This is a literal meaning, not a metaphor. Ever since Hao Qi's final battle against the Nine Martial Kings member Pan Liuhai at the Red Queen Base, where he thoroughly became a Ranked Human and then achieved a perfect transformation thanks to Pan Liuhai's legacy, he had completely embarked on the path of the Ranked Human—and an almost perfectly realized one at that.
The reason it was only "almost perfectly realized" was simply because Hao Qi and the others lacked a full understanding of Ranked Humans—or rather, no one understood them anymore. The heyday of the Ranked Human era stretched from the late Ancient Era of the Internal Force civilization to the mid-Ancient Sect civilization, a period when a great number of Ranked Humans emerged. The Ranked Human known as the Overlord was the pinnacle of this era, a being described as "defying the ring of heaven, challenging the handles of the earth." Yet once it was proven that the path of the Ranked Human was a dead end—and an absolute dead end at that—virtually no more Ranked Humans existed in the world. Thus, apart from Yun Qingqing, almost no one present knew anything about them.
Precisely because of this lack of understanding, Hao Qi only knew that his own Ranked Human achievement was quite good and that his foundation was solid, but just how good it was—and whether he truly was a perfect Ranked Human—remained unclear to him.
Chapter 313