Day turned to night, and moonlight flowed like water, a silver moon adorning the pitch-black sky.
By now, Hangzhou was already a sea of glittering lights.
Before the revival of spiritual energy, it would have been hard to spot a night sky dotted with stars like this. For people who loved the starry sky, that was certainly a regret, but for the vast majority, it didn’t really mean much.
They didn’t have the habit of gazing at the stars at night anyway.
In the past, Bai Xuan didn’t have that habit either. This time, it was just a sudden whim.
Lying quietly on the villa’s lawn, he gazed at the brilliant night sky. Countless stars glowed with a soft light, and the entire sky became dazzling because of those scattered specks of starlight.
“Pikachu~”
Beside him, two Pikachu were also lounging lazily on the grass, eyes narrowed as they enjoyed the cool night breeze.
Bai Xuan stroked their heads and then closed his eyes as well.
After the revival of spiritual energy, everyone else seemed to have accelerated the pace of their lives. But Bai Xuan, for some inexplicable reason, had slowed down.
No, before, his pace of life had actually been quite fast too. It was just that in these past few days, something had changed.
But for him, this change wasn’t so bad.
The change in Bai Xuan these past few days was very obvious. At least, Huo Yu could feel it clearly in her interactions with him.
If the original Bai Xuan was simply a rather precocious teenager, then now, there was an indescribable feeling about him.
A bit like a wise sage, yet different in certain respects.
As for whether this change was good or bad, Huo Yu didn’t know. Why Bai Xuan was undergoing such a change, she couldn’t fathom either.
She even suspected whether this was a result of Bai Xuan’s [Authority of Nature].
After all, Bai Xuan’s ability was too powerful. It wasn’t impossible that some kind of flaw existed; when you gain something, you inevitably lose something else. Perhaps because of the influence of this ability, Bai Xuan had lost something.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Bai Xuan looked at Huo Yu and asked, a little puzzled.
“It just feels like you’ve changed a lot recently.”
Huo Yu said very directly.
“But if I try to pinpoint exactly what has changed about you, I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Is this a side effect of your ability?”
“No, it isn’t.”
Bai Xuan shook his head and said calmly,
“Maybe it’s simply because I’ve been reading more books lately.”
Not just books, perhaps the [Authority of Nature] truly was a factor.
At the very beginning, it was fine. His mindset hadn’t changed much compared to before the spiritual energy revival. But as his power grew increasingly stronger, especially without a mentality sufficiently matching that power, he felt an inexplicable difference from his past self.
And this difference wasn’t just a gap in strength, but a gap on multiple levels.
His attitude towards humanity, his attitude towards living beings, his attitude towards civilization, his attitude towards nature…
He was human, there was no doubt about that.
And he had always thought about problems from a human perspective.
Joining the Spirit Energy Bureau was like that, hunting mutant creatures was like that too. Yet it was precisely this way of thinking that made him feel something was off.
It seemed as if a consciousness, somewhere deep and indistinct, was reminding him that he shouldn’t be thinking about problems this way.
He should adopt a new perspective.
A god’s perspective!
Nature encompasses all things. It contains not just humanity, but also various plants, animals, and elements; all objects, whether innate or man-made, are part of nature.
He is the wielder of the [Authority of Nature]. In the future, he is destined to think about problems from the standpoint of the Lord of Nature.
Although a god possesses their own personality, their judgment on the direction of civilizations and nature should be their own, guiding civilizations and nature onto new paths in their own way.
The actions a god takes must also have their own reasons, even if that reason is simply “because I want to do it.”
“Right now, I need time. Time will tell me the answer.”
Time is a very wondrous thing. Many questions you ponder, the meaning of life, will be answered by the passage of time.
He was aware of his current flaw: he did not possess a mindset that matched his power.
Pluto from Ultra Beast Force, Aizen from the Bleach world, Holy Keisha from The Black Troop… these powerhouses all possessed mentalities and ways of thinking that matched their own strength. They knew what they wanted to do and how to do it.
But he did not know.
He needed to grow; he needed a new self.
A god… is absolutely not a title bestowed merely because of power.
They stroll through the long river of time, witnesses of civilizations; they are ethereal and elusive, yet omnipresent.
He didn’t know when the thought that he would become a god had arisen.
Was it when the chat group spoke to him about thinking from a god’s perspective? Or the moment the [Authority of Nature] merged with him?
Or perhaps… it was the different worlds he saw in his dreams back then.
The vast, ancient earth; the verdant, solemn forests full of life; the heroic, majestic peaks piercing through the sea of clouds.
The sky, the sea of clouds, the forests, the high mountains, the great seas, the streams…
It wasn’t that he wanted to become a god, but that having obtained the [Authority of Nature], he was destined to become one.
“The revival of spiritual energy has granted us the ability to become transcendent. The change in our life level gives rise to the pursuit of the supreme.”
“Great power makes us confident, proud, even arrogant.”
“But because of our own principles, we know that arrogance and pride will become obstacles to our progress. So, we begin to struggle with them, to avoid undesirable consequences caused by a change in mentality.”
“As time passes, our way of thinking changes, and our perspective on things is no longer the same as in the past.”
“Madman, saint, god, devil…”
“…”
Huo Yu stared blankly at Bai Xuan, who was now saying things she couldn’t quite understand.
How did a casual chat suddenly turn into him muttering to himself?
And the things he was saying were so high-level?
Power makes people arrogant and proud? With you on Earth, who could possibly feel proud?!
As for a change in thinking?
Shouldn’t it be the same as before?
Someone above takes the lead, and those of us below just follow and handle the remaining matters.
What’s there to change?
But inexplicably, Bai Xuan’s transformation scared her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Bai Xuan seemed to be evolving towards some level she couldn’t comprehend.
And madman? Saint? God? Devil?
These four should be completely different things, right? Why did Bai Xuan think they were the same kind of existence?
Would the future Bai Xuan develop in this direction?
Or had it already begun?
Did everyone whose power reached Bai Xuan’s current level fall into this kind of state?
Shaking his head, Bai Xuan came back from his contemplation.
