Question Why don’t rebirth mc directly reach godhood?

Give me the reason/s——
I’m writing a story. My is ya reincarnated soul and have the best cultivation technique and had previous cultivated up to immortality. I need a reason for his cultivation to NOT sky rocket.
Why don’t reincarnated MC cultivator directly reach from qi refiner to like xiantian realm instead of cultivating from qi refiner to, houtian stage then xiantian stage?

They say some thing like “I need to stabilise my foundation” or something. Could you guys please explain it to me?

 

He have a unknown disease that harm his soul slowly

 

It's a rush job versus careful consideration. Which one would you want. Or alternatively give him an artifact or something that sucks up his energy and spits out refined energy.

 

your body is a vessel. imagine your body as a cup.

you start off with a fragile clay cup. you train and raise it to a better material cup, but it can still only hold so much. then that cup becomes a bowl, then it becomes a bucket. then it becomes made of jewels and blah blah blah.

 

This is kind of like asking "why someone reborn as a baby doesn't grow up in one day"

 

You could say that due to the way he cultivated before (taking time between each "realm", the need of a strong body, or medicine stuff), he would be considered a genius but would lack this extra factors.

 

Basically what this guy said. How could a cup contain all of that energy without upgrading?

 

The easiest way to look at cultivation is building a tower. Your goal is to reach the clouds. To do that you need to build a large enough foundation + strong enough materials.

The cultivation technique is like the materials, the foundation is just that the foundation of the building. With stronger materials, you can build a taller tower then those using weaker materials, but if your foundation isn't large enough, you won't reach the sky.

 

Because the chapter will be short

 

Because... plot.

 

Since (mostly) everyone else was giving vague answers, I'll give it to ya straight. It's a cheap trope, meant to make the character seem awesome while maintaining some tension because they aren't super OP yet. Most of the 'reasons' they aren't back at their super OP levels are quickly fixed by the character after filling a few pages with slow dragon ball z style energy build up montages.
That is to say, if you want to do this right, you have to actually make the character suffer/feel their relative powerlessness for real. If you went with the 'weak body' trope, make it so that they legitimately can't cultivate properly and DON'T give them a magical ring or an old grandpa mentor or whatever.
If you go with the 'needs time to rebuild' trope, then make sure things go wrong while the MC is still gathering power. Suddenly powering up because the MC remembered a secret technique from their previous life is just plain lazy writing.

tl;dr any reason is fine as long as you stick to the reason throughout and don't just undermine it with a powerup/old grandpa mechanic.

 

as a writer I think you'll have more options on how to develop and stabilize the character of your mc if he goes through a process and your mc becoming straight godly cultivator would limit that because every conflict that you could think of would be absolutely useless cause he could solve it with his power right away unless the conflict is made by another godly cultivator but then again where do you go from being a godly cultivator it sort of limits the possibilities you could insert in your writing. I think novels are basically useless if there's no thrill and hardship for the mc I think what the readers want to see and relate to is how the mc solves his problems as he improves. Even mc with systems need to do something to improve their strength. this is just my opinion though you are free to do what you want.

As cultivating thing like in xianxia everyone above already gave the best possible answer.

 

Read Zhanxian

 

It's logical. If a bodybuilder suddenly rebirths to his teenage years when he was either scrawny or fat, what do you think he should do? Train, that's right, because Rome wasn't built in a single day.

 

Basically what he said. It's like irl, even if you are great at some sport if you don't train properly you are not gonna be able to perform, and if you overexert yourself you might even get injured.

 

Honestly? It seems like a bad idea to actually write that, I think it would be best to simply avoid the trope altogether.

But hey, it's your story.

 

^ This is super important. As someone who wrote an entire story (link in sig) about an absolutely powerful MC, I can tell you first hand that you have to get REALLY creative to make a story interesting if the MC is OP in every way. I would not recommend going with that route unless you're writing a short piece or are very comfortable taking big creative risks (like having four POVs or something)

 

That depends on how long you wanna make your story.
But I don't think you really need any reason why they have to go through great lenghts to reach the top.
For one, it would be impossible to directly reach the top, and even if you could, you'd be many times less powerful than literally anyone who reached the same level the normal, steady way.
Two, when the MC reincarnates, it's only the soul, in other words, memories. So, he'd have knowledge, and experience to make his progress much faster and smoother, but he'd still need to accumulate qi/spiritual force/sou; force/whatever. Unless in your novel, they only cultivate the soul, and reincarnating would not reduce the power.
Also, it should technically be impossible to skip steps, even if your cultivation method goes against the heavens.

But basically, when the MC steadily cultivates, it's so that an unsteady foundation, that was hastily built, will make future progress harder than it needs to be, and make them weaker than others at the same level. And it's more likely future breakthroughs would be impossible.
The only advantages I can think of, besides experience and the cultivation method, would be the knowledge of the laws of cultivation, and maybe Laws, if there are any (like Elemental Laws, or Gravity, Destruction, Time, Space)

It's like you're replaying a game, but know the best ways to get XP, your future build, and the like

 

If you previously built a pyramid singlehandedly, then someone comes to demolish it, do you still have a pyramid you built? Or do you have it's ruins and the experience to build new one, or some shit like that anyway

 

Modify his cultivation technique so that it only absorbs purified, super refined qi or whatever energy. Use the excuse that qi is difficult and time-consuming to purify, thus slowing his progress in cultivation. Then add benefits of having 100% pure qi or something.