Were humans united?
Jia Xiu felt that depended on the situation, chiefly on the frame of reference used for comparison.
Compared to the Devil Race, they were undoubtedly united—practically as united as they could possibly be. If the Devil Race learned to help one another... forget it, perhaps mutual aid was asking too much. If they merely learned not to kill their own teammates in battle, they would have flattened every nation long ago.
But if unity meant close cooperation, no hidden agendas, and no faction harboring its own schemes and calculations, then humanity was indeed still quite far from unity.
So when the emperor of the Ukmak Empire said that he had conditions, no one present was surprised.
It would have been stranger if he had none.
The Ukmak Empire Research Institute's projects had always had the least exchange with the rest of the continent.
It was not that they never communicated. Sometimes, the Empire would even take the initiative to release certain research.
For example, the plane-traversal magical device they had given Jia Xiu.
But that had been in the hope that Jia Xiu could make some new breakthrough on its foundation.
And Jia Xiu had indeed made a breakthrough, though not on the basis of the original magical device.
That behavior was less like academic exchange and more like encountering a bottleneck they truly could not overcome, then bringing in some "outsiders" to give it a try.
Like buying a lottery ticket after running out of every other option.
As for projects where they still had options—projects they could continue advancing—they had never revealed them.
The Ukmak Empire had its own journals, its own academic conferences, and its own evaluation system. As the most populous nation on the continent today, its proportion of members in the Caster