He had most likely observed ancient shrines and altars made for Totems of China. The Totem clans were also under constant warring until Sacred Totem Leaders forbade this practice of inciting wars to become stronger.
They also stagnanted in strength as a result and were eliminated by time. This was the true nature of this world. All creatures could be consumed by stronger creatures to improve themselves to a certain point. Among the few exceptions would be elemental creatures who only needed resources of certain elements and had no thirst for blood for this reason.
Sacred Totems Leaders and other Totems had moved out of this path and focused themselves to the path of faith until humanity probably eliminated them. Due to the emergence of the faith path, humans who were just like demon beasts in the wild rose in stature instantly. They held cognitive function and thoughts regardless of their strength and were more important to Totems. Who preferred them over beasts and became their guardian and laid down rules to protect them.
This practice continued on till humanity discoverd magic by observing different demon species and gained one element after another. They observed Elemental Sacred spirits like Flame Belle to discover Fire element and Flowers like Li Fan to improve Psychic strength and so on till a genius observed natural lightning to awaken the Lightning element. The last of the orthodox elements.
Since then Humanity had hit a bottleneck. Naturally all of these weren't universal truths merely Cao Guang's understanding after researching and remembering the future.
Cao Guang also would not blame humans for eliminating Totems, he was different from Mo Fan in that way. In his opinion it was inevitable if humanity continued to progress they would have clashes with their masters. It remained true to this day.
In his opinion humanity's mistake was not improving enough to deal with the Sea by themselves. If they weren't strong enough there was no problem using a crutch like Totems to him.
He also would not pity the villagers after stealing their Water of Kun. He would leave them enough and take a little from every village.
Afterall it was a renewable resource, it wa also his plan to repay these villages in the future in a different way. And he would have just the opportunity as well.
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Cao Guang and his squad collected the mission from Military HQ. They were tasked with delivering medicines Sunny Goat Village.
The Village had seen a recent upturn in sick people and needed more medicines than they had and requested the military to escort one of the villagers in Ancient Capital with the medicine back to the village.
Cao Guang roughly knew where the village was located and they had a villager along with them. He bought some Ash Garlic from the market for safety and brought it with him as they set off.
Ash Garlic was mainly produced by these villages. But they would sell it in Ancient Capital for money and some other resources. They just wouldn't speak about it's other effects.
Since they had a normal human with them they would be traveling the whole journey at walking pace. It was already noon when they set off and they would have spend a night in the battlefield if they weren't fast enough.
The villager named Fang Gu would be the one coming with them. Cao Guang was aware that this guy was not a normal human and was a mage when he read his data and met up with him.
Although he would also be the chief of Sunny Goat Village in the future as well. Fang Gu had awakened Undead element as his primary he had no intentions of cultivation any further after he reached the peak of primary level and did not even have an Undead to summon right now.
Infact Undead magic was heavily under utilised in the China. It had the second largest number of Undead mages after Egypt yet there wasn't even a troop of them in Ancient Capital which was supposed to be land of Undead.
In Cao Guang's opinion it was a waste of an element. The Undead element worked slightly different than Summoning. One could cultivate a lowe level Undead to higher levels, but Undead could not be created that easily either.
China also lacked a lot of knowledge about the element, due to lack of historical knowledge since the death of the Ancient Emperor.
They lacked knowledge about borrowing and making contracts with Undead as well and the Magic Association did not do a lot to improve the situation either. Maybe from their perspective it was better to not overly develop this element.
Cao Guang would however change this after reaching a level where he had voice in the military. Something he was closer to now thanks to the Incendiary Fire invention he had made.