The longer you walk through this world, the more clearly you’ll see that life’s path is filled with traps and crises at every turn. And you must never assume these crises will come from any single event. On the contrary — whether in your career or your accumulation of wealth — the most dangerous variable in everything you do is always people. The people around you. The people beside you.
This is precisely why so many individuals, no matter how eloquently they can talk about anything under the sun, crumble the moment they step into the real world. As the saying goes: Fail to read people even once, and speak no more of accomplishing great things.
This isn’t about riding someone else’s coattails, nor is it about keeping everyone at arm’s length. But let me speak from the heart — Master Chi genuinely hopes you’ll remember this: in this world, some people can be friends, some can be partners, and some should remain no more than passing acquaintances — a nod of recognition and nothing more. Go even half a step deeper than that, and they become the disaster stars and tribulations written into your servant and sibling palaces in your BaZi destiny chart. On this point, the world is overflowing with raw, bloody examples for your reference.
You trust a brother, and the guarantee you signed for him becomes the final straw that breaks you when times get hard. You trust a sister, and everything you did for her becomes the very blade she uses to control you and stab you in the back.
Master Chi is not teaching you to be selfish, nor to look out for yourself alone. My pure intention with this article is to help you understand which people, in relation to you, should be approached only lightly — and never drawn close as true friends or allies.
People in True Decline#
When Master Chi was young, I was just like you — full of chivalrous loyalty and righteous heart. When friends around me were in trouble or hardship, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. I would draw the blade for my brothers and sisters without a second thought.
But as I matured, I came to realize: loyalty is absolutely necessary, and you should never abandon righteousness just because of a few setbacks, retreating into pure self-preservation. Yet far more important than that is how you help others and extend a hand.
You may not yet be someone moving in business, capital, or political circles — which means you may not have seen what the real world truly looks like. But if you have, you’ll know: once a person enters what I call a “true decline cycle,” they go through a complete period of total submersion and suppression.
In that situation, every ounce of help the outside world can offer is essentially meaningless. In one sentence: it cannot reverse the downward tide.
The money, resources, connections, and opportunities you pour in today may relieve an immediate crisis — but they will never extinguish the flame of declining fortune that keeps reigniting. Those of us who’ve been through this know: the root cause is that when a person is hit by catastrophe, they are rarely able to assess how severe the blow truly is — the kind of blow that might overturn their entire fate.
The result is that while they appear to be fighting hard, and while they genuinely feel gratitude for your help — none of it changes the larger picture. They become like a human black hole: every day they show you their resilience, their effort — yet they quietly consume every resource you bring them. Until eventually, they may even pull you down with them.
This mirrors what played out repeatedly in business circles over the past decade or two: it always started with a billionaire-level boss running into trouble — financial, legal, or crossing some red line. And because of brotherhood and shared history, many friends would rush to help. The moment they did, the entire circle began to collapse.
So Master Chi urges you to remember: when a friend around you is swept into the floods of fate, what you should do — just as in real life when someone is drowning — is not to immediately jump into deep water and drag them out yourself. First, observe carefully. Because it’s very possible that even they themselves don’t know how large their problems truly are.
If, after some time has passed, you find it’s nothing too serious — then by all means gradually help them climb out. But if you discover that the truth of the situation runs far deeper than what appears on the surface, or that they’ve been hiding things even from you — do not allow yourself to become entangled.
Understand: a person in crisis will grab at every straw of hope with whatever it takes. You can afford to wait until they’ve hit absolute rock bottom — until the decline can go no further, until there is nowhere left to fall — and then extend your hand.
This way: you save them at the moment of genuine need, you keep yourself whole, and you earn the deepest gratitude. Three birds, one stone. Why not?
(The greatest act of grace anyone ever remembers is the final hand extended — not the one that gave the most.)
People with Depleted Chi#
These people tend to appear most frequently among the middle class and the salaried working crowd. If you’re still in those circles, pay close attention.
What are their defining traits? Simply this: before any plan is made, they’ve already concluded it will fail.
No matter what it is, in their eyes it’s impossible, impractical, complicated, too difficult, or simply not worth attempting. And the moment you try to present a concrete success story, they mobilize their entire intellect to furiously refute you — explaining why that person succeeded only because of connections, luck, tactics, and various things that can’t be spoken of openly.
In short: this thing isn’t worth it — and even if it were, it wouldn’t be our turn.
And yet these very same people love nothing more than to complain and blame the world, day after day. Because what they actually want is a perfect, effortless tailwind — a smooth road requiring no struggle, no hardship, no setback, no pressure whatsoever.
For this, I’ll return to what I said at the opening of this article: the connections in our lives fall into different categories. Some people are meant to be spouses; some are destined to be lovers but never partners; some can be dear friends but not business allies; some can be allies but should never be brought too close personally.
I’m not saying Master Chi wants you to surround yourself with a gang of people endlessly hyping each other up. But please make absolutely certain that the people you deal with day to day — male or female — are people who want to make something happen.
When Master Chi was young and had nothing to my name, I too spent time with peers who were, like me, going nowhere in particular. Among them, certain ones — even without reading their destiny framework — you could just tell: these ones were going to break through. Not because they were smarter, but because they were genuinely, constantly searching for a path forward and upward.
When we saw stories of people rising at the time, we didn’t get hung up on how questionable or underhanded their past had been. We all knew: who is born a pure lotus above the water? It only appears unstained because it has already risen out of the mud.
So if they could rise — how did they do it? What was their path? How did they seize those opportunities? How could we replicate it? And yes, along the way we’d inevitably run into new problems and uncharted difficulties — but we would absolutely never simply give up.
Master Chi once used this example: a seed buried in a pile of rocks doesn’t bloom and bear fruit because it has extraordinary force to break through stone. It blooms because it never stops directing all its effort toward the single goal of sprouting.
So remember this always: people start similar in nature, but habits set them apart. Always, always partner with those around you who are also elbowing their way upward — even if you don’t particularly like them as people. Because when it comes to career and personal achievement, they are worth incomparably more to you than those who call you brother or sister.
Say nothing else — just look at any industry today. Do you think the major capital players who’ve built real power have deep personal affection for one another? Of course not. They converge because of aligned interests and shared nature. But the moment they recognize they need each other — without exception, they choose those of the same kind over those of the same taste.
People with Failing Luck#
You ask: has Master Chi, having read so many destiny frameworks, ever encountered someone who “held a winning hand and then played it into ruin”? Yes — plenty of them. More than you can count.
We need to understand an important distinction: destiny (命) and fortune (运) are two entirely different things.
Destiny is the framework, the foundation, the grand momentum. For example: born into nobility, descended from a prominent family, gifted with rare talents, blessed by noble benefactors — these define a person’s life pattern (格局), and that pattern is something to be reckoned with. Or even if the pattern lacks full expression, they are still destined to carve out a piece of the world for themselves.
And truly, there are many people in highly privileged and accomplished domains who simply need good destiny to hold their position steadily — nothing you’d even know how to envy, because their foundation is just that solid.
But fortune — fortune breaks down the grand arc into individual events: each independent chapter in the unfolding of a life.
And there are many people in this world who ride their foundation or their destiny framework their entire lives, remaining active in their circle and tier — yet never once, in their entire lifetime, having a single battle worth talking about.
This type concentrates heavily among the second generation — all varieties of it. Let me be clear: that group is deeply contradictory. The strong among them are extraordinarily strong; the weak are extraordinarily weak. And once they’ve settled into their respective tiers, they exist in completely separate worlds that never intersect.
Master Chi has observed many real situations where two family patriarchs call each other brothers — yet their children have zero interaction whatsoever. No need to explain: one side is clearly raising tigers and phoenixes; the other is clearly producing a houseful of useless descendants.
What “failing luck” means for this type is: they spend their entire lives in an endless loop of squandering and losing — a thoroughly hopeless case. And around them, they reliably attract a crowd of followers and attendants — mostly equally useless characters — like those in the dying days of the Qing Dynasty who would orbit around the Bannermen’s sons, living off them through various schemes.
Master Chi is genuinely opposed to you entering these circles. And yet an enormous number of people — people who’ve never been in the presence of real power in their entire lives — are very easily seduced by a single line: “so-and-so’s son” or “so-and-so’s daughter.” And then they spend long stretches of their precious life accompanying these failures, all while believing they’ve touched the clouds.
Do not do this. Follow the persistently victorious small general before you follow the persistently failing great house. Because over time, your reputation and your habits will be pulled off course.
Now — if you’ve thought it through and you tell me: “Master Chi, I’ve made my decision. I need to play this person once to advance myself.” I won’t say I support or oppose that. The fortune and misfortune of that choice are yours to make.
But from Master Chi’s experience: this is almost certainly a poorly timed transaction with unfavorable returns. For one thing, the circles are small — burn someone once, and it becomes a stain that never washes off. For another, the return is low — if you already see this person as dead weight, their own parents have long since given up expecting anything from them. You’ll extract very little even from the exploit. And on top of that, you’ll damage your karmic merit (福报). Why bother?
At this point, this article has essentially been a summary of the “servant palace” and the “sibling palace” in the destiny framework — cataloguing the kinds of futile connections in your life that bring you nothing, so you have a clear mental register.
I’ll admit: Master Chi has been negligent about this topic until now. I always assumed that if I could explain the grand Dao and the worldly details clearly enough, that was sufficient.
But I overlooked the fact that, unlike someone like myself — forged through real catastrophe and adversity — many of my readers have never experienced genuine storms or truly treacherous human hearts. And that naturally becomes a serious blind spot and vulnerability on the road of life.
The three types discussed today — people in true decline, people with depleted Chi, people with failing luck — each one accounts for countless unfortunate souls who have been deceived and harmed in this world.
And the outcome? You will be dragged down by the person you trusted most. You will be held back by the friends you see daily. You will be cheated by the connections you deliberately cultivated. And the damage they inflict on your life runs far deeper than any single event — because the fundamental problem with people is that they shape those around them. The good lift you up; the corrupt pull you under and rot your character along with theirs.
So — returning to the theme — Master Chi still hopes you understand: sometimes you must deliberately seek out certain people, and keep clearly in mind that the reason you seek them out is not because of personal affinity, but because you genuinely need what they offer.