Cao Guang wrapped up his call with Song Xia, he had sucessfully convinced her to endorse Japan and Switzerland when it came to training locations.
Now all that remained was to let the advisors take care of the rest. No one was more eager to choose great training spots for the national team than the advisors.
It was great glory for them to lead a bunch inexperienced college mages to win the tournament, if they were in the Enforcement Unions their careers would be fast tracked like Feng Li's was.
Any winner of the tournament would go on to be a great mage as well given enough time. Why would they say no to his ideas. The maritime battlefield idea was sure to catch on, the national teams already had a history of doing that.
It was the Alps institute section that worried him, the advisors wouldn't be willing to throw so many benefits to a neutral organisation. Besides the Alps had become a near subsidiary of the Holy City thanks to the pressure of Parthenon.
Parthenon and Alps not getting on together was no new topic. Alps was founded by an exiled Candidate of Parthenon in the first place. Unlike the Parthenon, Alps was never a power hungry place.
It focused on helping orphans around the globe out of altruism. They were also an all girls institute. Alps institute would want land in China in return for letting their national team train with the Faerun Falls, it was probably something the country would be unwilling to do.
It was an expanding period for human cities but no nation would like other organisations gaining a foothold in their territory and draining talented mages. Alps were an international institute, they would accept all nationalities.
Despite all their altruism what go Alps institute into trouble was the fact they never even produced a Forbidden Curse Mage. How were they supposed to stand up to Parthenon like that. Besides Yizisha's period as a Candidate was over which meant the time bomb she had planted in Alps called Edith was ready.
If not for the fact that she was unable to gain the spirit of Parthenon even after killing her brother she would be free enough to take care of them. Yet the Parthenon themselves went into a helpless period went Yizisha went ahead with her even crazier plan.
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Cao Guang rested for the weekend. He didn't cultivate at all. He spent his time checking up on Mo Fan and other interesting individuals. The guy was in middle school now and his grade was just as bad.
Cao Guang also searched various upcoming auctions for suitable Soul grade seed of the Fire element. If he was able improve his Fire element like he planned to, he could make a killing out of the World College tournament.
He flew to the nearest city he could and made his way to the North guard Fortress. It was the place where Zhao Manyan helped the army hold back the Underworld Frog and the Yoked.
The Beijiang Desolate Beasts were a group of aggressive predatory species that looked a lot similar to a fusion of apes and wolves. They had four legs, but could stay bipedal for a short while and fight.
They were large in size and were a Warrior level species. Even the weakest of these creatures were Warrior level killing machines.
They were five metres large even just as Warriors, they Commanders and Rulers were even more impressive. Fortunately they had no Emperors among them for the past few millennia.
It was rumoured the Emperor of Beijiang Desolate Beasts were an arch enemy of Ying Zheng. He build the Northern part of the great Wall just for the purpose of holding these detectable creatures back.
A plethora of battles between ancient kingdom of China and Beijing Desolate Beasts had taken place when Ying Zheng was still a respectable Emperor.
He made rivers out of their blood, when he finally slayed the Desolate Beast Emperor after reaching the peak of Forbidden Curse level.
After that the Beijiang Desolate Beast's strength shriveled as they eeked out subpar Rulers every generation untill the current one, which had cultivated itself to the Supreme Ruler level and had a few more Rulers under it.
The species had become a thorn in the military's side again. They would march to attack the Wall where they once fell like crazed idiots every Summer.
At first it may been about revenge, but they soon developed to have their mating season in Summer and used the human mages and the energy their bodies contained as the main source of energy during this period. Every dead mage was slowly going to be a new Desolate Beast. The circle of life was certainly cruel.
Cao Guang went through the markets of the Fortress looking to buy information on the distribution of these beasts as he went outside the Wall. This year's big battle at the Wall had ended and military had suffered significant losses.
They had moved on to retaliation, this was also a period were they would be the weakest. This was a method they used to control the strength of these beasts for the past two thousand years.
The birth of that Supreme Ruler had certainly thrown the plans off. The one called the Desolate Matriarch was a suprise to everyone when it's existence had been confirmed.
It was a great negligence on the army who were tasked with limiting the strength of these beasts by any means and suddenly after thousands of years someone had screwed up allowing these beasts to be a serious threat again.
He had heard the news that all officials involved had been punished after the fact, but the new ones were left holding the bag.
Cao Guang bought some distribution maps from a few vendors. It was common for Hunter to come here every year and take part in the offensive. Besides it was easy pickings as it was the few periods were these beasts were vulnerable.
Cao Guang had even heard of a tactic from a few centuries ago. The generals would bring criminals and convicted mages and non mages here from all over the country. The ones that were on life imprisonment without parole or on death sentence.
Unlike the tower of Osaka, instead of just imprisoning them they would made to fight and kill these Desolate Beasts. When they eventually become the food for these beasts and filled their appetite, the generals would be able to save a lot of manpower among the soldiers.
They would then launch campaign to cull their numbers as much as possible. It was a common strategy humans would go on the offensive against every horde of demon beasts that did not have an Emperor tomlead them. Currently there were three confirmed Emperors in mainland China along with one unconfirmed and one unofficial ones.
The three Emperors were
one Heavenly Fox Emperor and Kunlun Tiger Ancestor, both residents of Kunlun mountains and the latter was among the best Emperors and a serious threat to humans. Luckily it was rumoured to be uninterested in human lands and ruled his subjects with an iron fist.
The Kunlun mountains were it's kingdom and it didn't allow any demons to leave it's territory. There were rumours that the Kunlun Tiger Ancestor had reached a level were humans were no longer a viable food source. The resource that it needed was unimaginable.
The third one was the Razortail Dragon Emperor of Dongting Lake. It was an Emperor level true dragon, it was on the quest to sire pure blooded descendants and often caused trouble to humans by infusing dragon blood into the Giant Lizard species in attempting to site children.
It was also called the Incest Emperor for obvious reasons
The uncomfirmed Emperor was once on the side of humans also called Ying Zheng or basically Qin Shi Huang or the Qin Emperor and the father of Undead and discoverer of the Undead element. The first human Emperor of these lands and the builder of the great Wall. He had slayed an Emperor during his lifetime even if only to become one himself in the future.
The unofficial Emperor was in the Siberian Icelands. China and Mongolia bordered the Siberia and were often in the crossfires of its subordinates who had a poor sense of direction. Ofcourse neither country was as affected as Russia.
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If not for the fact that the Desolate were tired out and resting and preparing for the population infusion, Cao Guang would have been forced to join a party of Hunters to hunt these things down.
Then he would have to split the resources with them, making the whole process a lot longer than it needed to be. Cao Guang's plan was to abuse their inability to deal with aerial prowess and escape of push came to shove. And without teammates he didn't have any one to protect with his big brother complex.