Han Xiao spent two minutes skimming through Serre V's proposal, then casually handed the document to Lothaire, nodding, "It seems you're not planning to consult the people of Goddora."
"While this matter is beneficial to the future of civilization, the free will of the majority will only hold it back; only a dictatorial approach can advance this plan." Now that it was a private meeting without any prior communication, Serre V spoke much more directly.
Lothaire, who was standing next to her, skimmed through the document with an air of nonchalance, nodded reservedly, and said, "I understand your request. Are you sure you don't want to implant something else in the minds of the people?"
Upon hearing this, Serre V wiped away a cold sweat. "No need, no need. Eliminating discrimination is enough."
"Well, if it's just about eliminating discrimination, that's very simple for me."
Lothaire gave a mysterious smile that sent a chill down Serre V's spine.
When facing outsiders, Lothaire wasn't as casual as she was in front of Han Xiao. Han Xiao had already told her on the way to maintain her composure and not to reveal her true nature and scare Serre V. At this moment, Lothaire pressed her fingers against her cheekbone, looked at Serre V, smiled elegantly, and explained her thoughts.
"Black Star has already told me the situation. According to my understanding, the Bloodline conflicts in your Goddora mainly stem from three sources. First, the traditional concept of pure Bloodline has been passed down through generations. Under the influence of the interstellar environment, only a small number of pure-blooded individuals still stubbornly believe in this view. I call this group the diehards, and their thinking is the hardest to change."
"The second reason is discrimination stemming from physiological differences, which arises from an instinctive aversion to seeing intelligent life or deformed beings. Perhaps some pure-blooded people do not intend to discriminate against mixed-race individuals, but they cannot help but feel disgusted upon seeing them. This is the reason for discrimination among most people. To reverse this, I think we need to start with aesthetics."
"Thirdly, there's the hatred accumulated from numerous conflicts caused by years of discrimination. It's a legacy of history. Moreover, due to discrimination, pure-blooded people have a higher average social status than mixed-race people and have more say in various industries, which can be seen as a class conflict. Although I can temporarily suppress this hatred, if you don't change the status quo, the conflict will resurface in the long run."
Serre V found this incredibly disconcerting.
In his eyes, each of these three factors was a near-unsolvable problem. Just listening to Lothaire's analysis made him feel incredibly troubled, and once again he began to doubt the feasibility of the plan.
Lothaire seemed to see through his worries and said calmly, "Optimistically speaking, it would take at least several decades to mitigate these problems using conventional methods. But now that I'm here, I can shorten that process by thousands of times. The first two points are the main issues. As long as the problems of the die-hards and aesthetics are resolved, class contradictions will gradually improve."
Serre V took a deep breath, stood up, and bowed deeply to Han Xiao and Lothaire, performing a grand salute common throughout interstellar space.
Please help me!
In the morning, the warm yellow sunlight awakened the sleeping city.
In a commercial plaza on the homeworld of Goddora, towering buildings stand tall, with hovercars shuttling between them. From time to time, passersby wearing flight runes take off or land on the open-air platforms extending from the high-rises, creating a bustling and vibrant scene.
At this moment, a long queue is forming at a suspended bus stop on an open-air platform. It's the morning commute time for office workers, and these Goddora are waiting for public transportation to get to work.
The star system civilization has enough productivity to support lazy, gluttonous people, but the home planet, as the capital of the civilization, has always maintained vigorous vitality. Those who settle on the home planet are all high-quality laborers who are willing to work hard, unlike the peripheral jurisdictions of the Gauting Colony Planet, which are lifeless and full of lazy people who have no concept of "going to work".
Ludi stood in the middle of the line, dressed respectably and looking like a social elite. However, unlike the surrounding Goddora people, he had no outer ear and his ears were spiral holes. He also did not wear braids or ornaments like the other Goddora people because he did not have long hair. His facial features were also more spaced apart, which looked quite incongruous and made him appear very different.
He was the only mixed-race person in the entire team.
Ludi could feel the subtle gazes cast upon him from all around, concealing a hidden sense of rejection. He remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, seemingly indifferent and unmoved. In reality, he secretly hoped that the hoverbus would arrive at its stop immediately, freeing him from this treatment of being stared at like an animal in a zoo.
Ludi is sixty-three years old this year, which is middle age according to the lifespan of the Goddora people. He is a senior employee of a large corporation with a high income. In theory, he should have a middle-class status in society. However, his appearance brings him potential obstacles everywhere. He knows that his current position is basically the limit and he will not be promoted anymore.
Every day, what he hated most was going to work, not because the work was hard, but because going to work meant he had to socialize and endure all sorts of strange looks. Every day he was under tremendous psychological pressure, but he couldn't show any emotion on his face. Countless times he would wake up in the middle of the night and sit blankly in the dark, thinking that he might as well quit his job and not torture himself.
But every time Ludi saw his sleeping wife beside him, he would dismiss the idea.
His wife is a beautiful pure-blooded woman who married him, a mixed-race man, against her family's wishes and bore him two children. Years into their marriage, his wife's family still treats him coldly, while his wife rarely complains. For the sake of his family, Ludi dares not quit his job and can only let his anxiety and annoyance vent silently and quietly in the time it takes for a cigarette to burn.
For him, life was stagnant, like a gray silent film playing on repeat every day. Only when he came home and saw his wife and children's smiling faces would he regain color and sound. Ludi had no expectations for the future. He couldn't see that the road ahead was actually beautiful. What was scary was a life where he could see the end from the beginning.
Ludi chuckled self-deprecatingly. Just then, the two people behind him started talking, and their conversation reached his ears.
"Have you heard? The DarkStar Leader was captured recently, marking the complete annihilation of the DarkStar organization."
"More than half a month has passed, of course I know."
"Heh heh, there are reports that the DarkStar Leader's trial has ended and he's been imprisoned in Rainbow Light Prison."
"I don't know that, tell me about it..."
Hearing the two people behind him deliberately chatting, Ludi could only pretend not to hear.
Because of the existence of DarkStar, hybrids have faced more criticism. After the DarkStar organization was destroyed, purebloods have mentioned DarkStar to him intentionally or unintentionally more than once, as if it were a form of mockery.
Ludi did not agree with DarkStar's ideology. As a hybrid who longed for stability, he even despised DarkStar's behavior. But from the perspective of purebloods, it seemed that every hybrid worshipped DarkStar, and DarkStar's destruction was equivalent to the failure of hybrids. Thus, they could adopt the posture of victors and feel triumphant.
Just then, a virtual screen projection rose between the tall buildings in the distance, attracting everyone's attention.
The image of Serre V appeared on the virtual screen. He faced the camera, looking serious and sitting upright, as if he had something important to announce.
The same scene unfolded in the cities of every colonized planet of Goddora, with the official announcement reaching the entire civilization.
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, Serre V slowly began to speak:
"Today, on behalf of the Goddora government, I announce an important decision. To avoid a repeat of the tragedy of DarkStar, we have decided to accept the assistance of the Amethyst Civilization and use unconventional methods to address our long-standing issue of Bloodline discrimination..."
King Serre V recited his prepared speech with great emotion, describing the situation as the Amethyst Civilization offering assistance, and how he, after careful consideration, decided to accept the help. He embellished his words to minimize the people's sense of rejection.
However, all the people of Goddora were stunned by the news and fell silent.
It wasn't until seconds after the news ended that countless people snapped out of their daze and erupted in a deafening uproar.
"That was so sudden! There was absolutely no warning!"
"This is trying to brainwash us!"
"Why must you try to change our mindset? Free will is inviolable! Has Serre V gone mad?"
Will there be any long-term effects?
"Is this the meaning of the Amethyst Civilization? It might be reliable."
The surrounding Goddora people were talking all at once, with varying reactions, but mostly expressing astonishment and dissatisfaction.
Ludi didn't participate in the discussion; his eyes widened, his face filled with disbelief.
At that moment, he felt as if his long-numbed heart had been revitalized and was pounding.
A crack seemed to appear in his stagnant future, revealing the dawn of dramatic change.
On this day, people from all walks of life in Goddora mobilized, trying to find out the government's intentions through various channels, and everyone was filled with anxiety.
No one wants their thoughts to be altered, not even if it's something great for the collective. As expected, individual will backfired. Serre V promised subsidies, tax cuts, and all sorts of benefits after accepting the "discrimination reform" plan, but he didn't give the people the option to refuse.
The internet was in an uproar, and real-world protest groups sprang up like mushrooms after rain. Serre V's plan shocked the entire society, but he remained obstinate.
With Amethyst's intervention, internal resistance was forcibly suppressed, and the massive government machinery began to operate according to his wishes.
The upper classes of society were basically controlled by pure-bloods. These people possessed enormous power, and most of them were diehards. They had not received any prior warning either. Although they disliked Serre V's plan, they did not immediately jump out to oppose it. Instead, they calmly observed the situation, so external resistance did not intensify.
The name of Amethyst helped Serre V avoid further controversy. A cluster-level civilization could still intimidate the Goddora. Even though Serre V's behavior resembled dictatorship, many Goddora believed it was the will of the Amethyst Civilization.
Various factors enabled Serre V to forcefully push forward this almost reckless and insane plan.
Seeing that they could not sway the government's intentions, all the Goddora people focused their attention on the pilot area of the first "discrimination reform" plan announced by Serre V, which was the border territory of the Gauting Colony Planet.
An insignificant, otaku-friendly planet is naturally an ideal location for a pilot project; even if negative consequences occur, the negative impact on the entire civilization will be limited.
Rainbow Light Prison, top-secret single cell.
The DarkStar Leader sat in the corner of the cell, which was pitch black, so dark that he could not see his own hand in front of his face. In the darkness, he could only hear his own breathing.
His trial was over, Goddora and Amethyst got what they wanted, so he was imprisoned and would spend the rest of his life in jail.
The hope that sustained his beliefs had been destroyed. The DarkStar Leader seemed to have lost his backbone, his aura collapsed, and his heart became numb.
Rainbow Light Prison has the power to destroy the faith of DarkStar members. He doesn't know if he can hold on in the future, but he doesn't care about anything anymore.
Clang!
The narrow feeding window below the cell door opened, and a dish of food, along with light, was thrown into the cell.
"Recently, Serre V has actually tried to brainwash all the Goddora people to eliminate discrimination against mixed-race people. Has he been turned by you DarkStar?"
The jailer outside the door suddenly spoke, his tone sarcastic. After saying this, he closed the feeding slit and his footsteps gradually faded away.
In the darkness, the DarkStar Leader suddenly opened his eyes. His previously numb eyes were instantly filled with astonishment, and he looked completely bewildered.
Brainwashing an entire civilization?!
Holy crap, could it be that we're kindred spirits? You're even better at this than me!
You should be leading DarkStar!!