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

When Shen Yun's words landed in the workshop, the disciples who had been whispering around her seemed to be put on pause at the same time, all their voices fading away in that instant. Then, like a lit fuse, the discussions surged up again with even greater force, spreading from the center of the workshop in all directions, like a turbulent tide churning endlessly in the narrow space.

"Is the sect leader going to betroth Senior Sister Qingyue to him?"

"Good heavens! That's the sect leader's only daughter!"

"Elder Li has only been in the Purple Thunder Pavilion for less than a year, yet he has already drawn a fifth-tier Purple Thunder Talisman, and now he has drawn a sixth-tier one—is the Sect Master trying to completely bind him to the Purple Thunder Pavilion?"

"I'd tie him up too! How many sixth-tier talisman masters are there in the entire Immortal Alliance? Not to mention he's so young."

Those gazes, like layers of lit candlelight, illuminated Li Hanshan's figure with exceptional clarity. There was envy, there was amazement, and a few sour glances flickered uncertainly at the edge of the crowd, but all were drowned out by the tidal wave of praise.

Standing in front of the desk, Li Hanshan could feel the weight of those gazes growing stronger.

Li Hanshan withdrew his gaze, clasped his hands in a fist salute, and said, "Sect Master, shouldn't we consult Qingyue's opinion on this matter first?"

Upon hearing this, the murmurs in the workshop fell silent for a brief moment, like water droplets being suppressed. Shen Yun's gaze lingered on Li Hanshan's face for a couple of breaths, then she said after a moment of silence, "I can make the decision regarding Qingyue."

As a mother, she certainly has the authority to make decisions.

However, Li Hanshan doesn't want to get married so soon. Although he has many women, none of them have officially married him yet. Many women initially had designs on him but were then conquered by him, such as Hua Nongying, Qin Muyue, and Granny Yin.

These women are all ruthless demonic witches who kill without blinking an eye. Although they are all devoted to him now, and Li Hanshan treats them as his women, marriage is impossible.

There were also women like Jiang Nianwei and Ye Shuanghua who had no ill intentions towards him from the beginning, but Li Hanshan had not considered marriage as a possibility.

Although Shen Qingyue was quite nice, Li Hanshan didn't want to get married right after joining the Immortal Alliance. Even though he was a transmigrator, marriage was still a serious matter.

He quickly calculated in his mind—given his current status, a direct refusal would not only cause Shen Yun to lose face, but would also crack the foundation of trust he had painstakingly built within the Purple Thunder Pavilion. However, if he agreed, he was only there to gather information from the Immortal Alliance, and his position would become awkward should the Immortal Alliance and the Demonic Sect go to war in the future.

"Sect Master's kindness is an honor I cannot bestow," he said, his voice steady. "But such important matters in life are not child's play. I am new to the Immortal Alliance, my foundation is not yet secure, and I beg Sect Master's permission to consider this for some time."

Shen Yun's gaze lingered on his face for a moment, as if weighing the sincerity and evasion in his words. After a moment, she nodded slightly, her tone regaining its composure: "Alright. You've only been at Purple Thunder Pavilion for a short time, so you do need time to adjust. There's no rush to decide this; you can think it over carefully."

She realized she had been too hasty.

There was no way around it; Li Hanshan's talent for talisman making was simply unseen and unheard of. She herself was already the most brilliant talisman maker in the history of the Purple Thunder Pavilion, and even talisman masters from overseas immortal islands believed that her future achievements were limitless.

However, her talent for making talismans was far inferior to Li Hanshan's.

All told, Li Hanshan had only been learning talisman-making for less than two years, yet she was already able to draw a sixth-order Purple Thunder Talisman. She herself had spent over a thousand years to draw a sixth-order Purple Thunder Talisman.

Although she spent most of those thousand years cultivating, and only spent a hundred or two hundred years truly practicing the Dao of the Jade Talisman, this was enough to demonstrate the terrifying talent of Li Hanshan.

Such a genius was enough for her to spare no expense, preparing to use her own daughter to bind the other party to the Purple Thunder Pavilion, but Li Hanshan politely declined.

Does this mean he's not interested in his daughter?

Shen Yun didn't dwell on the issue too much. She shifted the topic back to the sixth-order purple lightning talisman on the table, her fingertip lightly touching the still unstable spiritual light on the edge of the talisman: "However, although the sixth-order purple lightning talisman is drawn, it's still missing the most crucial step before it's truly usable."

Li Hanshan followed her gaze to the talisman, his Void Refinement level divine sense carefully perceiving the spiritual energy flowing within the silver-purple patterns on its surface. Indeed, as she said, while the patterns were complete, the flow of spiritual energy exhibited a slight stagnation at the core nodes of the talisman, like a shallow, un-dredged section in a repaired riverbed. This was a natural defect caused by insufficient spiritual energy quality—the Nascent Soul level spiritual energy injected during its creation ultimately couldn't fully meet the purity requirements of a sixth-tier talisman.

Shen Yun withdrew her hand, her tone tinged with helplessness: "Once a sixth-order Purple Thunder Talisman is formed, it must be activated by a Void Refinement cultivator injecting Void Refinement level spiritual power to truly possess the power a sixth-order talisman should have. If it is forcibly activated with Nascent Soul level spiritual power, it can only unleash the power of a high-grade fifth-order talisman at most, and may even cause the rune structure to collapse due to insufficient spiritual power quality."

She carefully put away the blueprint for the sixth-tier purple lightning talisman, leaned back in her chair, and stared at the talisman paper that hadn't been fully activated yet: "I've been stuck at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage for many years, always just one step away from the Void Refinement stage. So, although this talisman has been drawn, to truly unleash its full power, you'll have to wait for a Void Refinement senior to infuse it with spiritual energy."

After listening, Li Hanshan followed up with a question: "Aren't there any Void Refinement cultivators stationed in Qingyun City?"

Shen Yun shook her head, her eyes showing a familiar calm: "No. Qingyun City is just an ordinary city in the Southern Ridge. The Immortal Alliance has established a total of 180 cities along the Southern Ridge mountain range, which together form the entire defensive line. These 180 cities are divided into 18 defense zones, with 10 cities forming each zone, each guarded by a Void Refinement cultivator. Qingyun City is in the seventh defense zone, and the Void Refinement senior in charge of the entire zone is stationed in the zone's main city, Yujing, which is about 5,000 li away from here."

Li Hanshan's face showed just the right amount of surprise: "One hundred and eighty cities, with one Void Refinement cultivator in charge of every ten cities, wouldn't the Immortal Alliance have at least eighteen Void Refinement cultivators?" He said this with curiosity in his tone and with the shock unique to a rogue cultivator who had just learned about the situation.

Shen Yun shook her head slightly, a serious look appearing in her almond-shaped eyes: "More than that. The Void Refinement cultivators stationed in the defense zones are only the official personnel. The number of high-level cultivators in the Immortal Alliance has grown rapidly in the past few hundred years, and the number of Void Refinement cultivators has long exceeded fifty. Most of this force is concentrated in the core areas of the major sects and will not be easily mobilized, but if a war breaks out, they can be deployed to the front lines at any time."

Fifty! Good heavens, the overall strength of the Immortal Alliance is actually this strong!

It should be noted that the three major demonic sects in the Central Continent only have about thirty Void Refinement cultivators at most. Even if you include the Void Refinement cultivators from other minor demonic sects, the total number probably wouldn't reach fifty.

From this perspective, the Immortal Alliance has surpassed the three major demonic sects of the Central Continent in terms of the number of cultivators at the Void Refinement stage, only lacking one at the Dao Integration stage.

Now that they have made up for their shortcomings as Dao Integration cultivators, no wonder the Immortal Alliance is preparing to take down the Demonic Sect of Central Continent in one fell swoop.

This made Li Hanshan even more curious. How did the Immortal Alliance manage to produce so many Void Refinement cultivators in just one thousand years? Even for the Demon Sect, it often takes hundreds or thousands of years for a Nascent Soul cultivator to reach the Void Refinement stage, and even longer for a Void Refinement cultivator.

The cultivation speed of righteous cultivators is far lower than that of demonic cultivators, so the surge in the number of Void Refinement cultivators in the Immortal Alliance is something that Li Hanshan finds hard to understand.

This is too unusual.

Shen Yun paused for a moment, then her gaze became more serious: "Although this information isn't top secret within the Immortal Alliance, it's still kept confidential from outsiders. Fellow Daoist Li, you're now a member of the Purple Thunder Pavilion, so just listen to these words and don't mention them to anyone else." Her tone was calm, but the seriousness in her eyes was genuine.

Li Hanshan clasped his hands in a fist salute and said, "This disciple understands. The sect leader trusts this disciple, and this disciple will naturally not betray that trust."