0093 donned a mask of pain.

Chen Jue withdrew the accumulated earnings from the back ends of the various video apps and transferred them to his bank card.

By now, the short-video industry had become mature, and there were almost no restrictions on cashing out earnings. In general, the money arrived within seconds.

Even so, when the tax deduction notice popped up, Chen Jue could not help feeling a twinge of pain.

The tax was not small, and it was calculated on a progressive scale: income between 800 yuan and 20,000 yuan was taxed at 20 percent, income between 20,000 and 50,000 yuan at 30 percent, and anything above 50,000 yuan at 40 percent.

He had accumulated a little over forty thousand yuan, yet after tax, what he actually received was only a little over thirty thousand.

Fortunately, when the annual individual income tax settlement came around next year, he would still be able to get some of it back. That made Chen Jue feel a little more balanced.

At the front desk, he signed up for the cheapest rehabilitation package, 12,000 yuan, filled out the forms, recorded his information, and smoothly became a new member of the Tianyu Sports Rehabilitation Center.

Passing through the front desk and into the true interior of the center, he was met by a warm, fresh current of air.

Compared with the damp and chilly night at the turning of autumn and winter outside, the temperature inside this rehabilitation center was genuinely comfortable.

It was obvious that they had spent a great deal of money installing a complete set of constant-temperature and humidity control equipment. That kind of system was far more advanced than an ordinary central air conditioner, and it was usually installed in server rooms where the power never went off day or night.

If used in a living environment, it would also need to be paired with a professional fresh-air system and underfloor heating.

When Chen Jue had worked at Tai Sheng, he had once visited the new villa of the chairman who had run off with the money, and he had been stunned by that climate control system.

A customized installation for an entire villa would cost several hundred thousand yuan, and the maintenance costs were even more expensive. Even electricity alone could run into tens of thousands a year.

Not to mention applying such a constant-temperature system across such a vast rehabilitation center. Its annual operating cost was probably no less than several million.

Health industries are unbelievably profitable, Chen Jue thought in admiration.

He felt that the membership fee had been well worth it. This was only the invisible comfort of the environment, after all.

If the details were this meticulous here, there was no need to ask how good the other services inside the center would be.

Sure enough, after changing in the locker room into the free set of sportswear they provided, Chen Jue went into the dining area for a look. The beautifully prepared buffet dishes there were in no way inferior to the cafeteria at Jiang University or to the buffet restaurants of five-star hotels.

Although they did not go so far as to serve lobster or king crab, the balance of meat and vegetables was excellent, and the ingredients were clearly the freshest available.

Just then, Chen Jue happened to be utterly exhausted from exercise, so he took advantage of dinner time and ate to his heart's content in the rehabilitation center's restaurant.

...

After finishing his meal and resting for a while, when he entered the center's sports rehabilitation area, Chen Jue heard several piercing screams coming from inside.

"Easy... easy!"

"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! Hiss!"

Hearing the cries from within, Chen Jue could not help shuddering all over. Even though he had heard sports students mention in exercise-massage class that the pain from stretching and massage was comparable to the ten great tortures, actually being about to experience it at close range was still extremely shocking.

When he walked into the room, he saw more than a dozen leather massage tables lined up in a row, and on one of them lay a burly man with a body full of muscle, being tossed back and forth by a masseur in uniform.

When he leaned in for a closer look, he realized that this muscular man who looked to be in agony was, unexpectedly, an acquaintance!

"Coach Li Chaogun! You're here for a massage too?" Chen Jue greeted him and then found a nearby massage bed to lie down on.

Li Chaogun, who had just been pressed to the edge of collapse, looked at Chen Jue and went blank for a moment. His mind seemed to be a little foggy, and he could not quite remember who this man was for a while.

"Oh... right! I remember now!"

"You're Boss Chen!"

"It's been a long time. Last time I saw you, Boss Chen, you finished the trial class and never came back to our Easy Train Fitness. Did you go sign up somewhere else?" Li Chaogun squinted hard at him and finally found a trace of recognition in Chen Jue's slightly sparse hair.

"I'm no boss. Just call me by my name, Coach Li."

"I've been teaching myself fitness lately, so I haven't signed up at any gym for now." Chen Jue smiled faintly and struck up a conversation with him.

He had a deep impression of this fitness coach who had guided him for the first time.

Especially those thick, powerful legs of his, which could once press out a four-hundred-pound barbell plate at a time. One look was enough to tell he was a master who understood strength training well.

"Haven't signed up at a gym?"

"Boss Chen, don't tell me you've been taking L-carnitine?" Li Chaogun said in surprise when he heard that Chen Jue had not been training in a gym.

"How else could you have slimmed down so fast!"

In just a little over a month, Chen Jue looked as though he had become a completely different person.

Especially since Li Chaogun had been the one who handled Chen Jue's first fitness assessment, he could tell at a glance how much weight Chen Jue had lost from the change in his build.

"Taking L-carnitine?"

"What is that?" Chen Jue asked, a little suspiciously. It was the first time he had ever heard the unfamiliar term.

"L-carnitine is a weight-loss drug. It can work with exercise to speed up fat oxidation and breakdown. Since Boss Chen here has slimmed down so quickly and has been teaching himself fitness, I figured you must have taken something." Li Chaogun explained, though there was still a trace of disbelief in his eyes.

"A weight-loss drug? I see!" Chen Jue did not bother to explain further.

After all, with the panel helping him improve constantly, the speed of his body's transformation was indeed a little unbelievable. Ordinary people simply could not understand it.

...

Lying there chatting with Li Chaogun, Chen Jue learned that the other man was preparing to compete in an amateur bodybuilding contest soon. His regular prep training had been somewhat excessive, and because his muscles felt uncomfortable, he had come to this rehabilitation center for treatment.

He was a long-time member of Tianyu and had been coming here for several years.

And through this casual conversation, Chen Jue also learned a great deal about the hidden rules and dark risks behind bodybuilding competitions.

Because the selection contests for bodybuilders placed great emphasis on how "dry" the muscles were, they were very different from ordinary fitness training.

Bodybuilders who entered the Olympia not only focused on strength training, but also exercised strict control over muscle mass, fat mass, and even body water content, pursuing an aesthetic that, in Chen Jue's eyes, had already become almost pathological.

In order to score high and place well, bodybuilding competitors all paid a kind of "effort" beyond what ordinary people could imagine.

High-intensity training was only part of it. Those with poor talent also had to inject steroids into their bodies for long periods, stimulating the growth of skeletal muscle.

According to Li Chaogun, most fitness coaches like them would enter bodybuilding or physique competitions to create side income.

Once one stepped into that circle, it was equivalent to setting off down the road of using gear with no way back.

If one wanted bigger arms, thicker legs, or broader shoulders, pure training alone would not do it. One had to use gear.

The problem was that these steroid drugs carried extremely high risks and were highly addictive. Not only could they numb the nerves and reduce hormone secretion, they could also place too much strain on the internal organs.

Many bodybuilding athletes who relied on gear even faced the risk of organ failure and a drastically shortened life.

After hearing all this explosive industry gossip, Chen Jue was also somewhat shocked.

To pursue this kind of pathological muscular beauty, they could even give up their health. What kind of bodybuilding was that?

No wonder Li Chaogun had asked him at first glance whether he had taken anything.

Without relying on drugs, it was indeed not easy to slim down to this extent in such a short time.

Chen Jue thought this to himself, feeling fortunate that he had relied on the panel to walk the right path of training.

...

After lying there and chatting with Li Chaogun for a while, Chen Jue saw the other man finish his massage, change his clothes, and leave. Only then did he himself grow quiet.

That man's physique was indeed explosive, and his strength was formidable as well.

But after learning that those abnormal arm and leg measurements were packed with all sorts of artificial tricks and chemical gimmicks, Chen Jue no longer felt the envy he had before.

As for the middle-aged masseur who had been working on Li Chaogun, when he saw Chen Jue take off his outer coat and reveal that evenly balanced physique of his, he nodded appreciatively.

"Your muscles are all natural. Better than that young man just now."

Chen Jue smiled at that.

"Then, Master, you'll have to keep your hands light when you work on me!"

"Massage has nothing to do with light or heavy. What matters is whether it works. For people like you who train, if I don't put some force into it, I can't stimulate the deep fascia." The masseur grinned and first worked over Chen Jue's whole body by hand.

At the beginning, Chen Jue could still endure the pain of the natural stretching and massage. It was only when the man brought out the fascia knife that things truly became unbearable.

First, the masseur applied a special milky-white ointment, then gently scraped and kneaded Chen Jue's calf. Chen Jue immediately sucked in a sharp breath!

"Damn it!"

"Too painful!"

Chen Jue's eyes widened, and a mask of agony instantly covered his face as he could not help blurting out a few curses.

Only then did he finally understand what people meant by the ten great tortures.

The part of the muscle scraped by the fascia knife felt as if countless oversized infusion needles were stabbing into it. And this pain did not end all at once; instead, it was like standing in a spring and constantly restoring mana while continuously releasing a pain skill, lingering without end.

"If you can't bear it, just shout."

"This is level-nine pain, only one level below the level ten pain of childbirth!"

"Your leg muscles are obviously overworked. A lot of places have knotted up."

"Did you just finish a long-distance run?" the masseur asked as he scraped, inquiring about Chen Jue's training situation from his mouth.

Chen Jue nodded. While crying out in pain, he told the man about the training he had done.

This was just like seeing a doctor in a hospital; he had to tell the doctor where it hurt before the right remedy could be prescribed.

After learning that Chen Jue had not only trained his legs but also his upper limbs and core, the masseur used the fascia knife to scrape over his entire body bit by bit.

Then the sports massage room rang with Chen Jue's screams again and again.

The more enjoyable the training had been before, the greater the price he had to pay now.

When the full-body massage and stretching finally ended and the pain faded away, Chen Jue felt as though his entire body had been soaked ten times in a hot medicinal bath. He was loose and comfortable to the point of almost melting.

At that moment, the panel popped up a prompt:

Ding.

Completed one high-standard massage and stretching session. Under the pressure and stimulation of professional equipment, your muscle groups contracted, and the muscles and soft tissues shifted away from one another, promoting sliding between the fascia, increasing the breakdown of hyaluronic acid between the deeper layers of fascia, accelerating blood circulation and metabolism, and effectively relieving muscle adhesions.

Under the stimulation of the equipment, your muscle groups sustained a slight artificial injury, prompting your body to restart an inflammatory response and carry out deep self-repair.

You attempted a sustained pain-stimulation experience. Your mental will has increased slightly, and your pain threshold has risen a little.

Physique +0.01

Spirit +0.01

Free Attribute +0.01