Chapter 253: Failure - 253
Instead of creating cities or kingdoms, Spirits had a much more primal way of grouping together.
To form a group, a spirit would have to be at least at the nascent soul realm. Since there was no such being in the spirit world due to the cultivation reset, every single spirit was busy wandering around aimlessly.
Once a spirit reached the nascent soul realm, it instinctually had two options. One, it could continue wandering around alone, or two, it could form a group of spirits.
Option one needed no explanation, a spirit would simply continue to become stronger until death or reaching a bottleneck.
Option two, however, was a little complicated. Due to the power of the nascent soul realm spirit, other, weaker spirits would be drawn to its vicinity.
At that point, the spirit would use its innate ability that Zhou Fan called subordination.
On a willing spirit one realm below the strong spirit, subordination would mark them and allow them to be commanded by the strong spirit. This would also allow the spirits to communicate through their minds.
On spirits two realms below or more, the subordination mark could be forced, unless there was already one on it.
This is the only hierarchy present on the spirit world. As for having children, spirits could only be born from the world unless two spirits reached the void traversing realm.
While the subordination mark sounded bad, it was not without benefits. For the spirits one realm below the main spirit, they would gain some Qi from the main spirit every now and then depending on the main spirit's strength and number of willing subordinates.
This Qi was only the natural excess, not causing the main spirit any loss unless they had a lot of willing subordinates and needed to personally offer Qi.
The innate ability of subordination was something that had been personally created by Zhou Fan. If not for it, spirits would very rarely group up unless very intelligent, causing them to develop slower as a whole.
There was not much to look at or pay attention to in the spirit world. Everything was the same everywhere. Spirits did not make buildings, so there was no history to check out.
If not for the fact that Zhou Fan knew the spirits had once had void traversing realm cultivators, he would have thought they were a newly created race.
With his overseeing of the planets done, Zhou Fan still had plenty of time for his break. He decided to simply wander around the worlds and possibly give opportunities to people he came across.
His first destination would be the heaven world. The heavenborn race had spread out, but the heaven world was still the main planet. Even Tian Ren spent most of his time on it.
In just a few seconds, Zhou Fan appeared on a path in the heaven world. He had disguised himself as an old man and pulled a small cart with him on the path.
He had a bamboo hat and long facial hair. Even his clothes seemed to be old and dirty. Not disgustingly dirty, but with a couple dirt stains.
He began his walk on the path, not using his divine sense to instantly tell where he was or where he was heading towards.
As he walked on the path, he came across many people. There were some young people, some middle aged people, and a few old people.
Zhou Fan seemed to always sigh as he walked past them. They were called old people, but he was their senior by millions of years.
It seemed as if everyone was in a world of their own, far away from his.
One day, after around a month of walking, Zhou Fan's path led into a forest. The forest was filled with cherry blossom trees, and the weather was perfect. It was clearly the peak of spring.
As he walked under the shade of one of the cherry blossom trees and a leaf landed on his nose, he sighed again.
He was feeling an unnatural amount of melancholy. Surprisingly, he was more at peace than he had been in a long long time. Even the river could not compare to the beauty of spring.
Suddenly, Zhou Fan stopped walking. It was as if all of his experiences were combing together and he was beginning to finally understand.
Heaven was a failure. He had thought it before, but he knew it now.
All things with emotions age. Even Zhou Fan felt the effect of age, despite not looking a day older in the last millions of years.
"If Heaven has emotions, it too will grow old. The universal consciousness must be emotionless and impartial." He said to himself.
He finally understood. He could present the rules, but he could not overly enforce them. Otherwise, the very aspect of cultivation was pointless.
In Zhou Fan's opinion, the reason to cultivate was power and freedom. The freedom to do whatever you want, whether it be kill, steal, oppress, help, give, or clean.
Power was necessary to protect yourself from the backlash of your actions. If you kill the son of an emperor, you just had to be stronger than the emperor or whoever was behind him and you would not be judged.
If you wanted to heal someone that a demonic overlord wanted to kill, you just had to be stronger than that demonic overlord or whoever was behind him.
In the cultivation world he had observed, there was always someone behind someone. Kill the son, the father would come, kill the father, the grandpa would come, kill the grandpa, the ancestor would come, kill the ancestor, a god would come.
In some instances, even killing a mortal could result in a space shattering realm cultivator being offended down a long chain.
Zhou Fan always found that funny. Luckily, he was the biggest fish in the biggest pond. As for the cosmic dao, it was the pond itself.
Zhou Fan understood that Heaven could not be the universal consciousness. Luckily, he had thought about that long ago. He had ways to make Heaven useful.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone