Rich Bro V Me 50

Spent over ten yuan on a Didi to get back to Changhe Residential District.

Went to the Cainiao Station at the entrance to pick up my recent packages, then lugged the delivery bag back to my rented room at a snail's pace.

The room was only about ten square meters, furnished with a small cabinet, a five-foot bed, a small desk, and a tiny bathroom that had been added later.

It was a partitioned room in a three-bedroom apartment; the space was so cramped that even turning around was a struggle.

And yet, this still cost Chen Jue 2,300 a month!

With a deposit of one month plus three months' rent, and utility bills higher than residential rates, nearly 30,000 a year went straight into the landlord's pocket.

Chen Jue remembered moving here with Taisheng Company two years ago; the rent was already 2,000 back then, but at least the company's monthly housing subsidy and his housing provident fund could cover it.

Later, to celebrate Hang City hosting the Asian Games, they claimed it was to improve the city's image, and the rent was hiked up by another 300.

That extra 300 had to come out of Chen Jue's own pocket.

When you run into something like this, there's simply nowhere to go to reason with anyone.

Because all the landlords in Hang City seemed to have made a secret pact, like they were playing mahjong together, adjusting prices in unison—it was even more absurd than gas prices.

If you don't want to rent it, that's fine; there are plenty of others waiting to move in.

The area is surrounded by industrial parks with so many companies and job openings that every day, a fresh batch of green leeks pours out of university campuses for the landlords to harvest.

In the past, upon returning to this cramped little room, Chen Jue would definitely have felt emo, flopping onto the bed to scroll through his phone for hours or opening his laptop to play a few games to kill time.

He would numb himself with the dopamine provided by short videos, NetEase Cloud Music, and games.

But tonight, skipping stones at the park, the joy brought by that fun physical activity left Chen Jue feeling refreshed.

So much so that everything he looked at seemed a bit more pleasing than usual!

Character: Chen Jue

Strength: 0.77

Physique: 0.91

Spirit: 1.05

Skill: [Stone Skipping Lv1 (5/200)]

Available Free Attribute Points: 0.00

(Character Evaluation: A typical corporate wage slave; your body is in a state of severe sub-health.)

"This Attribute Panel is truly magical!"

"If I add a few more points to my attributes and level up my skill, would I be able to skip a stone dozens of times with just any random rock?"

Chen Jue glanced at the Attribute Panel, feeling that he could find some different kind of fun for himself this weekend.

This cramped rental room was suffocating; if it didn't work out, he'd just go back to the park and skip stones for a couple of days.

Getting out more was better than staying in the room playing dead.

But before that, he had to solve the problem right in front of him.

Because after all the tossing and turning tonight, Chen Jue felt physically exhausted, especially his right arm, which had gone completely limp.

Having sat in an office for so long without any strenuous exercise, this sudden exertion had exceeded his arm's limit.

It had only been half an hour, so the soreness wasn't obvious yet.

Chen Jue estimated that when he woke up tomorrow morning, he wouldn't even be able to lift his arm.

Chen Jue had plenty of experience with this; he had encountered it a few times before when moving or during company team-building events.

After lifting too many heavy objects or walking too much while hiking, his muscles and joints would be too sore to move the next day.

It was the kind of pain that hurt whenever you touched or moved, requiring over a week of rest to recover.

Having had similar experiences, Chen Jue knew exactly how to handle it.

At nearly 30 years old, he had learned to deal with minor physical ailments on his own.

He first took a hot shower in the bathroom and changed into loose clothing.

He soaked a towel in scalding hot water and applied a hot compress to his entire arm.

Then, he dug out the two bottles of Yunnan Baiyao spray he kept in the cabinet, applying the insurance liquid first, followed by the medicinal spray.

After applying the medicine, Chen Jue used his left hand to massage his right arm.

Afraid it wouldn't be enough, he made a special trip out of the residential complex to buy two boxes of pain-relief patches at the pharmacy, which were said to promote blood circulation, relieve pain, and relax the tendons.

He slapped five patches onto the swollen areas of his right arm.

"It shouldn't hurt as much tomorrow, right?" Chen Jue swung his right arm, feeling a slight improvement.

He returned to the room and boiled some water to drink.

Then, he climbed onto the bed, leaned against his lazy pillow, and lay there comfortably for a while.

Usually, he went to bed after midnight, and since it was Friday night, Chen Jue certainly wouldn't be able to fall asleep before two or three in the morning.

However, with his right hand practically crippled, Chen Jue had no choice but to play the one-armed hero for the night, using his left hand to unlock his phone.

He didn't open Quark, nor did he use incognito mode to browse those strange, questionable websites.

He was exhausted to the point of being a dog; he didn't have the energy for a "session" anyway.

He opened Bilibili and searched for the keyword "Stone Skipping," and a pile of videos popped up.

Perhaps he had gotten too hooked on it earlier that evening, because even now, lying in bed, Chen Jue couldn't get the [Stone Skipping] out of his mind.

But as soon as he clicked on the first few highly-viewed Stone Skipping videos, Chen Jue couldn't help but let out a few "What the f*ck?!" exclamations.

Because after watching these videos, his previously pleasant mood was instantly thrown into turmoil.

"You can skip a stone over a hundred times in one go?"

"There are actually professional athletes for such a niche activity?"

"And there's even a world record!"

Chen Jue was so shocked that he bolted up from his pillow, refusing to believe it, and clicked through several more videos.

He realized that the feel and experience he had summarized for [Stone Skipping] tonight were almost laughable compared to these professional athletes in the videos.

Chen Jue discovered that these professionals could easily skip a stone dozens or even hundreds of times with a casual flick.

Moreover, there were all sorts of fancy styles: skipping multiple stones at once, or creating intersecting or parallel curved trajectories across the water's surface.

The most insane part was that some stones, toward the end of their run, could even precisely pop balloons floating on the water!

"This is just abstract!"

"This is actually possible?"

Chen Jue's mouth hung open, as if he had discovered a New World.

After watching a few instructional videos on technique, he compared them to the posture he had used at White Horse Lake that evening and realized his form was completely off.

"The optimal angle for the stone to enter the water is 20 degrees."

"No run-up needed; the posture is a stationary half-squat with a diagonal downward turn." The more Chen Jue watched, the more abstract it felt.

It was supposed to be a fun, casual activity, yet foreign scientists had actually conducted professional research on Stone Skipping, even publishing analytical papers teaching people how to skip stones better and more often.

They had even uploaded their papers to the high-impact journal website Nature!

"Are these people just bored out of their minds? Do they really have that much free time?" Chen Jue couldn't help but grumble.

He spent every day working his fingers to the bone; forget about buying a house in Hang City, he was barely scraping by on the poverty line.

Once the company dissolved next month, he would have to worry about his income; he'd never had the heart to look into these things before.

If it weren't for the sudden awakening of this Attribute Panel, Chen Jue wouldn't have even touched the recreational sport of [Stone Skipping].

However, with billions of people on Earth, there were bound to be experts in every niche field.

After finishing these Stone Skipping videos, besides feeling shocked and bewildered, Chen Jue also gained quite a bit.

Not only did he learn more professional techniques from the videos, but he also understood why the pros could skip so far and so many times.

It had a lot to do with specialized skipping stones.

The flat stones Chen Jue picked up in the park could skip, but they didn't reach professional standards in terms of shape or weight.

So, after closing the videos, he even went on Taobao to specifically search for the same skipping stones used by those pros.

"Damn it!"

"Isn't the promotional photo on this shop the same world-record-holding big shot from the videos?"

Seeing the top-ranked skipping stones on Taobao with 9999+ monthly sales, Chen Jue knew he was still too naive.

These professional athletes weren't just bored; they were actually making a living off this [Stone Skipping] craft!

Look at the sales of these hit skipping stones—couldn't they easily make a few million a year?

What was even more ridiculous was that a bunch of people were actually buying these pathetic stones cut and polished by machines!

He clicked into the comment section and took a look; it was mostly companies doing team-building or schools hosting events, and they were buying them in bulk.

"One stone costs almost 1 yuan including shipping."

"You throw it in the water just to see a splash and hear a sound."

"Am I just too poor? Or are there too many rich guys online?"

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