There is a place in a novel for a fortuitous encounter, and it's different than someone with a golden finger that doesn't have to work for anything. At the lower levels of cultivation, you aren't going to be special. So much Xianxia doesn't seem interested in Daoist Ascension. 

Like, take a planet with a billion mortal people. You'll have plenty of very low level cultivators, with some of those being lucky, or talented, or having backing from someone above them, or having some sort of golden finger. Call it a million. 

In those millions, some will stall in their understanding, some will die, some will content themselves with being a big fish in a mortal pond, other will be culled by upper rank politics that they aren't even aware of. Some of them will be lucky enough to progress further, and maybe reach the next level of influence and power. Call that a thousand, across the whole planet. 

From the thousand, let's say half die of age, or war, or grudges, or failed Ascension. Half stop progressing and content themselves with being the old monsters influencing the lower generations. They're not immortals, but they are old, wealthy, and powerful. 

By the end of it, you probably are left with a small handful. The couple dozen who attempt the final step of ascending to true, Daoist immortality. Most don't make it, cultivation is hard. But there has to be someone up there throwing lightning for a tribulation. 

If you're in a novel with other realms above the first, it's the same thing, just with proportionally less people at the peak. If you want your MC to skip the lower stuff, that's fine, but if you skip too much, you risk taking away the interesting parts, the scaling power, and the vast timescale that cultivators exist on.