Chapter 51 - 44: The New Colleague Is a Bit Abnormal

With his right hand on the mouse, he feigned familiarizing himself with the risk control system, while his left hand relentlessly squeezed a hand gripper.

The counter on the gripper, reset to zero, ticked upward steadily: +1, +1.

The last time he’d used this thing, he had no experience and had gone too hard, too fast. He ended up with lactic acid buildup in both hands. So this time, Chen Jue intentionally slowed his pace.

He not only lowered the resistance on the gripper from the original 60 kg to 30 kg, but he also slowed his squeezing pace.

Anyway, there were eight hours in a workday. As long as he didn’t injure his hands, Chen Jue could squeeze this thing until the company went bankrupt!

As for the work itself, it was child’s play for Chen Jue.

As a Master Level risk control data analyst with over 10,000 hours of experience, he knew with a single glance after logging into the system how to judge whether a client should be approved for a loan or rejected.

This was the so-called work experience at play; he could hit the ground running at any new company.

Many companies out there looking to hire loved recruiting experienced hands like Chen Jue.

They didn’t even mind paying a higher salary. As long as the job was done well, it was always better than hiring a bunch of error-prone recent graduates and interns.

This was also why so many university students, upon graduating and sending out resumes, would immediately be hit with the crushing blow of, "Sorry, you don’t have work experience. You don’t meet our requirements."

No work experience, no job offer.

Can’t get a job, can’t get experience.

This formed an unbreakable closed loop of logic: graduation equals unemployment.

...

He squeezed for over an hour, but the Attribute panel showed no changes.

Chen Jue figured he had lowered the resistance too much, and the amount of exercise hadn’t reached the panel’s recognition threshold.

After all, when he was squeezing at 60 kg, the notification had appeared after about half an hour.

But Chen Jue wasn’t in a hurry. He had plenty of patience!

While taking a break to switch hands, Chen Jue looked up and scanned his surroundings.

Besides familiarizing himself with the office environment, he was also observing his new colleagues.

They were all risk control personnel who sat in front of computers for long periods. Not only was their posture all twisted and crooked, but even their glasses were similarly thick—you could tell at a glance they were at least 500-degree prescriptions.

However, this group of colleagues were all high-earners among ordinary people, with monthly incomes starting at 20k. Their spending habits on food and clothing were similar to Chen Jue’s; they were all willing to spend money.

None of them looked pale and sickly. They were either round-bellied and plump or had the prosperous look of the well-fed.

Other than their team leader, Li Mo, who showed some signs of working out and had a leaner build, five or six out of every ten of them were overweight.

Looking at them, Chen Jue felt like he was seeing himself before he’d obtained the panel.

’I’ve been working out so consistently lately. I must have lost at least a few pounds, right?’

’If I get the chance, I should find time to get a body composition test.’

Chen Jue felt a little nostalgic for the 50,000-yuan body composition machine at Yi Lian Fitness.

Unfortunately, now that he had moved to the CBD for work, he wouldn’t have the chance to go to the Binjiang Industrial Park area anymore.

He opened his phone, browsed Taobao, and settled for the next best thing: a bathroom scale with a body fat analysis function. It cost him less than 30 yuan, cheaper than a single breakfast in Hang City.

Just then, Shen Shikun, who was sitting next to him, returned from the restroom. As he passed Chen Jue’s desk, he pointedly glanced at the gripper in Chen Jue’s hand a few times, then leaned in and asked, "Hey man, what’s that thing? For working out?"

Chen Jue glanced at him. In the past hour, he had already noticed this Fatty Bai had made two consecutive trips to the restroom.

And he was gone for quite a while each time!

First a number one, then a number two... getting paid to be on the toilet. Half an hour would pass just like that. He was clearly a veteran slacker among office workers.

"It’s just a hand gripper, for exercising your fingers."

"Want to give it a try?"

Seeing his plump figure, Chen Jue offered him the gripper out of a sense of goodwill.

Shen Shikun took the gripper and played with it for a bit. He even tried to increase the resistance, but once he got to 50 kilograms, he couldn’t squeeze it anymore.

"Phew!"

"It’s this tiring after just a few squeezes?"

"Can’t do it! Can’t do it!"

Shen Shikun let out a long breath and handed the gripper back to Chen Jue, a suspicious look on his face.

Because earlier, while zoning out at his desk, Shen Shikun had noticed that Chen Jue had been squeezing that thing ever since he sat down.

He’d been at it from just after 9:00 to 10:30, for over an hour straight.

What kind of incredible hand endurance did that take?

Even though Chen Jue had switched hands midway, for a 220-pound homebody like Shen Shikun, it was completely incomprehensible how someone’s hands could have so much... patience.

Don’t they get sore after squeezing for so long?

’This guy seems to have a weird hobby!’ Shen Shikun muttered to himself.

Seeing that Fatty Bai wasn’t very interested in exercise, Chen Jue just smiled, took the gripper back, and continued his training, switching hands.

Around 11:00, a new notification finally appeared on the panel:

——————

[Ding~]

[You have completed an excessive anaerobic endurance training session. Your finger, wrist, and arm muscle groups have been effectively exercised. Your muscle endurance and grip strength in both hands have improved.]

[Strength Attribute +0.01]

[Free Attribute +0.01]

[Friendly Reminder: Muscle fascia, bones, and joints are not machine parts. Excessive endurance training can easily lead to tenosynovitis of the fingers. Please schedule your training time reasonably to avoid unnecessary physical injury.]

[Recommended training duration: 30 minutes / 12 hours]

——————

’I went over the limit again?’

Seeing the notification, Chen Jue immediately stopped squeezing the gripper.

Just like with the Eye Health Exercises from before, this hand gripper also shouldn’t be overused.

Just as the panel said, the human body wasn’t a tireless metal machine.

Sensitive body parts like the hands had their own limits.

’Only 30 minutes of training in half a day, for a total of one hour per day.’

’Looks like I still need to learn how to rest properly,’ Chen Jue thought to himself.

Taking advantage of the moment while his hands were sore, he allocated the 0.02 Free Attribute points he had earned that morning to [Constitution].

A warm current spread throughout his body, and the lactic acid buildup in his hands was mostly relieved by the surge of heat.

Glancing at the unfamiliar term, [Tenosynovitis of the Fingers], Chen Jue took out his phone and specifically searched for it online.

It was a disease common in the hands and wrists, primarily caused by long-term overuse of the fingers and wrists.

The tendon sheath, also called the synovial sheath, is a tubular synovial sac that encases long tendons, reducing friction during movement.

In layman’s terms, it’s like a ring of ball bearings around the muscles and joints of the hand, which automatically secretes lubricant. With little activity, there’s naturally no problem.

But with overuse and insufficient lubrication, friction would lead to inflammation.

Chen Jue was already very resistant to the mere symptom of lactic acid buildup.

Let alone training to the point of getting inflammation!

He could grind Attributes anytime, but the prerequisite was not to damage his own body.

...

He put down the hand gripper and glanced at the time. It wasn’t lunchtime yet.

So Chen Jue sat at his desk and started looking up information related to human exercise. These office computers were high-spec; the internet connection was stable, and you could even alt-tab to play games without any issues.

But playing games during work hours wasn’t just slacking off; it was pushing your luck.

However, since he had been spending less time on his phone and computer recently, staring at the screen for so long made him feel a little unaccustomed to it. His eyes felt a bit dry.

He took off his glasses and, as if no one else was around, raised his hands and started doing the [Eye Health Exercises].

He planned to massage the acupressure points around his eye sockets to relieve his eye fatigue.

But this scene left Shen Shikun, who was next to him, completely dumbfounded!

"Holy crap!"

"What is he doing?"

"Is he doing those Eye Health Exercises for kids?"

’If that stuff actually worked, I wouldn’t have become nearsighted so early!’ Shen Shikun complained wildly in his head. He felt that his new colleague was truly a bit of a weirdo.

Openly playing with a hand gripper was one thing, but now he was actually starting to do the Eye Health Exercises that only elementary and middle school students did.

However, seeing how vigorously he was massaging, and how his techniques and movements were completely different from the "Rub the Tianyin Acupoint" he remembered, Shen Shikun couldn’t help but stare a little longer.

’What version of the Eye Health Exercises is this?’

’How come I’ve never seen it before?’ Shen Shikun wondered.

He stole another glance at their team leader Li Mo’s desk in the distance, hesitating over whether he should follow suit and learn it too.

Because if he did, he would have a new trick for slacking off and killing time at work.

...

In the blink of an eye, it was 11:30. At the surrounding desks, people began to stand up one by one, stretching their backs and limbs.

Chen Jue also saw that in the new work group chat, people were already discussing what to eat for lunch and what takeout to order.

For an office worker, the lunch and noon break were the only times that truly belonged to them.

If you didn’t treat yourself to something good at a time like this, you were just making yourself suffer for no reason.

"Chen Jue, want to grab a bite together at the cafeteria on the first floor?"

"The food in the cafeteria is pretty good. I usually eat there," Shen Shikun suggested enthusiastically as he leaned over.

"Sure!"

"Let’s go together."

Chen Jue nodded, grabbed his employee ID card, and followed him downstairs.

This time, however, he didn’t take the stairs. Considering he had already climbed them once that morning, Chen Jue was worried that too much Climbing might injure his knees.

While looking up information online that morning, Chen Jue had discovered that besides [Tenosynovitis of the Fingers], there was also a complex condition called [Knee Joint Injury].

Besides, with Fatty Bai next to him, he’d probably be seen as an idiot if he made his 220-pound colleague take the stairs.

They took the elevator down to the cafeteria. It was very spacious, with a two-story, open-atrium layout.

The food selection was also extensive. Besides Chinese food, there was also Western cuisine and fast food chains like KFC and McDonald’s. The variety was impressive, in no way inferior to the cafeteria at Huaye Mansion, which was run by an external contractor.

Moreover, the diners here were almost all internal employees of Hengtong Group, uniformly dressed in suits. It wasn’t as crowded and mixed as the one at Huaye Mansion. Chen Jue’s first impression was that the environment was nice and not so noisy.

He first went to the service counter to load 500 yuan onto his employee ID card for meals. After getting the food he liked, Chen Jue found an empty seat by the floor-to-ceiling windows.

As for Shen Shikun, he came over with a whole fried chicken, two Cokes, fries, and a hamburger.

"Isn’t that a bit greasy for lunch?"

Chen Jue asked curiously. He was finally starting to see why the guy was so fat.

"It’s alright!"

"I grew up abroad, so I’ve loved fried chicken and hamburgers since I was a kid. I’m used to it, though I switch it up sometimes." Shen Shikun chuckled, then joined Chen Jue in complaining about the building’s property management.

"See that fly?"

"It’s already autumn, but there’s still a green bottle fly that big! The property management here is so cheap. They don’t even spray some insecticide. Seeing this thing while you’re eating really ruins your appetite!" Shen Shikun’s face was full of disgust.

"They really are cheap!"

"They don’t even turn on the exhaust fans in the stairwell in the morning. It stinks the moment you go in," Chen Jue added, complaining as well.

The fly had most likely flown in from the stairwell.

Because when he was climbing the stairs that morning, Chen Jue had noticed that the large trash cans on each floor were placed right at the entrance to the fire escape.

If there was no ventilation, the smell would definitely attract flies.

As they ate, the fly started circling their table. BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. It was incredibly annoying.

Shen Shikun, a 220-pound Fatty Bai, didn’t have very agile arms. He swatted at the annoying fly a couple of times but failed to drive it away.

Seeing this, Chen Jue stopped him from his useless efforts. "Let me," he said, then picked up a toothpick from his tray.

"You?"

Shen Shikun, who was in the middle of munching on his hamburger, was slightly taken aback. Before he could figure out what was going on...

...he saw Chen Jue bend his finger to take aim. When the green bottle fly landed on the corner of the table and began to rub its forelegs together, he flicked his finger. The toothpick shot across half the table’s length and pinned the still-rubbing green bottle fly dead to the table.

Seeing this, Shen Shikun’s hand trembled. The half-eaten hamburger fell with a THUD onto his tray.

He was dumbfounded!

He felt that his new colleague sitting next to him was really fucking weird!