The title Master Chi has chosen for today is a phrase he has pondered for a long time — one he wants to give to you as a gift. Its meaning, stripped bare, isn’t complicated: every setback and hardship in life carries its own value and purpose. And much of that pain — if you don’t take it now, the version that comes for you later won’t be a minor stumble. It will be a true catastrophe.
So when Master Chi says this, he is not wishing you harm. He speaks as someone who has been through it and knows: if you want to achieve something real, there are certain pits you must roll through. Not a surface-level brush with difficulty. Not learning from someone else’s story. No — you yourself must walk through the most destitute and desperate circumstances life can throw at you. You must feel firsthand the rough, razor-sharp edges of the world and the people in it grinding against you.
Don’t count on “wisdom” or “innate understanding” to get you out early. This is like a prison sentence with no announced release date — it will suffocate you until you’re seething, until the roots of your teeth itch with fury. And no, Master Chi says this without a trace of mockery. He’s telling you plainly: you want to rise? You want to stand up? What lies ahead is a bottomless pit that almost no one climbs out of. Go in. Roll in. Only if you roll back out will greatness follow. If you can’t get out — the pit is your life, and the mud becomes your eternity.
Younger readers may not fully grasp this yet. But those of you who are older, who have walked through the second half of life — you know exactly what I mean. We’ve all been through those most wretched and desolate stretches.
When Master Chi reads destiny charts (命盘) for readers, he has mentioned the concept of “great calamity brews great achievement” countless times. Why? Because he has seen too many young lions, climbing high on early success, convinced they were destined for the absolute summit. Some were close friends. Some were passing acquaintances. Almost without exception, each of them had, in their youth, achievements and moments of brilliance that left people speechless.
Take someone with a Seven Killings wealth-seizure destiny framework who fought his way through futures, foreign exchange, and stocks — consuming competitors along the route — who could show you nearly two billion in liquid cash sitting in an account, hot and real. Or take someone who, while today’s celebrities coast on reputation alone and live in extravagant ease, had already crossed over into both business and entertainment, holding the lifeline of every artist south of the Yangtze River in one hand.
You know these people exist — rare as they are, perhaps one in a generation, but they exist. And you’d think someone like this must be seasoned, fifty or sixty years old, carved by decades? No. Early thirties. That young, that gifted, that unbelievable. Their destiny frameworks (格局) carried the pure wealth-power configuration — the “Golden Radiance” pattern, whose financial Chi (气运) cannot be suppressed; the “Moon Born of the Deep Sea” pattern, where all fortune arrives without effort. Master Chi has seen more extraordinary destiny frameworks than he can count.
So it doesn’t matter whether it was background or luck that got them there — achieving it is achieving it. Because no matter how much external force you apply, you cannot prop up someone who is mud that won’t stick to a wall. And both of these individuals, by the way, were born into ordinary middle-class families.
I’d imagine most young readers, reaching this point, feel a surge of envy — what a free, magnificent life. Go on, take this to an elder in your life, someone over fifty, and ask what they think. If they say, “Yes! I’d hope for the same for you!” — they’re pulling your leg. They may not study destiny frameworks the way Master Chi does, but they’ve lived enough life and watched enough people to know: a life like this is headed for disaster. A serious one. No exceptions. Ever.
Why? Missing class. Missing the lesson life needs to give you — the one that breaks you to the bone, the one you cannot withstand, the one that brings total collapse. Only after that lesson do you earn the right to great achievement. Without it, everything you have, everything you are right now — it all has to be paid back. Every last bit of it.
Master Chi has always believed that “great calamity” is not simply a rough patch you endure before slowly grinding your way back out. That’s hardship, but it doesn’t qualify as true calamity. Real calamity, as it exists in this world, is cruel and ice-cold. Because you can only truly fall to the lowest, most broken point — and only from there, with your forehead pressed to the ground, do you earn the right to observe the world and the people in it from that angle.
People who have never been through real-world trials always say: “You see the world too darkly.” Don’t bother arguing. They have never seen the world the way you have — face pressed flat against it. So of course they don’t know: from that angle, people can be self-serving and cold to a degree that staggers you. That in this world, there are genuinely people who cannot stand to see you do well — not even a little. That there are genuinely people who, the moment they see you fallen, will come over to stomp on you. That there are genuinely people willing to fire a shot from the shadows to destroy you — and happy to do it.
Don’t think this is exaggerated or unreal. Look at the people around you who have survived great calamity and climbed back up. Were they not all once bright-eyed and full of energy? Are they not now, many of them, the quiet, guarded middle-aged figures you see today? It’s not that they’re performing maturity. It’s that they have seen too much human poison in their time, and they find it genuinely difficult to trust again.
And here some naive voice pipes up: “If you don’t trust outsiders, surely you trust the people close to you?” Child, let Master Chi tell you — the ones who can truly hurt you, truly destroy you, are always the ones you once trusted most. Sometimes it can even be the person lying beside you, slipping in a cold blade. That’s why the wound is absolute. That’s why the despair is complete.
And do you think these things happen when you’re riding high? Almost never. The odds are vanishingly small. Because when you’re at the top — wind at your back, fortune blazing, wealth pouring in — who wouldn’t put on the most sincere smile and make sure to get the most out of you? You stand tall, you see far, but you cannot see what’s directly under your feet — especially the cracks quietly forming beneath you.
There’s an old saying: when an army collapses, it falls like a mountain, and the general cannot escape. You may have seen this firsthand — look at the people around you who built something up only to watch it crumble. When the collapse came, was there a single one who could slow the landslide? People can be truly terrible — as vicious as wolves. When they can no longer get meat from you, you become the meat. And the deadliest bite always comes from behind, from the one you trusted most.
Tell me — how could you possibly skip this class? How?
Not to mention those desperate, futile struggles when you’re deep in the valley with no hope in sight. Master Chi feels genuine compassion for young people in that place, and deep sorrow for those in middle age who are struck by upheaval and forced to start over. He knows too well: in those moments, you feel completely, utterly hopeless and lost.
You know there’s a 7:30 metro and a bus to catch tomorrow morning. You know that tomorrow at work will probably be just another day of hollow repetition. You know that when you get home, there’s a mountain of chores waiting that cannot be ignored. Life becomes two walls — fitting together so precisely they might have been machined — pressing in from either side, squeezing your heart and ribs until they ache, and you cannot push back.
You have so much you want to do. You know exactly what needs to be done. But life’s great kill shot is those three words: “I have to.” That gravity alone is enough to drag you into a pit where even lifting your hand to turn your head becomes a luxury.
You know you are more than this. You know this is not your ceiling. Master Chi knows it too. But beyond the two of us — who else sees you?
Tell me: what value does an experience like this hold? If you accept it and give in — it’s worthless. But the moment you refuse to accept it, the moment you flip the table and say: I’m going to fight this to the end, no matter what — that experience transforms from garbage into gold.
Because you have seen so much cold indifference, you can now read human nature with cold clarity. You can see through the false smiles and the genuine tears, and perceive exactly where human nature breaks down. And then, with complete ease, you can say in a few casual words: “People are just like that, aren’t they?” — and hold the precise pressure point of anyone around you right in your grip.
Because you have survived the endless compression of life, you can now compress yourself. You can slice through all the things you love and treasure and cut precisely to what is “necessary” and “non-negotiable.” And when everyone around you is stunned by your ruthlessness and decisiveness, you have the standing to say: “You can’t even see this clearly — are you serious?”
Master Chi knows — that’s just the heat talking. You have no desire to explain yourself to someone who has never walked through hell. Because the reason you’ve climbed this high isn’t intelligence, wisdom, or a sharp mind. It’s because you once lay this low. If “on your knees” sounds almost elegant — what you actually did was prostrate yourself: forehead against the ground, hair soaking in mud, cheeks close enough to feel the grit and roughness of the earth against your face.
Those who can truly speak your language don’t need to say a word. From far away, you can see it in their posture and their gait — kindred spirits, and only kindred spirits recognize each other.
Master Chi, looking back on his own past, knows this is how it was for him too. Which is why, after his own family’s fall from prosperity, he found the nerve to pick up his current work and see it through. I have never believed that mastering the fundamentals of your craft is what lets you truly understand fate (命). Only by enjoying the blessings fortune brings and fully absorbing the suffering destiny assigns do you come to know: in many things, raw talent alone is not enough.
Young people ask: why are celebrities celebrities? Why are actors actors? Celebrities know only exhaustion. Actors know tears — not the kind where a grown man cries rivers at the slightest slight, but the kind you know, in that moment, cannot come. Only alone, back in that room, looking at yourself in the mirror, does it hit — and the tears mix with your dinner, and you sleep with a cold heart.
What’s that? “Those who haven’t wept in the small hours don’t understand life?” Master Chi will tell you straight: when the pain and suffering reach their absolute extreme, you can’t even cry. Because this bastard called fate won’t even give you the chance. It will only let you feel it — after you’ve made it all the way through, after enough time has passed — when you return to that place and something triggers the memory, and you say: “I actually… goddamn made it through that?”
Trust me — that will always come out as a question. Because even you know: if you were told to ride back in there like Zhao Zilong (the legendary Three Kingdoms warrior who rode alone into a hundred-thousand-man army and came back out alive), it’s no longer possible. Your heart has aged. You’re tired, worn out. Walking out once was enough. Going back? Please, spare me.
So in many situations — when conflicts arise, when misunderstandings and clashes happen with other people — I’ve long since learned to see past them. I’ll say something that might sound vulnerable: when Master Chi was at his lowest, most destitute, most humiliated — the stories from that time, if an enemy heard them, they’d burst out laughing and say: “Serves you right.” If a true benefactor heard them, they’d laugh too and say: “That suffering was worth it.”
Looking back now — those who were my enemies then are still my enemies now. Those who showed me grace then are still my benefactors now. I thank them all — those who once let me see every danger this world holds. Because of them, I now have eyes that see through it all.
When you’ve lived to this point, everything becomes clear. What really matters? Seek affinity (缘), avoid karmic debt (孽). Just like certain cold cuts that come from nowhere — I’ve thought about it, and the fault is entirely mine. Yes, you read that right: the other party has no fault at all. It is entirely my own failing, my own error, and I accept it completely. Whatever others think, whatever the world says — I only feel that even when I’m in the right, it must mean there was something I didn’t do well enough. Not well enough.
Master Chi doesn’t know, as you read this right now, whether you are a man or a woman. But remember this: once you’ve walked the full arc of fortune and hardship, many things become self-evident. Truly — what back is too proud to bow? Consider it my apology for everything. All of it — I take responsibility.
But forgive me: I can no longer afford to waste the years. Only because of those who love me and those I love — for their sake, I can endure anything.
You see — that is the essence, or perhaps the lasting wound, forged by life’s most painful lessons. There’s no helping it. This world is a great dye vat. Those who can soak in it and come out with their humanity still intact are genuinely rare. Those who manage not to be infected by all the scheming and backstabbing — thank heaven for them. Because the problem with the great dye vat is this: it will make you feel that this is simply the way the world is. It will make decay and vileness seem normal. If you believe that — you’ve been fooled. And whoever believes it deserves a wasted life and a permanent sinking.
But in the end, Master Chi wants to leave you with a few words — reflections on this human world, gathered on the walk to this point:
1. Whatever path you choose, remember — this isn’t for anyone else. Not even, strictly speaking, for yourself. You walk it because you know you must. But once the decision is made, walk until you genuinely cannot take another step. Trust me: a life of suffering is not guaranteed. But a life of regret is.
2. I know that telling you to let go and open your heart is about as useful as nothing. Master Chi’s abilities are limited and his pen isn’t elegant — this is as far as the words can go. But I believe: once you’ve truly gone through the trials and the torment, you will eventually let go and find peace. The greatest fortune is to take a loss and not let it fester.
3. The only thing in your life that deserves the word “worthwhile” is your own peace, joy, and wellbeing. And the people who love you, and the people you love. Everything else — nothing else deserves even a moment’s pause.
And most importantly: not only must you cherish your blessings — you must also cherish your hardships. Without fully absorbing the hardship, you cannot enjoy the blessings fully. Life will always rise and fall. So do not be afraid.
Fortune has its end. Calamity has its close. Whatever comes — just smile.
Because those who smile through it will see the light of day.