Chapter 67 - 57: An Impossible Challenge?

"Brother Hua, I’m gonna head out!"

As someone with a touch of social anxiety, Chen Jue instinctively flinched away from the gleaming livestream camera held by the cameraman.

He had always appeared as the masked "Brother of Special Skills" before. To be honest, showing his real face on camera felt a bit weird.

This was a perfectly normal reaction for most people. Aside from the hardcore social butterflies, if you randomly pulled someone off the street, very few would be willing to have their face broadcast like this.

After all, getting famous these days wasn’t always a good thing. The internet was full of stories of people suffering from social death after a single on-camera appearance.

As for the netizens flooding the chat with comments, 99% of them were just keyboard warriors. Even if some of them actually trained, they would never show up in person to challenge Chen Jue to an arm-wrestling match.

In reality, they were all just regular people bogged down by stress. They went online to watch streams and scroll through videos for a bit of fun. Who would have so much time on their hands that they’d actually seek out an offline fight?

Seeing that Chen Jue was determined to leave the stage, and recalling his earlier request to have his face blurred, Brother Hua guessed he was probably an introvert. He played along with the crowd’s excitement and announced, "Let’s give a round of applause to this handsome guy who successfully completed the challenge twice!"

Amidst a round of fervent CLAPPING, Chen Jue slipped off the stage, planning to take advantage of the crowd to get to his car and leave quickly.

Just then, Hu Feifei, the woman who had been promoting in the crowd, who had clearly been waiting for him, sidled up to Chen Jue with stars in her eyes. "Brother Jue! You’re amazing! That silver brick is so heavy, not even many of my colleagues can hold it for that long!"

Seeing Hu Feifei praise him so highly, Chen Jue quickly waved his hand dismissively. "It’s nothing, really. I just happened to have been practicing my grip strength recently, that’s why I could do it."

He knew his own body best. The only reason he’d succeeded in the challenge this time was because of the targeted hand exercises he had done beforehand.

Besides, while the silver brick challenge seemed to require the strength of the entire arm, the real trick was in the grip of the fingers and the explosive power of the forearm muscles.

And breaking that 30-second silver brick challenge record was all thanks to cheating by adding points on his panel.

But the cheating came at a cost. Right now, Chen Jue’s left hand was strained, and it hurt terribly just to move it. He was in a hurry to get back and rest, so he didn’t want to waste any more time with Hu Feifei.

"That’s still incredible!"

"I know several male trainers who went on stage and failed the challenge," Hu Feifei said with a smile.

Perhaps sensing his eagerness to leave, she didn’t hold him up any longer. ’Did I forget my makeup today? Has my charm worn off? Why does he seem completely uninterested in me!’ she complained internally. But her voice was sickly sweet and feigned coyness as she said, "Brother Jue, if you’re free this weekend, you should come to the club and help me and Lin Ling practice Darts~"

Then, after his noncommittal "definitely next time," she watched with a resentful gaze as Chen Jue got into his domestic SUV and drove away.

...

On the way back, Chen Jue thought about the two times he had run into Hu Feifei.

One was at the Darts club during a match, and the other was here at the silver brick challenge, surrounded by a crowd.

Chen Jue guessed that Hu Feifei was probably the type of person who thrived on being the center of attention—an exhibitionist personality. It might also be an occupational hazard; the more spotlights on her, the more excited she got.

But as soon as the gazes and spotlights were gone, she became cold and indifferent toward him.

She was just like those "Frisbee ladies" or "gym ladies" that were all the rage on the internet for a while. That, combined with her slightly fake, cutesy voice, was enough to make a young man like Chen Jue, who was almost 30, sick to his stomach.

’Teacher Wu, who’s generous, beautiful, and doesn’t care for fame, is much more my type!’ Chen Jue grumbled to himself.

He drove back to the talent apartment, first applying a cold and hot compress to his left hand, then spraying it with medicinal spray, massaging it, and putting on a pain-relief patch.

After the soreness had subsided a bit, Chen Jue placed the two big red envelopes he had won from the evening’s challenge on the table.

He took out the five thousand yuan and spread the bills out neatly. Looking at the money he had earned in just a few short minutes, Chen Jue grinned, a sense of accomplishment welling up inside him.

’This should be the first income I’ve earned with my body since I started training systematically, right?’ Chen Jue mused, tapping the pile of red banknotes in front of him.

It wasn’t a lot of money, only about what he earned in five days at his regular job.

But for Chen Jue, it was the first step toward making money from a side hustle.

’I wonder who came up with these challenges. Two thousand yuan just for lifting a silver brick? Do they have money to burn?’

’People will really do anything for traffic these days!’ Chen Jue couldn’t help but sigh internally.

He had just earned five thousand from Brother Hua’s pocket tonight, but the guy could probably make it all back in minutes just by editing a video and posting it online.

He marveled at how rich these internet celebrities were and was astounded by the current fast-paced era of visual media.

As long as you could catch the right trend and create some hype, even a pig could fly.

Some top internet celebrities could earn more in a lifetime than an ordinary family, or even a small business, just by selling products on their livestreams.

Faced with that kind of money, it was hard for anyone to be content with a normal nine-to-five job.

Even Chen Jue himself felt a little restless, hoping his "Brother of Special Skills" ID would blow up overnight so he could escape the daily grind.

’I wonder if my Brother of Special Skills account can hit a million followers,’ Chen Jue thought as he opened his phone and checked his channel’s backend.

The view counts for the two "special skills" videos he had posted earlier had stabilized, both stuck in the tens of thousands.

His follower count had also plateaued at 11,000.

If he wanted to keep attracting viewers from Bilibili and Douyin, he would have to come up with some more original special skills.

However, since he had strained his left arm during the silver brick challenge tonight, he’d have to rest for a couple of days before filming another video.

...

He scrolled through his phone for a while and saw all sorts of copycat videos similar to the silver brick challenge.

As it turned out, the original idea for the silver brick challenge came from a Gold Museum in Dacong Province.

This Gold Museum, in cooperation with the local tourism bureau, had created a gold brick challenge. If you could lift a 25-kilogram solid gold brick according to their rules, you could walk away with the brick, which was worth over 10 million yuan.

Chen Jue watched videos of several major fitness influencers, including Brother Hua, who had all gone to this Gold Museum to attempt the gold brick challenge, but they all failed.

When he saw that the real challenge required participants to wear special nylon gloves to lift a trapezoid-shaped gold brick placed flat, Chen Jue exclaimed, "That’s ridiculous!"

He had just tried it himself tonight with a similarly shaped 25-kilogram silver brick. The surface of the silver brick was not only smooth, but there was also practically no leverage point to get a grip.

The multi-million-yuan gold brick in the video was clearly crafted with more precision than Brother Hua’s silver brick, its surface polished to be even smoother.

No one could lift it even without gloves, let alone while wearing such slippery nylon ones.

The rules of the challenge designed by the Gold Museum were just plain mean.

"If anyone can actually take that thing, I’ll change my name!" Chen Jue couldn’t help but scoff.

But then, the thought of the magical panel he possessed made him wonder. If he increased his Strength to a certain level, might he have a chance at this gold brick challenge?

’So what if I have to wear nylon gloves?’

’If my hand strength is great enough to leave an imprint on the gold brick, wouldn’t that create enough friction to grip and lift it?’

As soon as this absurd idea popped into his head, all of Chen Jue’s sleepiness vanished.

Just because others couldn’t succeed didn’t mean he, a guy with a cheat system, couldn’t.

Besides, this gold brick challenge wasn’t unique to that one Gold Museum in China. Several large gold mines abroad that were open to tourists had long hosted similar challenges.

Some had the brick in a glass case with a small hole for people to try and grab it within a time limit, while others just used a 50-kilogram trapezoidal gold brick.

Anyway, there were many variations, all of them gimmicky challenges designed to attract tourists’ attention.

If he really trained his arm and grip strength to that level and managed to walk away with a gold brick, wouldn’t he be set for life?

’Maybe I should try some targeted training?’

’You’ve got to have a dream, otherwise, what’s the difference between you and a salted fish?’ Chen Jue thought, opening Taobao and searching for a model of a similar gold brick.

A real 25-kilogram gold brick cost over ten million yuan; there was no way he could afford that.

And he couldn’t just go to the Gold Museum in Dacong Province every day to practice lifting the brick. The frequent entrance fees and accommodation costs would drain his savings. He had to find a workaround.

Fortunately, a search on the almighty Taobao actually turned up similar gold brick models.

However, to create a 1:1 replica that weighed 25 kilograms, ordinary metals just wouldn’t be heavy enough.

Because gold is the elemental form of the chemical metal Au, which has an atomic mass of 196.967. The alloy that came closest in both density and appearance was brass.

He found a shop specializing in custom brass ornaments and asked about the price for a 25-kilogram replica gold brick.

The seller sent him a link directly. He clicked on it and saw the price was over 3,700 yuan. To his astonishment, the monthly sales were at 10 units!

It was obvious that these were bought by other internet celebrities copying Brother Hua, who planned to film their own silver brick-style challenge videos.

’Even a replica gold brick is this expensive?’

Chen Jue looked at the price and hesitated.

He was usually quite frugal. It was only recently, after awakening his panel, that he had started trying more new things. With the added expense of a car and frequent massages at the Jingtang Club, his spending had begun to flow like water.

But when he glanced at the crisp five thousand yuan he had just won, and imagined the scene of him lifting a ten-million-yuan gold brick, Chen Jue decided to just go for it and placed the order.

"Screw it!"

"Worst case, I’ll just go to the Jingtang Club a few less times!"