Introduction: There exists in this world a towering structure that reaches the heavens. Each floor requires you to produce the right key to unlock it. The first floor demands diligence. The second demands tenacity. The third demands intelligence. Every floor requires a different key — and each key works only for its designated lock. Yet the tragedy is this: countless people, having unlocked the first floor through diligence, are foolish enough to believe that diligence is the master key. They remain forever trapped on that first floor, straining desperately to climb higher. They convince themselves that the reason they can’t reach the second floor is that those above have sealed the door shut. So they seethe with resentment, railing against an unjust world — never realizing that the door above requires only a light, clever touch to open. Today, Master Chi wants to talk to you about the true nature and secrets of this Tower of Destiny.
Once you’ve had genuine, comprehensive contact with all three tiers of society — high, middle, and low — you will arrive at a stark, blood-raw realization:
The lower the tier, the less access people have to the genuine wisdom that could actually change their fate.
In other words, when a person is still stuck earning a few thousand a month, barely surviving, commuting daily by subway and bus — what they truly lack is not money or opportunity itself.
What they completely lack is any guidance on what the hell they should actually be doing right now.
If you’ve ever been deep in that phase, you know exactly what it looks like: everyone around you is just as lost and ignorant as you are. So don’t look within low-tier circles for the knowledge and culture that will help you rise. Because every so-called piece of life wisdom you’ll find there has been compiled by someone who also failed to make it.
This is exactly why I must introduce the concept of the Tower of Destiny. I have always firmly believed that once a person truly understands this concept, they gain a clear internal roadmap for climbing upward. You’ll at least know: at your current level, what exactly should you be doing — and what should you absolutely not be doing.
Let me give you an example. A young man — hardworking, wholehearted, straightforward, and honest. Is this a good young man?
The answer is obviously yes. But only within the tier he currently occupies.
Diligence, warmth, simplicity — these are all fine qualities. But they are qualities that belong to the tool-workers and the grassroots. They function at the base level.
Put these same qualities in a higher tier, and they start to fall short.
Because in a higher-tier environment, what a person needs to stand their ground is a degree of sharpness, agility — even a touch of cunning.
Pursuing pure simplicity and plainness might earn you good outcomes in fables and fairy tales.
But in real life, the vast majority of people like this can’t even protect themselves.
You must remember this: as a person’s tier changes, certain principles that were once golden laws become worthless relics — stiff, outdated, and powerless. This is a key point I always emphasize when I read people’s destiny frameworks (格局): at every stage of life, you must learn to adapt to the rules of that stage. Never assume the world will accommodate itself to you.
Every tier, every stratum, every domain has its own unique rules — and there are deep-rooted reasons why.
The truly intelligent person is always the most adaptable — not the one constantly complaining that they’re being targeted or that others simply don’t recognize their worth.
Let me lay it out simply:
- Lower tier: Diligence. Sincerity. Duty. Compliance.
- Middle tier: Deep study. Perseverance. Social acuity. Tirelessness.
- Upper tier: Resilience. Strategy. Ambition. Magnanimity.
Once you see it laid out like this, you realize the skills and capabilities each tier demands are entirely different from one another.
The Lower Tier
Starting at the bottom: if you want to establish yourself in society and secure the most basic, fundamental social resources, you must steadfastly embody all four qualities — diligence, sincerity, duty, and compliance — without wavering or second-guessing yourself.
Because these four core principles apply across every industry and domain you will ever encounter.
Don’t listen early on to low-intelligence people telling you to cut corners and find shortcuts.
Anyone who teaches you that kind of thing early in life is either someone who’s made a complete mess of their own, or someone who struck a small windfall and immediately lost their head.
Remember: while none of these four qualities will make you rich, they are enough to let you plant your feet firmly in any field — and keep people from targeting you with hostility.
And the most precious return they’ll give you is this: no matter who’s talking, when your name comes up, people will sincerely say — “Oh, that kid? That kid’s solid.”
Just those few words are worth more than gold.
Because they mean that someday, those words will help you leap forward a full tier.
People often ask me how to raise their children — parents who are themselves already operating at the upper tier, dealing with interests and opportunities every day, genuinely unsure how to teach their kids to stay on the right path and work hard.
My answer is blunt: tell your child directly — “One day you’ll learn the necessary cunning, calculation, and maneuvering. But until that day comes, what you’ll be judged by is still your purity and your goodness.”
People always make the mistake of thinking the world especially preys on the gentle-hearted — that the pure and simple-natured are the easiest to bury.
This is a deeply wrong belief. Fatally wrong.
The middle tier has always had a particular fondness for the upright, modest kids from humble backgrounds — because integrity is genuinely rare at the lower levels. The lower environment has always been harsh. The reason you don’t feel it is that you haven’t yet dealt with that stratum on matters of real interest.
The Middle Tier
As you slowly mature and climb, you’ll gradually realize that the qualities you once took pride in are losing their power.
At this point, you need to embrace new skills: deep study, perseverance, social acuity, and tirelessness.
Here, someone with slightly slower comprehension will inevitably jump in and ask: Master Chi, does diligence become meaningless then?
Of course not. Diligence still has its place. But you need to be clear-eyed about it — pure donkey-grinding-the-mill diligence becomes less and less meaningful.
And yet, even just this shift defeats enormous numbers of people. Either they believe they can’t abandon their honesty and simplicity, or they think that as long as they keep grinding, they can keep climbing.
What they don’t realize is that they need to complete the transition — as quickly as possible — from chess piece to chess player.
Deep study means spending real effort to thoroughly understand the people, events, rules, and unspoken understandings of your environment.
Perseverance means that even after facing setback after setback, you can still bring your confidence and fighting spirit to bear.
Social acuity means stopping the act of the self-righteous fool, and instead starting to consider and accommodate the interests of all parties around you.
Tirelessness means repeating all of the above in a continuous cycle — without dissolving into the daily complaints of a coward.
A lot of people find this unbearable to read. That’s because they don’t understand. It’s like the respected senior at the Deyun Society comedy troupe who constantly gets mocked and berated on stage — that’s what he’s being paid for. If you can’t handle it, you don’t have to take the stage. Nobody has a gun to your head.
Same principle applies to you. If you want to escape the mediocre, materially barren lower-tier environment — if you want to give yourself, your family, your children, your parents, and your loved ones a better life — then you must do this. You must, step by step, kill your old self — the one who only knew how to put their head down and grind — and let yourself become ever more adapted to the new tier.
The Upper Tier
Finally, when you’ve climbed to the upper tier, you’ll realize with a start that you’ve long since made peace with “self-killing.” You no longer behave like a bitter, spineless person who blames all their misfortune on everyone else.
Just as someone in the lower tier dealt only with petty, trivial matters, at this level — no matter the environment or industry — what you’re always involved with and busy with comes down to two things: capital and people.
Money, and people.
The defining qualities of this tier are: resilience, strategy, ambition, and magnanimity.
Resilience means you must be capable of bearing pressure that others would flee from.
Among the many powerful individuals Master Chi has known, this quality generally appears in one of two forms: either a frightening clarity of mind that lets them find a countermeasure and solution every single time — or a naturally colossal fortitude, almost terrifying in scale, where under pressure that would drive a normal person insane, they somehow manage to laugh and chat as if nothing’s wrong.
Strategy is the combination of everything you’ve learned from your past and the intelligence you carry in the present, translated into decisive action.
This is also a threshold that some people simply cannot cross no matter how hard they try. Many middle-tier people, even pushed to the absolute limit, are still incapable of making bold, dominant decisions in career and life — and no matter what they do, they always snap back into a cramped, narrow destiny framework (格局).
Ambition is, frankly, the thing that has destroyed many people — because it is genuinely a trait that belongs only to the upper tier.
Many young people talk about ambition incessantly, desire endlessly — while having mastered none of the basic skills or virtues they actually need. So they burn themselves up in one impossible, reckless gamble after another.
Magnanimity is another quality rarely seen in the lower and middle tiers — because chess pieces have no right to exercise tolerance. They just accept whatever fate arranges for them.
But what separates a general from a commander-in-chief is precisely this: whether you have enough breadth to tolerate the maneuvering of multiple competing interest factions beneath you — and whether, while wielding each sharp blade effectively, you can also withstand their edge and the backlash they bring.
Closing
After much deliberation, Master Chi genuinely cannot find a more blunt yet effective phrase than “kill yourself” to describe a person’s ascent through the tiers.
One of the greatest mistakes a human life can make is to sink endlessly into the glory of past achievements — and to stubbornly believe that what once worked will never go out of date. Once that habit takes hold, you’re done. Not an inch of progress will be possible for the rest of your life.
Just as in destiny reading (命理) the major life cycle (大运) transitions — whenever a great wave of fortune arrives, it is never merely an increase in wealth fortune or career gains. It is a complete replacement of your circumstances and your understanding. And that is no bad thing.
Know this: whenever you look back and think your past self was ignorant and crude — that is the moment you’ve taken another great leap forward.
So learn to continuously strip yourself to the bone, shed your old skin, and be reborn. Again and again, kill and bury the self of yesterday.
That — and only that — is the true master key to the Tower of Destiny.