Refinement cultivators can barely suppress their aura and detour, it's almost impossible for Nascent Soul cultivators to pass through that defensive line undetected."

As she spoke, she stopped in front of a protruding rock platform, turned to look at him, and said, "Furthermore, there are numerous monitoring arrays within the Immortal Alliance's territory, distributed throughout various cities and markets. Once your spiritual energy fluctuations are recorded, they will pinpoint your location within several hours. You won't even have time to escape."

Li Hanshan leaned against the trunk of a purple bamboo tree, listening intently as Ye Shuanghua finished recounting the information, his mind racing. He thought, "I have a way to evade the detection array. Furthermore, my pure Yang energy is different from the cold, sinister aura of the demonic sect cultivators—it's not demonic energy. Even if the Immortal Alliance's detection array detects it, it will only be identified as some kind of predominantly Yang spiritual power, not directly label me as a demonic sect disciple."

Ye Shuanghua looked at him, and after a moment, her brows relaxed slightly, but the worry in her voice did not completely disappear: "Even if you can bypass the detection array and enter the heart of the Immortal Alliance, investigating their overall strength is not something that can be accomplished simply by hiding. The divine sense of a Dao Integration cultivator has an extremely wide coverage area; you will be detected as soon as you get close."

Ye Shuanghua remained silent for a moment, seemingly weighing his plan in her mind several times, before speaking, "Since you've made up your mind, I won't stop you." Her tone returned to its usual coolness, but beneath that coolness, there was clearly unspoken question: "When do you plan to set off?"

"As soon as possible." Li Hanshan straightened up from the bamboo stalk. "We'll depart in three days. In the next few days, I need you to tell me everything you know about the Immortal Alliance—the location of their mountain gates, the distribution of their major sects, the relationships between the sects, and the specific layout of the detection arrays on the Southern Ridge Mountains."

Ye Shuanghua did not refuse. She sat down on the edge of the rocky platform, patted the stone beside her, and gestured for Li Hanshan to sit as well. "The Immortal Alliance is much more complex than the Holy Alliance," she began, her voice much calmer than before. "They are composed of dozens of sects, but only three are truly influential. The two largest are the Biluo Sect and the Yunyin Pavilion. The Biluo Sect is primarily focused on sword cultivation, with a profound sect foundation. It is said that their sect leader is the master of that newly-formed Dao Integration cultivator. The Yunyin Pavilion specializes in talismans and formations; many of the Immortal Alliance's defensive systems were designed by them."

She paused for a moment, "The overall strength of the Immortal Alliance has always been weaker than that of the Holy Alliance. It's an undeniable fact that the Demonic Sect's cultivation speed is faster than the righteous path. We take shortcuts: plunder, dual cultivation, corpse refining, devouring—each of these allows cultivators to break through bottlenecks at a speed far exceeding that of the righteous path. Meanwhile, the Immortal Alliance cultivators can only rely on arduous training and fortuitous encounters, resulting in a cultivation speed far lower than ours. Therefore, they have always been suppressed by the Holy Alliance; a thousand years ago, they were almost wiped out by us."

As she spoke, a thoughtful glint flashed in her eyes, "But just a thousand years ago, the Immortal Alliance's strength suddenly began to rise. Their number of high-level cultivators doubled in just a few hundred years, and even the number of Dao Integration cultivators increased from one to two. The Holy Alliance has always suspected they received external assistance, but after a long investigation, they haven't been able to find the source."

"Foreign aid?" Li Hanshan asked, "What kind of foreign aid could enable them to rise so quickly?"

Ye Shuanghua paused for a moment, as if sorting through scattered fragments of information. "Our scouts have sent back some clues—occasionally, during the Immortal Alliance's operations, some cultivators with extremely pure auras appear. Their spiritual power is unlike any sect in the Central Continent, and their fighting style is completely different from the Central Continent's schools. Moreover, they rarely appear alone; they are always accompanied by core members of the Immortal Alliance, guarding them like protectors." She paused again. "The intelligence says these cultivators are not from the Central Continent. They come from the Endless Sea in the south."

Li Hanshan's heart skipped a beat: "The Endless Sea? Aren't there only demonic beasts and sea monsters over there?"

Ye Shuanghua shook her head: "There are immortal islands deep in the Endless Sea. We only confirmed this later—in the far south of the Endless Sea, there are vast islands shrouded in spiritual mist, with a spiritual energy concentration far exceeding that of any spiritual vein in the Central Continent. Cultivators live on those islands, sharing the same lineage as the immortals of the Central Continent, but they have never truly connected with the Central Continent. It wasn't until a thousand years ago that they began to make contact with the Immortal Alliance. It's possible that some force on those immortal islands proactively approached the Immortal Alliance, offering them cultivation techniques, elixirs, and even manpower."

She looked at Li Hanshan, "The fact that the Immortal Alliance was able to fill the gap in the Dao Integration stage in such a short time is likely related to the support from those immortal islands."

Li Hanshan went over her words in his mind. The immortal island in the far south of the Endless Sea, a cultivator force that had been isolated from the Central Continent for countless years, began to make contact with the Immortal Alliance a thousand years ago. This allowed the Immortal Alliance to survive and gradually grow into a behemoth capable of confronting the Holy Alliance.

The overall strength of those overseas fairy islands is probably extremely formidable.

It should be noted that the resources in the sea are actually exceptionally abundant, even comparable to those on land; otherwise, how could there be so many powerful monsters in the sea?

This also explains why these overseas immortal islands are so powerful. However, Li Hanshan still has some doubts, such as how these overseas immortal islands came to be in the first place. He wonders if the catastrophe that destroyed the Yaoguang Sect and the Beihuang Sword Sect had affected these overseas immortal islands.

In addition, the other sides of Zhongzhou are also vast and endless seas. Why are there no overseas fairy islands in these seas?