In the second part of the Gilded Age, Master Chi will focus on the topic of “self-cultivation.” This section matters because many people still haven’t grasped that the rules of the game have completely changed.
Take today’s wealthy individuals as an example. If you’re not in that circle, you naturally assume these rich people live lives of indulgence and excess — that their massive fortunes exist purely because of lucky timing or some murky, unspoken connections.
But if you yourself are at the C-4 level or above, you’d understand that today’s elites and the wealthy are actually deeply refined through inner cultivation — genuinely ahead of the crowd in cognition and worldview across the board. Real strength, not performance.
Talk to anyone who built their wealth through finance, industry, or the internet, and you’ll find that this group’s lifestyle already stands in stark contrast to the mainstream.
The masses obsess over gossip and scandal; elites focus on policy and the bigger picture.
The masses spend their free time on gaming, escape rooms, trendy restaurants, and murder mystery nights — pure entertainment. Elites spend theirs reading, working out, and using social connections to generate investment and business opportunities.
Put it bluntly: both groups are human, but one is consuming mountains of greasy, high-carb junk food every day while the other fuels itself primarily on protein-rich, fiber-dense nutrition. So tell me — how significant will the difference in their physical condition be?
That’s why the second piece of the Gilded Age follows the big-picture overview with an inner cultivation framework: see the world, see others, see yourself. Only by refining yourself can you position yourself to seize the momentum of the age.
Every era will inevitably produce a wave of fortunate winners. This time around — why can’t that winner be you?
The Old and the New#
There’s a saying: “Only the wise know how to read the times.” Anyone who has lived through a major shift knows the full weight of those words. Look at the giants who’ve been hammered recently — weren’t they all brimming with confidence and swagger just a short while ago? And now?
Don’t be foolish enough to swim against the tide. Learn to move with the current of the age — otherwise, anyone, no matter how capable, will pay the price in blood and broken bones.
So for the first part of self-cultivation, we need to identify which directions and industries are unambiguously the discards of this era — old playbooks that must be turned over early — and which ones represent the sunrise and the future. Nail this distinction and, at minimum, you won’t lose.
The following fields: start making your next move now.
1 — Real Estate Development: No need to elaborate. This is an obvious sunset industry. The essence of real estate is “development” — so when our overall urban construction and population migration enter their final chapter, the curtain call for this sector will inevitably follow.
2 — Children’s Education: Equally clear — get out as early as you can. The damage this sector’s decline has caused is severe: skyrocketing internal competition and crushing pressure on parents. At the moment, there’s little sign of a recovery. Get off the boat before it sinks.
3 — Internet: Still a hot commodity right now, but the years ahead are destined to be far less brilliant than the past five. Everything has a lifecycle — the internet is no different. If you work in this field, don’t be naive enough to wait until you’re 35 and get forced out. Your industry’s lifespan may be even shorter than you think, so plan earlier.
4 — Basic Administrative Functions: Accounting, agency work, administration, HR — pay attention. Have you noticed how much of your work is already being replaced by software? Just look at bank branches: the tellers and front-desk staff they used to hire by the cohort every year have been cut by more than half. If your work is fundamentally clerical labor, the outlook may not be rosy.
Yes — to those working in these industries and others like them: Master Chi sincerely hopes you’ll sit down and seriously map out your future. Especially while you’re still at a good position with the leverage to make a career transition — treasure this brief window. Don’t cling to it, and don’t gamble on it lasting.
You know, in the 1990s, a job at a steel mill was a coveted, well-compensated career. So was driving a taxi. Today, both have faded into quiet ordinariness.
But did those workers have no options? Of course they did. The sharp-minded steel workers and taxi drivers who saw the shift coming either transitioned into other fields to ride the next wave — or leveraged their industry experience to go independent. That’s how the steel traders of the millennium era emerged, along with the founders of countless freight and logistics companies.
Never forget these two maxims: the tide is stronger than any man and only the wise know how to read the times. History has shown us, time and again, that those who failed to understand these words became tragic footnotes in the closing chapter of a dying industry.
But Master Chi also hopes you won’t spiral into anxiety over this. As I’ve said before, all things have their lifecycle. Today it may be these industries rising and falling — in a few years it’ll be another layer of the ecosystem turning over. There will always be those who get left behind, and there will always be those who make the right choice and rebuild from a new foundation.
Strictly speaking, regardless of where any of us stands today — if we want a meaningful career and position in life, we will inevitably face at least two or more career transitions and redefinitions of ourselves.
Don’t be afraid. As long as you have options, it’s not the end. Your capabilities and your instincts are yours — who says you can’t win on a different track?
A new starting point might just be the thing that finally lets you shake off every constraint you’ve long wanted to be free of.
You must rid yourself of one deeply ingrained weak-minded belief: “As long as I do the minimum in my role, keep my head down, and stay out of trouble — I’ll have a stable, happy life.” Wake up. That’s over. Unless you can achieve true, complete desirelessness — it simply doesn’t work that way anymore.
Master Chi has seen not one or two, but 90% of today’s elites were forged under pressure. They built their fundamentals somewhere, were constrained by their own mental frameworks — and then the moment they were released into open water, they created waves. So perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise?
What matters most is your own foundation.
Mind, Body, and Craft#
Master Chi has long had a particular distaste for a certain category of so-called wealth gurus and their misleading lectures on “success” — things like: you need to know one secret trick to make money, or rich people think differently from you.
Let me tell you this plainly: the vast majority of those “gurus” are actually quite broke themselves. That’s precisely why they’re so eager to find fresh marks — and why they keep spinning ever more outlandish claims to grab your attention.
The truth is, it’s already 2021. Most of us have, to some degree, built a foundation and have at least a decent network. If that’s you, then you should also understand by now: success and wealth are never the destination — they are simply the natural reward that comes after you become strong.
So what does “strong” mean?
You have enough mental energy to think through problems that others aren’t willing to spend time on — so you make decisions that far exceed what most people would imagine.
You have enough discipline to wait for those decisions to bear fruit — so you don’t quit early, and you receive the material rewards you’ve earned.
You have enough foresight to reinvest your gains systematically rather than burn them on endless wants — so your capital compounds like a snowball gaining mass.
See that? What actually creates wealth is a tight, interlocking chain of logic — not the clever musings of some self-styled guru who’s never touched eight figures in their life.
It’s like certain female relationship columnists who constantly hand out advice to women, yet their own marriages are a mess — affairs, betrayals, the works. At the root: no coherent logic. So no number of clever tips will ever matter.
In the Gilded Age — whether you’re navigating social circles or building an empire — Master Chi hopes you’ll seize this rare era and protect everything you’ve worked hard to build. Treat the following as daily practice:
1 — Cultivate Your Body (修体): Master Chi has urged this repeatedly: build a consistent exercise habit, even if it means sacrificing leisure time. Did you actually take that advice? Probably not — most people dismissed it with a smirk.
If you’re curious, take a close look at the peak performers in any major city — the truly exceptional ones. You’ll find their exercise frequency and commitment far exceeds the average person’s. In the gym Master Chi frequents, the free weights area fills up with prominent young figures from finance by 7 a.m. every morning. The yoga studios and group fitness rooms see well-known names from media and fashion throughout the day.
Colleagues working within the official system tell me the same thing: the gyms inside government compounds have been packed these past few years.
Why? Because the body doesn’t lie. Train it to sustain a steady run for thirty minutes and your stamina will carry you through three back-to-back high-intensity meetings without breaking a sweat. Build consistent strength training into your routine and you’ll find you can absorb and endure the pressures of work in the same way.
Simple. Efficient.
If you’re not willing to maintain your own body, Master Chi has zero confidence you’ll succeed at anything else. Don’t take offense — if you disagree, then start taking care of yourself right now.
2 — Cultivate Your Craft (修业): The highest compliment we pay a true professional is: “They love what they do, and nothing is left on the table.” What does that mean? Passion combined with mastery. Anyone who embodies both will rise to the top, no matter the industry.
But life extends beyond career. There are many areas outside of work that demand genuine effort — and you’ll notice that the weak tend to fail comprehensively, across the board. Walk close to the daily life of someone who’s drifted through a basic role for decades and you’ll see it: half-hearted in everything, never truly committed to anything.
And honestly, the thing people fear most in this world is genuine commitment. Once you’re truly committed, there is no problem you can’t break through. Absolutely. Certainly. Without question.
Everyone around Master Chi — myself included — can be casual and joking in everyday life. But the moment we’re in our domain of expertise — destiny frameworks (格局), life logic — I speak with full confidence: I am, without question, the authority in this field. That’s not arrogance. That’s self-knowledge.
And where does that confidence come from? From myself — because I know exactly how much effort I’ve poured into sharpening my fundamentals, dissecting tens of thousands of destiny charts and life patterns. I don’t just know what — I know why.
So let me ask you: have you gone this deep into your own field? If someone asked you today to explain the full logic of your industry — from the ground floor up to the macro level — could you do it?
That’s the standard. No vagueness allowed. Hold yourself to genuine, total commitment, and even without any guidance from Master Chi, you’ll know exactly where your next step is — and you’ll take it with intention.
3 — Cultivate Your Mind (修心): Anyone who’s spent time in the world has encountered two types of people: the Sun, and the Black Hole.
What is a Sun? When you’re with them, you genuinely feel warmth and care. You receive respect and understanding. When problems arise — even serious ones — they meet the difficulty with optimism and energy, and somehow make you feel that things aren’t so bad after all.
What is a Black Hole? When you’re with them, every positive emotion you have seems to be absorbed. This person radiates gloom, suspicion, insecurity, and bone-deep pessimism. Their negative influence often far exceeds the problem itself — because you sense they are always extracting your effort and attention, giving nothing back, like a black hole that only takes and never returns.
When Master Chi was young, I believed that navigating the social world was purely a matter of tactics and cunning. And yes — those things have their power. But as I encountered more people at the highest levels and began to build and lead my own ventures, I realized: tactics and cunning have a very low ceiling. Everyone at that level is equally sharp. No one is dramatically cleverer. Playing those small games just breeds contempt and suspicion.
What’s truly powerful — it turns out — is an open, expansive, generous inner presence.
Master Chi’s hope for you is this: keep moving toward the Sun. Shed as much of the Black Hole as you can. When your heart faces the light, you naturally become immune to sorrow and shadow — and good fortune and blessings will naturally begin to gravitate toward you. That is the true essence of cultivating the mind.
Closing#
The second piece of the Gilded Age is not a difficult read. It’s simple and direct — yet truly living it is anything but easy. Either way, Master Chi has done his part. How much of it you put into practice is entirely up to your own capability and wisdom.