Chapter 1: A Sudden Awakening
Everything felt like a dream.
A bandage wrapped around his head, Lu Zhou stared blankly at the ceiling, his eyes vacant and unfocused.
In his dreams, he lived a life completely different from his own.
At first, he thought the sudden visions crowding his mind—images that seemed to belong to someone else—were simply the result of his brain being damaged.
Seven days ago, Lu Zhou had been one of the unnoticed male backup dancers at singer Nan Qiao’s concert. When the final stage ended, Nan Qiao, teetering on eight-centimeter heels, stumbled on the rising platform. Lu Zhou, quick as lightning, caught her, only to fall himself...
His fall split his head open—a testament to his helpful, if somewhat foolish, nature.
He was rushed to the emergency room. The CT scan pronounced a concussion.
And so, Lu Zhou was admitted to the hospital. During his stay, strange and bewildering images kept flickering through his mind.
It was as if he’d become someone else, living in another world.
Terrified, he pressed the call button in the middle of the night and summoned the doctor.
He vividly described his symptoms, but the exhausted, stone-faced doctor merely responded, “Confusion following a concussion is normal. Don’t panic. Rest and you’ll be fine.”
Modern medicine seemed unconcerned with his peculiar condition, dismissing everything as a simple concussion.
Left with no alternatives, Lu Zhou followed the doctor’s advice and rested.
Thus, he obediently spent seven days lying in the hospital.
During that time, a stream of unexpected visitors came to see him: several company executives, his former manager, even the famous singer Nan Qiao herself...
He’d never been the center of so much attention at his company, leaving him both bemused and flattered.
At sixteen, he’d auditioned for Jinhua Entertainment and become a trainee. Less than a year into training, he debuted as half of a two-member boy group.
Lu Zhou had believed, as the fortune-teller once said, that his life was about to accelerate toward stardom. Yet after more than a year in the industry, he failed to make even the slightest ripple.
His partner was disheartened, decided he wasn’t cut out to be an artist, and unilaterally negotiated to terminate his contract and leave the scene.
Left alone, Lu Zhou couldn’t stir up any waves, either. The company reassigned him, making him a “recycled” trainee, and placed him among the twelve candidates for a new five-member boy group.
This time, the company was serious, instituting a ruthless elimination system.
They trained hard together for two years before the company considered them fit to debut.
Lu Zhou’s performance usually ranked in the top five among the trainees, and he was confident he’d make the group.
But on the night before the final selection, a trusted friend betrayed him.
A drink laced with sleeping pills left him listless the next day. His poor performance at the assessment cost him his spot, while his “good brother” advanced and debuted with the group named “Chasing Light Boys.”
And so, Lu Zhou missed the speeding train into the entertainment industry, left to idle at the company, conserving his dwindling energy.
Year after year passed. The Chasing Light Boys soared to fame, while Lu Zhou withered away.
Every holiday, returning home, he endured his relatives’ biting remarks—
“Xiao Zhou, your mother said you became a star at sixteen, but I’ve never once seen you on TV.”
“I hear stars rake in money by the bagful. Lu Zhou, how much have you saved? Tell us so we can be amazed.”
In moments like these, Lu Zhou loathed his own lack of success.
Money by the bagful? Heh. That was for real stars. He wasn’t a star—just a nobody in the entertainment industry, barely scraping by.
Could he admit that he barely earned enough to feed himself?
He survived on a meager two thousand yuan monthly stipend—practically welfare. The company offered him no real work.
Since his double failure to debut, Jinhua Entertainment had all but abandoned him, treating him as a useless, idle presence, never granting him any good opportunities.
The only gigs he could secure were backup dancer roles for the company’s debuting artists.
The company found little commercial value in him and let him fend for himself.
To keep up appearances, Lu Zhou posted the occasional selfie or short video on social media, but his self-promotion skills were mediocre at best. Only today did his follower count barely surpass ten thousand—many of whom were probably bots gifted by the platform.
To make ends meet, he picked up part-time singing gigs at bars.
Year after year, time slipped through his fingers like sand.
His father grew ever more impatient with his career in showbiz.
Watching other people’s sons graduate from proper universities and land jobs at big companies with salaries of two or three hundred thousand a year, Lu Zhou’s father regretted the path he’d chosen for his son. He wanted Lu Zhou to stop wasting his youth and return home to take over the family business.
Why had Lu Zhou chosen the path of an artist?
The story went back to when he was eight.
That year, after the family’s customary trip to the temple for New Year’s incense, they chanced upon a blind fortune-teller on the way home.
On a whim, his mother had the man read her son’s fortune. The fortune-teller declared, “Your boy is destined for wealth and fame, adored by millions.”
That pronouncement electrified his mother.
She mused—adored by millions? Wasn’t that the makings of a star?
From then on, she enrolled Lu Zhou in every art class she could find, pouring their savings into nurturing his talents.
Fortunately, Lu Zhou did have a gift—passion and talent for music and dance, with performances that stood out.
It only strengthened his parents’ resolve for him to pursue an artistic career.
No one could have predicted how rough his journey in showbiz would become.
After countless failures, he doubted his abilities and cursed that fortune-teller.
Superstition had ruined his life!
If not for that fateful reading, if his mother hadn’t believed in it, perhaps his life would have taken another path.
At Nan Qiao’s concert seven days ago, Lu Zhou had intended to make that his final performance—his last farewell to the entertainment world.
He’d made up his mind to pack up, return to his village, take over his father’s fish ponds, help expand the family’s aquaculture business, and leave his artistic ambitions behind.
But fate had other plans. That final stage was too dramatic—he landed in the hospital with a concussion and, inexplicably, awakened something strange.
He dutifully rested in the hospital for seven days.
Yet his mind never returned to the “normal” the doctors described.
Gradually, Lu Zhou realized that the unfamiliar yet vivid memories surfacing in his mind weren’t hallucinations—they were real.
When he suspiciously picked up a pen and flawlessly wrote out the complete lyrics to the songs appearing in his head, it became clear.
This was no dream, no confusion.
He was a traveler from another world, silent for twenty-five years!
Or perhaps—a soul reborn?
To his astonishment, in his past life he had been a king of the stage, a prodigy of music.
He, Lu Zhou, had finally awakened.
Recalling the fortune-teller’s words when he was eight, Lu Zhou smiled.
Say goodbye to the entertainment industry? No, his career was only just beginning!