’Train my courage?’
After reading Zhou Chuan’s thesis, Chen Jue’s first thought on how to build courage was through [Climbing].
He thought of people in specialized fields who work at great heights, using altitudes inaccessible to ordinary people to stimulate and train their courage.
In Chen Jue’s time, it was impossible to encounter large, wild beasts like in ancient days. Even seeing animals meant paying for a trip to the zoo.
As for using [Hunting Throwing] to fight wild beasts, that was even more out of the question.
Huaxia had very strict wildlife protection laws. He might be able to encounter such large beasts if he ran off to the African savanna, but not otherwise.
As for Jiang Province where Chen Jue lived, there wasn’t severe cold like in the Arctic Circle or Antarctica. Even snow in winter was a luxury, let alone relying on Nature to temper one’s will and courage.
...
After finishing the thesis excerpt and clearing up some of the questions in his mind, Chen Jue felt refreshed and invigorated.
It was as if he had been desperately searching for a ride, and a kind driver had suddenly pulled over and offered him a lift.
As for Zhou Chuan, he might have seemed a bit mercenary, but some of his arguments were right up Chen Jue’s alley—they were even acknowledged by the system panel.
Too bad Chen Jue didn’t have enough money in his pocket to easily win over this scholarly eccentric.
Otherwise, Chen Jue would have wanted to see Zhou Chuan’s other works and theses to learn more about the mysteries of the human body and his bold hypotheses.
’Maybe Zhou Chuan has his own difficulties,’ Chen Jue thought.
Scientific research was certainly expensive, but Chen Jue hadn’t really had a grasp of just *how* expensive it was.
It wasn’t until he saw those top-tier tycoons casually throwing around sums starting at 3 billion USD that he realized he wasn’t the only eccentric one on the path to a healthier body.
...
After diligently reading and studying the thesis excerpt Zhou Chuan had sent, the lunch break was already over.
In the afternoon, there was a surgery course for the clinical medicine major, covering general surgery.
It was a small class, so Chen Jue snuck into the back row with his textbook. He spent the entire period squeezing a hand gripper and holding a wide Horse Stance, his body wobbling strangely.
However, after training like this, he managed to grind out another 0.01 in Strength.
It was just that Zhou Chuan’s bizarre arguments from the morning were too impressive, so much so that listening to this general surgery course felt somewhat dull and tasteless to Chen Jue.
This was like eating a light, simple soup after a heavy, flavorful feast; his palate had suddenly become picky.
’As expected of a top-tier university!’
’A graduate student’s arguments are on a higher level than some of the professors,’ Chen Jue muttered to himself.
As his hand Strength continuously increased, he had already adjusted the hand gripper to the 90 kg setting.
Because the lower settings could no longer stimulate the growth of his hand muscles, the Attribute grinding efficiency would also decrease.
He had bought the current 100 kg max hand gripper quite a while ago and had been using it for nearly three weeks. If he kept at it, Chen Jue estimated it would become useless to him within a few days.
He figured it was metal fatigue. From his frequent, high-intensity use, he had already squeezed the spring a bit loose.
The hand gripper only cost a dozen or so yuan, not even enough for a typical meal of braised chicken and rice, so Chen Jue hadn’t expected much in terms of quality.
But he needed to keep increasing his grip strength, so Chen Jue went online and ordered a new one with a 165 kg maximum resistance.
kg was the highest resistance he could find for a commercially available hand gripper.
Very few ordinary people could even budge it, so there was no market for them. Naturally, no manufacturers were willing to tool up for production.
As for anything above 165 kg, he would have to buy a professional custom model—the kind with multiple springs and an electronic LCD counter.
Those were for professional grip strength athletes aiming for the GM150 world rankings. They came with a companion app for real-time monitoring, could have an upper limit of half a ton or more, and used much higher-quality springs.
However, these custom-made hand grippers were quite expensive, and Chen Jue couldn’t use them yet anyway, so he decided to put it off for now. It wouldn’t be too late to buy one after his grip strength increased.
...
After his afternoon classes, Chen Jue didn’t go to the track to practice Street Fitness. Instead, he drove to the sports park he had visited before.
It had been nearly three weeks since his last visit to the rock climbing club.
He recalled his first visit, when he was pot-bellied, with a greasy, unseemly face.
Comparing that to his current self—having lost weight and body fat, taken off the glasses he’d worn for over a decade, and developed a sunnier, more positive outlook—Chen Jue felt it was all a bit unreal.
’Have I gotten younger in spirit and demeanor just by being around students all the time?’ Chen Jue mused.
It wasn’t just Chen Jue who felt it was unreal!
Even Yu Jie, who was squatting under the rock climbing wall scrolling on his phone, found it a bit incredible!
"Are you... that Brother Jue from before?"
Yu Jie’s eyes widened. He hadn’t seen Chen Jue in a while and thought he must be mistaken.
"It’s me! Yu Jie, did you not go to class today?" Chen Jue asked curiously.
"I skipped a class this afternoon to earn a little spending money. It was just a liberal arts course, nothing too important." Yu Jie grinned. Seeing a customer, he quickly put his phone away and circled Chen Jue, sizing him up. "But Brother Jue, what have you been doing? You’ve changed so much!"
Chen Jue told him he’d taken up Street Fitness and, by way of demonstration, showed off the results of his grip training. With just a few powerful grips and kicks, he used the protruding holds to scale the beginner wall—the same one that had given him trouble before—and reached the top.