Indeed, in the nation and era where Heron once lived, her people stood with spines like mountain ridges, never bowing to a storm of oppression.

Where there was oppression, there was resistance, a law written in blood and fire by countless souls and martyrs, like torches along a dark road.

That honor could not be defiled, a banner that did not drop in rain or ash.

Because of that honor, a nation once crushed by great powers clenched its teeth, swallowed blood and bone like bitter herbs, and hammered enemy spines.

They beat the invaders until fear showed in their eyes, like wolves driven from a valley, and stood firm again upon the world’s plain.

You could say her people were a book carved in granite, every page a vow of never yielding.

“Our people, after the state stood up again, went through a hard, flinty stretch,” Heron said, voice soft as night rain.

“We’d just swept a house full of soot and were only starting to rest, yet the rotten dynasty had left us behind on every road.”

Heron smiled bitterly and shook her head, respect for that age rising in her chest like morning mist over a river.

“I truly admire them. Without their struggle, my generation wouldn’t have had a warm hearth to sit by.”

“We ate fruit from trees they planted, so in a way we were beneficiaries, and I never forgot the martyrs whose roots fed us.”

In that age, the state revived its broken fields, like spring greening a burnt hillside.

Backwardness had once made the people taste humiliation like sand in their teeth, and the country felt the yoke bite.

Some tested the rising nation with war, like jackals probing a fence.

With rusty rifles and steel hearts, they showed the enemy what an iron army was, a river of iron rolling through thorns.

The days were hard, yet exiled compatriots returned like migratory birds finding old shores.

Blood binds like red rivers under skin, and homesickness lived in their bones like buried seeds.

Countless talents came back to the newborn state, offering strength in every field like beams to a rising hall.

Technological gaps were patched with numbers, sandbags against a flood.

Short of grain and shells, they carried iron will, like nails biting wood.

The country broke “common sense” more than once, like a river bursting old levees.

After decades of turbulence and growth, in a future year, it rallied nations craving change, a drum calling distant camps.

It leaped into great-power ranks, a hawk rising on a wide wind.

Later generations drove hard like oars biting a fast current, and at last they caught the fleet of strong states.

The nation looked verdant and thriving, a field full of shoots.

Technology kept catching up, and finally the country had a clear voice, a bell that carried across valleys.

They gripped sharp weapons, for steel in hand is the root of strength, like a spine inside a body.

“But remember,” Heron said, rubbing the Zerg Maiden’s head like smoothing new leaves, “no civilization is truly eternal.”

“It can shine long like a summer sun, yet when it peaks, it begins to wane, and every nation has its curtain fall.”

“Mother, even our current civilization?” the Zerg Maiden asked, eyes bright like stars behind thin cloud.

“Yes. Even ours. It will have its dim season,” Heron said, calm as a lake at dusk.

“Only reforms at crossroads keep the flame alive, like oil fed to a lamp.”

“I’m only someone pushing the wheel to turn. How far this civilization walks, I can’t say.”

“Maybe your generation will witness its next dawn,” she added, voice like a lantern held at a fork in the path.

Facing the Zerg Maiden’s confusion, Heron did not hedge; she spoke like wind that clears dust.

She admitted the newborn civilization still had many lacks; that’s normal as stones in a riverbed.

Even with Aether, a power that probes essence like light through grain, immortality isn’t promised.

Long lifespans bring problems, like trees heavy with dead branches that need pruning.

“Of course, that’s later,” Heron said, turning the page back like a hand smoothing old paper.

“For now we’re speaking of the civilization where I lived.”

“Since your country grew strong, Mother, why did you still want reform?” the Zerg Maiden asked, voice soft as a moth’s wing.

“Because by my era, the country had passed its zenith,” Heron answered, a ripe fruit with rot at the core.

“It began to decline, and laughable things sprouted in a state that looked strong, like mold on silk.”

Heron sighed, deep as wind through pines; she didn’t wish to pick at that scar.

But since the Zerg Maiden asked, she would answer, lest the child someday stand against the newborn civilization like a sapling bent the wrong way.

“In later years, absurdities bloomed,” Heron said, a chill like frost tracing her words.

“Agencies that should hold public trust ignored our moral code, as if temple pillars were riddled with termites.”

“To exonerate criminals, someone even said, ‘If it wasn’t you, why help?’ A line like smoke that stains the rafters.”

In a civilized society, such things are laughable and tragic, a cracked mirror that won’t reflect straight.

Whether the speaker grasped their fault or not, the harm to trust was like spilt ink, hard to gather.

Imagine it: acts that should be traditional virtue turned into a high-voltage line no one dared touch, thunder fencing off the good.

Who should bear the weight? Even reason found no court to lodge in, like a traveler before a locked gate.

It was heartbreaking, a winter wind under thin clothes.

Maybe the speaker didn’t think of consequences, but the damage outran any patch, like a torn sail in a storm.

“Nor did it stop there,” Heron said, voice like a blade drawn from a scabbard.

“Some, clothed in privilege, kept ill intent toward a people forged in iron and blood, like wolves sheltering under a temple eave.”

“They wielded minority status and state-given favors, and acted lawless on this land, as if no sky watched.”

“Even passionate officers in law and justice couldn’t handle them; if entangled, they faced retaliation like thorns catching cloth.”

“To them the law was a sword stuck in its sheath. Absurd, isn’t it?”

The Zerg Maiden thought a moment, confusion pooling in her eyes like rain in a hollow.

“Mother, why? Their numbers are fewer. Why aren’t they bound by law?”

“Why are the many bullied and denied help? Isn’t that upside down?” her voice trembled like a reed in wind.

Heron smiled, satisfied, a spring clearing a stone.

“You see— even a child knows it’s upside down,” she said, a bell struck clean.

“Yet that era was like that. I don’t know why.”

“The many weren’t valued, and the few, even without many talents, were held in the palm like fragile porcelain.”

“So, after I pushed a civilizational revolution, the newborn civilization kept only one people, branches grafted into one trunk.”

“This isn’t about blame,” Heron went on, steady as a river.

“It’s about weak identity on both sides, like threads that don’t knot.”

“In our ancient times, inter-ethnic wars were many, a battlefield of shifting banners; unity came later, like snow melting into one stream.”

“So I insisted on one people. Now, in the newborn civilization, no one can use small numbers to defy the law; the river flows one channel.”

In Heron’s heart, unity rang true, a drumbeat under ribs.

It was the deepest hope of her people, like homing birds seeking their nests.

They longed for compatriots to return and lost lands to bear their old names, mountains called back across mist.

Though her age didn’t achieve it, in the newborn civilization, even with borders dissolved like lines in rain, she assumed the homeland’s return in spirit.

Maybe it was a private wish, a candle she kept under her cloak.

Heron wasn’t a saint and would not show it to all eyes, her face a calm lake.

After centuries of assimilation, few in the newborn civilization saw themselves as an outside tribe; what remained were excellent cultural legacies, seeds carried in song.

The approach may seem a single cut, a carpenter’s decisive stroke, but it worked like a bridge across a gorge.

It erased ethnic barriers and made law enforcement uniform, scales leveled and true.

This wasn’t Heron attacking the past; not every era has timber and weather to pull off such feats.

“But what I can’t endure most are the foreign trash,” Heron said, iron sparking on stone.

“They took advantage of the country and still acted as if they had old extraterritorial rights, like rats feasting in a granary.”

“They abused our people and rarely faced punishment; unless a case rose to a national height, they won like loaded dice.”

“Citizens defending dignity faced the law’s lash, a bitter irony that stuck in the throat.”

“Whenever it happened, I asked myself if I was living again in an age of smoke and chains, a night without stars.”

“How could a plane ticket become a talisman to trample our people?”

“Why did they get our resources and protection, like guests fed first at our table?”

“If it’s for friendly ties between states, think of that strong nation across the ocean—”

“if someone trampled their citizens on their soil, they’d be shot within a few steps, a thunderclap ending the offense.”

“So what’s truly right?” Heron said, eyes like coals under ash.

“I don’t know. I only know that when I saw foreign trash insult my people, I couldn’t endure it.”

“It felt like living back in the age of shame, boots grinding our martyrs’ blood, a red river roiled underfoot.”

Heron exhaled at last, venting the foul air from her chest like a furnace releasing smoke into cold night.