The First Thousand Years of Refusing to Ascend

There are so many novels with this kind of setting recently, like practicing qi ten thousand times and transcending 10,000 levels of tribulation. It's like learning 1+1 all the time, and then not learning multiplication unless you add 1+1 to billions of digits, and then all your peers have graduated from calculus. So, how powerful can a person who only knows 1+1 be? Others use quantitative changes to lead to qualitative changes, and then accumulate quantity to continue the next qualitative change. You are always in the first stage, so the effect of your physical training in 10,000 years cannot be as good as that of others in one year. It's like you have been accumulating ashes, but the same carbon has been turned into diamond by others. How about you use ordinary charcoal to collide with diamond? Can your amount be enough to match the one gram of diamond added by others in a year? Quantity changes to quality, and variables change to quality... You are always at the quantitative level in the first stage. What do you use to fight against the level of accumulation that also occurs after the qualitative change?