Kantian Eternal Life said with disgust, "The Seven Treasures Heavenly Toad Clan is selfish and arrogant, despicable and shameless, cowardly yet brazen. Ordinarily, there would be no need to deal with creatures like them at all, but they do have one virtue. That virtue is the only reason they can
communicate with other civilizations."
"Integrity," Lu Yin supplied.
Kantian Eternal Life said, "Exactly. Integrity."
"In the Cubic Distance, civilizations don't communicate with one another, but they do compete. One civilization will always encounter another. If their strength is comparable, they can't truly fight to the death. Compromise and retreat are possible, too. Competition depends
on integrity."
"The Seven Treasures Heavenly Toad Clan already has all kinds of personality flaws that make them loathsome. If they lacked integrity as well, they'd have been wiped out long ago. The only ones who need nothing from anyone are the Fishing Civilization, but the Seven Treasures Heavenly Toad Clan isn't part of the Fishing Civilization. They
don't want to destroy every civilization they encounter. They have their own goals."
Azure Lotus Supreme nodded. "Integrity is the platform on which the Seven Treasures Heavenly Toad Clan deals with others. That makes sense."
Lu Yin thought of Star Toad. That damned frog treated Tribulation Crossing as a business, and the more he did, the better. He'd even trade for star energy, which was utterly worthless to him as a Cross Tribulation expert. Whatever else one could say about him, that damned frog was honest,
at most exploiting loopholes in the rules of a deal.
If not for that, he would have died long ago, back when humanity and the Eternal Clan were fighting in Primeval Space.
Humanity had hired him to deal with the Eternal Clan, and the Eternal Clan had hired him to deal with