“Every person wants power. Every person wants to encounter some miraculous opportunity that can change their fate. Every person hopes to accomplish what takes others years to do in just a day. They want shortcuts that allow them to skip decades ahead of others. They want to soar to the top and look down on their old peers. I have a responsibility to tell you that there are no shortcuts in cultivation.

“If you want to accomplish in a day what others accomplish in decades, then you’ll need to pay the pain of the decades of work compressed into a single day. If you can endure it, you will be completely transformed. If you cannot, you will be turned to dust. No one can change this law.

“The reason I am stronger than you isn’t because my talent is higher, or because I’m smarter than you. It is because I was forced to get stronger. What...