"Human civilization and Monster Civilization, deeply fused together..."
Meng Chao shuddered deeply. "Would a brand-new life form created this way still count as human?"
"That depends on how you define 'human.'"
Lü Siya spoke calmly. "In 1974, an Earth archaeologist named Donald Johanson discovered several shattered fossilized bones in a valley in Ethiopia. After reconstructing them, he obtained the skull of an ancient human and, through radiometric argon dating, determined that she had come from three million years ago.
"This was the earliest ancient human skull ever discovered by human archaeologists. They named its owner 'Lucy' and defined her as 'the world's first human.'
"But do you know? Miss Lucy, who came from three million years ago—the grandmother of all humanity—looked utterly different from modern humans. Through scientists' meticulous reconstruction, we could roughly simulate her appearance. She had a low forehead and protruding jaw, canine teeth and molars larger than those of modern humans, a brain far smaller than that of modern humans, and a shorter, more hunched body, covered from head to toe in coarse, stiff hair.
"Rather than calling her the grandmother of all humanity, it would be more accurate to say that she looked like the accidental product of an ape and a monkey after a drunken night.
"If Miss Lucy traveled through time to today and appeared before us, I'm afraid no one would think she was actually a 'human.'
"After Miss Lucy fell from a tree, died tragically, and became a fossil, humanity continued to evolve over the long three million years, changing its form again and again.
"Those who polished stone tools and painted murals were humans.
"Those who ate raw meat and drank blood, who cleared land with fire and cultivated it with blades, were humans.
"Those who chased cheetahs beneath the blazing