Chapter 142 - 102: Kegel Exercise

Cash is the best seasoning; the more you have, the better everything tastes.

After finishing his meal, he had planned to go sit on the lawn for a midday rest, but the sky suddenly changed and it began to rain. The autumn wind that blew in was now tinged with a bone-chilling dampness. Chen Jue knew this was a cold front moving south; winter was beginning to arrive in Jiang Province.

Compared to the dry cold and indoor heating of the north, the south’s winters, while not as low in temperature, felt much colder to the body.

It was like the difference between physical damage, which you could block by bundling up and stacking armor, and Magic damage, where no amount of armor would do you any good. The damp, cold air would seep right through your clothes and into your bones.

Chen Jue wrapped his thin jacket tighter around himself, feeling a shiver run through his body. He hurried to the school gate, hailed a cab, and rushed back to his apartment to change into a heavy winter coat.

He was extremely attentive to his health now. Any injury, illness, or fever would affect his daily training and hinder the efficiency of grinding for Attributes.

Seeing the rain outside grow heavier, Chen Jue decided not to go out at all and took a nap in his room first.

When it was time for his afternoon class, he logged into the university intranet, clicked the link for his online course, and began attending the lecture remotely from his room.

And with no teacher present, he didn’t need to worry about classroom discipline. Besides listening to the lecture and taking notes, Chen Jue also started a major workout in his room.

Since his hands had just undergone Acupuncture and Teacher Zhang had told him to rest them for 24 hours without getting them wet, Chen Jue didn’t practice his upper body exercises. Instead, he switched to training the muscles of his lower body.

As Li Rui’s professional athlete training plan hadn’t been designed yet, Chen Jue taught himself a set of indoor Kegel exercises he found online.

This was a type of exercise targeting the pelvic muscles, first published in 1948 by Arnold Kegel. The goal of the training was to strengthen the muscle tension around the pelvis by stretching the pubic bone and Tailbone of the pelvic floor.

Consistent, long-term Kegel exercises could improve prostate conditions in men, as well as symptoms like urinary incontinence and premature ejaculation.

Chen Jue didn’t have any such embarrassing problems. Thanks to his various panel Skills and Street Fitness, he was already full of vim and vigor. The only thing he lacked was finding someone to "connect" with and gain some practical experience.

The reason he had his eye on Kegel exercises was to improve his old problems of a herniated lumbar disc and anterior pelvic tilt.

’This routine actually includes anal-lifting movements similar to the Squeezing Valley Dao! No wonder it can improve urinary and excretory problems.’ After following the video for a few sets, Chen Jue quickly discovered the core principle of the routine.

After spending half an hour on the workout, a notification actually popped up on his panel:

——————

[Ding~]

[Comprehensive exercise completed. Your pelvic floor muscle group has been effectively trained, and neural control over your bladder and prostate has slightly improved. Your male reproductive and urinary functions have been enhanced.]

[Constitution Attribute +0.01]

[Spirit Attribute +0.01]

——————

’What a pleasant surprise!’ Chen Jue was quite happy seeing the two small Attribute gains pop up on the panel.

As for the terms that appeared in the notification, which were difficult to mention in daily life, Chen Jue was beginning to treat them with a sense of normalcy.

Having been exposed to a large amount of medical knowledge recently, Chen Jue could now be considered half a medical student.

In the eyes of someone studying medicine, gender distinctions fade away; all that matters is health and ethics.

...

After finishing his afternoon online class on clinical medicine and even grinding out some Attributes, Chen Jue was in a good mood.

During his break, he opened WeChat and sent a message to his second uncle, who was back in their hometown in Wen City.

Chen Jue’s family situation was very simple. He came from a rural family in Rui County, Wen City. His mother had passed away from cancer when he was in middle school. To pay for her treatment, his father had borrowed money from all their relatives and friends, accumulating a mountain of debt. In the end, he had no choice but to go to Europe to work and earn foreign currency to pay it all back.

Wen City bordered Fujian Province, and many rural areas had overseas Chinese who had returned.

In that harsh environment with many mountains and little land, going abroad to work was the only way out for many rural people back then.

Entire families would go, pulling their whole clan with them, and slowly, these areas became known as the hometowns of overseas Chinese.

But for some reason, the Chens seemed cursed by their ancestors, plagued by one disaster after another.

After Chen Jue’s father snuck across the border to go abroad, he lost all contact. According to the snakehead who had arranged the passage, there had been an accident where a boat capsized, and not even a body was found.

His father had been the backbone of the family, and going abroad to earn foreign currency was meant to improve their financial situation.

But in the end, not only did he fail to earn any money, but the family’s backbone also collapsed, which only made a bad situation worse for the already impoverished family.

If not for his father’s two brothers helping out and borrowing money to put him through vocational college, Chen Jue probably wouldn’t have even finished high school and would have had to drop out to work.

After graduating, Chen Jue went directly to Hang City to become a "drifter." For the first few years, besides his daily expenses, the bulk of his salary went toward paying off the personal debts left behind by his family.

For a young man just entering the workforce to pay off over 400,000 in debt left by his parents’ generation in just a few years through his own efforts was already incredibly remarkable.

This was the real reason why he was single, not married, and under immense financial pressure.

"Second Uncle, I’m thinking of renovating the old house back home, so I have a place to stay when I come back for the New Year," Chen Jue said after calling his second uncle, Chen Hongye.

"The old house? What are you fixing that up for? You have too much money and nowhere to spend it? If you have money, you should hurry up and put down roots in Hang City and find a wife!" Chen Hongye said, his tone earnest and instructive over the phone.

Chen Jue was the only heir left from his father’s side of the family. As his uncle, even though Chen Hongye had his own family to support, he still cared a great deal about him.

The reason Chen Jue wanted to renovate the old house was partly due to nostalgia for the time when his parents were still alive.

It was also a coincidence that the cold front had moved south into Hang City, reminding him that the New Year was only two months away.

Next year he would be turning thirty, the age when a man should be established. It would be too inconvenient to stay at his two uncles’ houses again for the New Year, so he wanted to take advantage of the spare cash he had to fix up the old family home in the countryside.

As for buying a house in Wen City, Chen Jue had no such thoughts for the time being.

The property prices in Wen City were just as high. The nationally famous property speculation groups originated from there; wouldn’t they lose face if they didn’t drive their own hometown’s property prices to the sky?

Moreover, Chen Jue was now based in Hang City and only went back for the New Year and other holidays. Renovating the old house was the most economical and practical solution.

Everyone has their own bottom line. Even though Chen Jue had unexpectedly made a comeback thanks to his "Brother of Special Skills" livestreams, he had no intention of spending the money recklessly.

After a great deal of persuasion, he finally convinced his uncle by transferring him 100,000 yuan for the renovation costs.

Because his father and his two brothers were all trained as masons, renovating a rural house would only take ten to fifteen days. Plus, since it was family doing the work, the labor costs wouldn’t be as high. The whole project would probably cost around seventy to eighty thousand yuan.

Chen Jue ordered the appliances and furniture online. E-commerce logistics were convenient now, and in the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai area, shipping was free all the way to the village. He just had to ask his uncles to find some time to go back to the village to receive the deliveries.

As for the extra money, Chen Jue told his second uncle to buy some materials to repair his parents’ graves, considering it a small gesture of his filial piety.

...

After finalizing the plans for renovating his old home, the sky outside had already grown dark.

In a damn place like Hang City, as soon as it rained and a cold front moved south, you could feel an uncomfortable chill even when hiding in your room.

So, seizing the after-work hours, Chen Jue made a coded call to his best friend, Jiang Zhe: "Go or no go?"

"Go?"

"Go! Go! Go!" Jiang Zhe immediately and eagerly agreed on the other end of the line.

He picked up his car and drove straight to the Jingtang Club. Seeing Jiang Zhe standing at the entrance in a thin windbreaker, shivering while smoking a cigarette, Chen Jue couldn’t help but laugh. "You’re freezing your ass off, why don’t you go inside?"

"I was waiting for the grand arrival of our Boss Jue! Master Jue, after you!" Jiang Zhe said, astutely pulling out a pack of Diamond Lotus cigarettes and lighting one for Chen Jue.

"Nice cigarettes again!"

"Spill it. Which rich guy’s construction site have you been at these past few days?" Chen Jue took a couple of drags from the cigarette and, with Jiang Zhe, strolled into the Jingtang Club.

Now that his pockets were full, he naturally had to treat his best friend to a good time.

Besides, his apartment felt chilly, and Chen Jue wanted to find a warm place to kill some time.

He wasn’t an ascetic monk; he was just an ordinary guy.

He was already bored out of his mind, and now with a little extra cash in his pocket, he definitely had to go out and have some fun.

"It’s that outdoor equestrian club I told you about last time!"

"That loaded client is throwing money at it like crazy. The construction period has been compressed from half a year to three months. It’ll be finished and handed over next week, so I’ve been keeping an eye on it these past few days," Jiang Zhe said with a grin. It was clear he’d skimmed a nice bit of profit from the site.

For projects funded by wealthy investors like this, the more rushed the schedule, the more kickbacks there were, because only by throwing money around could you speed up the progress.

As for how to tell how much profit a construction site had, you just had to look at what brand of cigarettes the people working there were smoking.

On a bad site, they’d be smoking cheap brands like Baisha or Shuangxi. A decent one would have guys smoking Liqun, Yuxi, or Furongwang. But on the best sites, it was bound to be Huazi or Diamond Lotus.

Every time Chen Jue met up with Jiang Zhe privately, he could guess whether his current project was lucrative just by looking at the cigarettes in his pocket.

"An equestrian club?"

"When it’s done, can we go horse riding there?"

Chen Jue’s expression immediately changed. His [Horse Stance] Skill was already at Lv4, but he had never once had a chance to practice with a real horse.

Since the [Horse Stance] was an improvement on the posture of ancient warriors on horseback, riding a real horse would surely have some unexpected effects.

So, with his arm slung over Jiang Zhe’s shoulder, he went into the Jingtang Club for a buffet dinner. Afterward, they asked a server for waterproof dressings to cover the Acupuncture points, and then, as they were comfortably getting a spa treatment and picking their masseuses from a tablet like they were choosing consorts, Chen Jue started asking Jiang Zhe about the equestrian club.

"That place has all sorts of outdoor activities: horse riding, Archery, and even family-friendly programs. They’ve built it on a huge scale, and they’ve even got top-tier B&Bs and a farm-to-table restaurant."

"There’s an opening ceremony next week. If you want to go check it out, I’ll ask the project manager for a few tickets," Jiang Zhe said with a cheerful laugh, giving Chen Jue the lowdown.