With Huang Ji explaining profound ideas in simple terms, everyone became immersed in humanity's sweeping epic.
A hymn to humanity was a hymn to courage. Those words could not have been more true.
No wonder the Star Alliance had made defying the instinct for survival one of its criteria.
A unique kind of courage and conviction was the greatest difference between intelligent beings and species struggling within a natural ecosystem.
Huang Ji said, "In short, humanity went through three stages: unintelligent, intelligent, and highly intelligent. Each corresponded to a different kind of treatment from the Star Alliance."
"Unintelligent races could be slaughtered, enslaved, and traded at will, like livestock. Intelligent races could not be slaughtered, but outsiders could interfere with them, teach them, and control them. They were treated like servants."
"And now we're classified as rare intelligent beings. Interference is forbidden, and we're protected while they wait for us to independently develop into an interstellar civilization."
"But 'rare' is only a label. Don't assume humanity is actually all that rare. We do have potential as a civilization, but it isn't particularly high. If that potential were divided into five tiers, we would belong to the lowest."
Evil Dragon, Lin Li, Adams, and the others were overwhelmed with emotion. Humanity had endured so much. Its first rise in status had come through the Dragonkin's help, and its second through Severing the Heavens. Only the efforts and sacrifices of countless forebears had made today's seemingly peaceful development possible.
Humanity had struggled through untold suffering to reach the present, only to discover that it was still merely a sub-civilization with the lowest tier of potential in the universe.
In the vast universe, there was always someone stronger. Humanity thought highly of itself, but in truth, its genes and culture were both thoroughly