The Human Anatomy course was a bit hardcore. As a class for Jiang University’s clinical medicine program, it was geared toward medical students in the 5+3 eight-year track. It required memorizing a ton of anatomical terms you’d never hear in daily life.
Just the list of 639 skeletal muscles, a dense wall of Chinese and English vocabulary, was enough to make Chen Jue’s head spin. ’This is way harder than my old risk control job.’
After getting through more than half the class, Chen Jue couldn’t help but yawn. He wasn’t sure if it was his internal clock acting up in the afternoon, but he was instinctively getting drowsy.
He resorted to massaging his ears to perk himself up.
But seeing the first-year freshmen in the class enjoying themselves, Chen Jue couldn’t help but feel he was born to be a slacker in comparison.
’As expected of the geniuses who got into Jiang University!’
’Don’t they find it hard to memorize so many terms at all?’ Chen Jue wondered, glancing around at the male students in the class, all with thick heads of hair.
’By the time they finish this eight-year program, probably more than half of them will be bald.’
’I went bald, and I got strong.’
’The hairstyle of the strong. You all deserve it!’
...
After his first afternoon class ended, Chen Jue grabbed his small bag and hurried to another academic building.
The only hassle with auditing classes across different majors was the commute.
The academic buildings for different departments and majors were scattered all over. The Physical Education department, for instance, was located over by the rubber track.
And this next class, Sports Training, was the one Chen Jue was most invested in. He didn’t want to be late at all.
It had only been three weeks since he’d acquired his attribute panel, so he was still a beginner at working out. He lacked professional guidance and a systematic training regimen.
Compared to the last two classes he’d audited, this Sports Training course was much more relevant to the improvement plan he had drafted.
However, the moment he stepped into the physical education classroom, Chen Jue felt scrutinizing gazes from all directions.
It wasn’t just the P.E. teacher on the platform sizing him up; even the handful of students in the class were staring at him.
’Crap!’
’Why does this atmosphere feel so weird!’
Chen Jue took a deep breath, reported to the tall, sturdy male teacher on the platform, explained that he was just auditing the class, and then quickly found a seat in a corner.
After asking the equally burly male student next to him, Chen Jue finally understood the unique nature of the physical education major.
Everyone admitted to this major was a recruited athlete. In a class of over forty, only a few were second-tier athletes; the rest were either first-tier athletes or even held the title of Master of Sport.
In other words, anyone you picked from this class could win medals at a sporting event. The best among them could even compete for gold and silver at national games. For a [Normal Person] like him to just wander in and audit the class was indeed a bit jarring.
’But since I’m here, I might as well just be shameless and learn what I can.’
They’re all just a bunch of 19 or 20-year-old greenhorns. Even if they were athletes, Chen Jue wasn’t the least bit intimidated.
"Today’s class will be about how to train efficiently and how to set a training plan for yourself. Everyone, please open your textbooks to page..."
Since this male P.E. teacher just read straight from the textbook, his teaching skills couldn’t compare to the previous two instructors. The content on the slides was also extremely simple, looking like it had been thrown together at the last minute just to get by. Most of it was just copied from the textbook, and Chen Jue felt himself getting drowsy as he listened.
’I was hoping to learn some useful knowledge from this Sports Training class to refine my [Strongest Human Training Plan v1.00],’ he thought, ’but I didn’t expect this.’
’These teachers are probably former athletes, not skilled at theoretical instruction,’ Chen Jue mused, glancing around the room. Many of the other students looked just as bored as he was; only a very small few were pretending to take notes, probably just to pass the exams.
With no other option, Chen Jue took out his grip strengthener again. He started spinning a pen in one hand while squeezing the device with the other to strengthen his hand muscles.
His [Constitution] Attribute was increasing rapidly now, and the endurance of his hand muscles had improved by a huge margin. Back when he worked at Hengtong, he could squeeze it for an hour a day at most. Now that he was at Jiang University, he wanted to extend that time and make some adjustments.
He hadn’t been fiddling with the grip strengthener for more than ten minutes when the somewhat burly guy next to him leaned over. "Senior, my name is Ma Qiang. Can I give that a try? My hands are itching to try it!"
Chen Jue glanced at the other guy’s thick arms and passed the grip strengthener over.
University classrooms mostly used long, connected rows of desks and chairs. With the backs of the seats in front providing cover, you could even play on your phone without the teacher on the platform saying anything, as long as the light didn’t glint off your glasses.
Ma Qiang took the grip strengthener and gave it a few squeezes. He found that while he could easily close it at its marked 50 kg setting, his hand started to get sore after just a few repetitions.
After just two minutes, he handed the grip strengthener back with a curious look and asked in a low voice, "Senior, what event do you train for? How is your hand endurance so strong! I saw you squeezing that for ages without even switching hands to rest, but I was done after just a few reps."
"Event?"
"Darts... I guess you could call it... traditional Martial Arts!" Chen Jue hesitated for a moment. He realized Ma Qiang had mistaken him for a fellow student athlete, but he didn’t correct him, just mumbled a reply.
"I train in Swimming, so my grip strength really can’t compare to yours," Ma Qiang said with a grin. He seemed a bit simple and honest.
At that moment, the male teacher on the platform probably realized how boring it was to just drone on about sports training theory. After all, everyone present was an athlete whose talents were meant for the sports field, not for listening to empty, abstract lectures.
So, he quickly clicked through the rest of his slides and then started assigning on-the-spot work and opening the floor for a Q&A session, telling the students to bring up any training-related questions they had.
He probably noticed the stirring over where Ma Qiang was and called his name first.
"Teacher Sun... I’ve been training well recently, and my performance has improved. I don’t have any questions for now!" Ma Qiang replied, standing up, a bit guiltily.
The atmosphere in a university class was generally pretty relaxed, not like primary or middle school where you’d be forced to stand as punishment at the drop of a hat.
Seeing that Ma Qiang couldn’t squeeze a word out, Teacher Sun told him to sit down and pay attention. He then pointed to Chen Jue. "You, the new auditing student. Do you have any questions about training?"
Hearing his name called, Chen Jue glanced at the lifeless classroom, and an idea suddenly struck him. "Teacher Sun, I do actually have a question that’s been bothering me for a long time!"
"But the problem is a bit complex and hard to describe with just words. I’ll need to write it out on the blackboard."
Hearing this, Teacher Sun’s interest was instantly piqued. He waved him over, gesturing for him to hurry up on stage and put on his ’show’.
’Didn’t he see that halfway through the lecture, half of the forty-plus students in the class were looking down, playing on their phones and zoning out?’
Seeing his chance, Chen Jue smiled slightly, went up to the stage, and picked up a piece of chalk. He then drew a diagram of the trapezoid-shaped gold brick on the blackboard and, borrowing Teacher Sun’s computer, played a video of the online gold brick challenge for the whole class to see.
The moment this fun challenge video started playing, the previously lifeless classroom instantly came alive.
"Teacher Sun, I’m a bit of a slacker with poor grades. I just want to know, exactly how much grip strength would you need to lift this gold brick!" Chen Jue finally voiced the question he had been harboring for a long time.
This gold brick challenge was the first major goal he had set in his [Strongest Human Training Plan v1.00]. It was his hope for earning his first pot of gold.
In addition to putting in the work every day—constantly using grip strengtheners and doing exercises like pull-ups to increase his grip and pulling strength—Chen Jue also wanted to scientifically calculate the minimum grip force required to lift the gold brick.
Only by calculating this minimum value would his training have a clear direction for improvement.
Unfortunately, Chen Jue was a slacker himself and had long since returned all the physics he’d ever learned back to his teachers.
But now that he was at a top-tier institution like Jiang University, surrounded by academic powerhouses, from the teacher to the students, he was sure that with a combined effort, they could definitely deduce the specific value of that lower limit.
"That’s an excellent question!"
"If any of you are interested, you can try to calculate it yourselves as well."
After looking at the 25-kilogram value for the gold brick on the board, and glancing at the brick’s shape and the white nylon gloves in the video, Teacher Sun picked up the chalk and added a few more data points to the blackboard.
"We don’t know the exact coefficient of friction for these nylon gloves, but for a material like gold, the surface friction coefficient of a gold bar or gold brick is around 0.2, if I recall correctly."
"Let’s first assume the coefficient of friction between the glove and the gold brick is μ."
"Next, let’s assume the grip force is just barely enough to lift it. Combining that with the 80° angle of the trapezoidal gold brick’s sides, we can derive the following equation: μNsin(80°) = mg."
"μ is definitely lower than the 0.2 coefficient of friction for a gold surface because these nylon gloves look very slippery. So, let’s just cut that in half for now and assume a very low value of 0.1."
"With that, we can do a rough calculation. mg = 25 × 9.8 = 245 N. Therefore, the required grip force N = mg / (μsin(80°)) ≈ 2487 N."
"That’s equivalent to needing 254 kg of grip force to lift this gold brick!"
The moment this simple derivation was complete, not only was Chen Jue stunned, but the entire class erupted.
"Teacher Sun is a beast! He did all that in his head!"
"I feel like it’s a waste for Teacher Sun to be teaching our P.E. department. He should be back in the physics department."
"254 kilograms of grip force?"
"Holy crap! What kind of gold brick scam is this?!"
"I think the world record for grip strength is only 192 kilograms. You’d need to install a hydraulic-powered mechanical arm to lift this thing!"