Ugly!

handing over the methods of making the three talismans and the 15 furnaces to the royal family really did not bother him much...

Handing over the furnaces can be like simply raising their quota of categorized weapons, and that would only hurt him by a few thousand, or at most, a few tens of thousands of gold coins per month, which is nothing when compared to any single industry he has, like the sound talisman carriers for example!

As for the methods of making three talismans, this is the price of playing with higher-ups.

He didn't make them from the start to keep them to himself, they would all be distributed sooner or later for the right price, 

the only thing in his mind about this was that he now have to make more kinds of talismans and techniques quickly before he needed something else big from the royal family...

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After this call with the sage, he went back with full focus on his research