Chapter 1

The phone on the bedside table vibrated incessantly. The buzzing noise disturbed the sleep of the young woman lying in bed. Meng Shengsheng frowned, and without even opening her eyes, her hands groped around to turn off the phone's alarm.

Having been awakened, she could no longer fall back asleep. Meng Shengsheng opened her eyes and sighed at the sight of the room's peeling plaster walls.

This was the second day since she had transmigrated back.

In her first life, she had lived to the age of twenty-six in this world before dying suddenly from continuous overtime work. She had then transmigrated to a parallel Earth-like version of China, where she experienced that special era, started a business, got married, and reached the pinnacle of her life. Yet, out of nowhere, an accident occurred, and when she opened her eyes again, she was back.

However, the timeline she returned to was not when she was twenty-six. This year, she was only eighteen, having just finished the college entrance examination.

Yet, her life in this timeline differed slightly from her first. She had applied to the Capital University of Chinese Medicine—a field she had never encountered or understood before. At this point, the application system for college entrance exams had already closed. Even if she wanted to change her choice, she couldn't, unless she was willing to repeat a year of school and retake the exam.

Meng Shengsheng was naturally unwilling to do that.

She checked the time. It was already seven in the morning.

She couldn't lounge in bed any longer; she had to rush to her part-time job to earn tuition for the coming years.

She had moved out of the orphanage when she turned sixteen. It wasn't because she was kicked out, but because she had no choice. The orphanage director, whom they affectionately called Mother, had passed away. The close friends she grew up with had already left to make a living on their own, and Meng Shengsheng felt it was no longer appropriate for her to stay there.

By the end of June, the weather was already scorching hot.

It took Meng Shengsheng about two hours to walk from her rented room to the subway station and then ride the train to the vicinity of the film studio.

The weather in the north was drier and hotter than in the south. By nine-thirty, the film studio grounds were already heating up, and the sun felt stinging where it hit Meng Shengsheng's exposed skin.

Yuzhou Film and Television City was bustling with crowds. Within this modern complex, the ancient-style architectures featured solemn palaces and crowded streets.

Aside from the production crews filming here, most of the people were tourists.

Meng Shengsheng had never had any contact with the acting industry before, and this was her first time visiting the film studio.

After walking for about twenty minutes since getting off the train, Meng Shengsheng felt thirsty and wanted to buy a bottle of mineral water. The bottles in the freezer of the street stall were clearly priced. A bottle that usually cost two yuan had more than doubled in price here, selling for five yuan.

Having just paid her rent, her bank account balance was in the triple digits. Even buying a bottle of water pinched her wallet.

Just as she finished scanning the code to pay, her phone rang.

She found a shady spot and answered, "Hello?"

"Shengsheng, have you arrived?" The voice on the other end belonged to a woman with a rather loud voice.

"Yes, I'm already at the entrance of the studio."

The caller was Guo Lihua, a friend she had grown up with in the orphanage. It was Lihua who had recommended this part-time job as an extra.

Like many parentless children in the orphanage, Guo Lihua grew up without supervision. Her grades were poor, and when she reached the age for the high school entrance exam, she skipped it and dropped out of school. After leaving the orphanage, she worked various odd jobs around the city. Because she was reasonably pretty and pleasant-looking, she had been scraping by in the film studio for the past few years, occasionally playing a corpse, a passerby, or a member of a crowd. On average, she could make two to three hundred yuan a day, which was just enough to keep her from starving.

"Do you want me to come pick you up?"

Meng Shengsheng wiped the condensation off her water bottle. "No need, I'll come find you."

"Alright, I'm over by the Silent Bamboo Forest. Head over here."

Meng Shengsheng hung up. While she was still studying the navigation on her phone, a tour group happened to pass by.

The tour guide, wearing a cap and holding a small flag, announced, "We have now arrived at the entrance of Yucheng Film and Television City. Walk straight ahead for another kilometer, and we will reach the famous filming location of *Four Heroes of Tianshan*, the Silent Bamboo Forest. Everyone follow me, don't fall behind. We'll take the sightseeing shuttle there..."

Meng Shengsheng pricked up her ears, quietly put away her phone, and followed them onto the sightseeing shuttle. Fortunately, the shuttle fare was included in the studio's admission ticket, so she didn't have to pay extra.

Sitting on the shuttle, she watched men and women dressed in various costumes and gowns passing by, finding the sight quite novel.

The Silent Bamboo Forest wasn't originally called that. However, because the television series *Four Heroes of Tianshan* was so famous, and a location in the drama called the "Silent Bamboo Forest" was filmed here, everyone started calling it by that name.

Meng Shengsheng followed the crowd off the shuttle. As the tour guide began persuading tourists to buy straw hats, she quickly slipped away.

Inside the Silent Bamboo Forest, there was a pavilion with tiered seating underneath. Guo Lihua was sitting there with many other extras, cooling off and waiting for work.

Guo Lihua spotted Meng Shengsheng first and waved to her, so Meng Shengsheng walked over.

Meng Shengsheng sat down next to Guo Lihua. Seeing her friend brought back all her memories, so she didn't feel any awkwardness.

The people around Guo Lihua seemed to have just come from a set. They were all wearing matching ancient costumes that looked like the attire of servants in a prince's mansion. There were also several older women dressed in delicate pink gowns. From a distance, they looked fine, but up close, it appeared somewhat comical.

Guo Lihua pulled Meng Shengsheng close and asked if she had eaten breakfast. Then, she pulled out her phone. "Come here, let me add you to the group chat first. By the way, do you have an actor's certificate?"

Meng Shengsheng shook her head. Soon, she was added to a group chat named "A Galaxy of Stars." There were about five hundred people in it. Clearly, many of them were idle at the moment. Seeing a newcomer join, they were very welcoming, flooding the chat with emojis of pink lotuses with blue gradient text that read, "Welcome to the family."

Meng Shengsheng: ...

Guo Lihua advised, "It's fine. You can get a temporary actor's certificate to get by for now... Everyone who joins the group has to change their name to a stage name and register it with the group leader. If there's suitable work, he'll contact us."

Meng Shengsheng casually gave the stage name "Su Sheng" just to get it over with, and then put her phone away.

The older women sitting nearby were clearly familiar with Guo Lihua, and they were currently discussing the boxed meals provided by a certain production crew.

"Yesterday's crew meals were terrible. They were almost spoiled, and it was supposed to be a famous domestic director's set."

"I didn't eat mine; I fed it to Wangcai."

"Did you see Chen Yuxin? She's so beautiful. I wanted to get a photo and an autograph with her, but her bodyguards and assistants blocked me. I could only sneak a photo of her."

"You're a fan of hers? She doesn't even look that great, and she spends hours on makeup every time... Oh, a newcomer joined the group? And Lihua brought her in."

Although the woman was older, she spoke in a very modern way. Seeing that Guo Lihua had invited someone to the extras' group and noticing Meng Shengsheng sitting beside her, she immediately understood the situation and pulled Meng Shengsheng into their conversation.

"Does the little girl want to act too? She's quite pretty. I think she has what it takes to become a star. If you work hard as an extra with us, who knows, you might catch the eye of a director or producer, and then you won't have to worry about money anymore."

Before Meng Shengsheng could respond, another older woman chimed in, "Don't look at how rich those stars are, earning millions a day. The things that go on behind the scenes are too dirty to speak of... Oh right, we were just talking about Chen Yuxin. You know Chen Yuxin, right? She started out as an extra just like us. Because she looked decent, a director took a liking to her and gave her a supporting role. Once the movie came out, she became famous. Now she's a big shot, traveling in a multi-million-yuan luxury van with bodyguards and assistants following her."

She then scanned Meng Shengsheng from head to toe. "With a face and figure like yours, entering this industry is like being blessed by the heavens. You'll definitely be more famous than Chen Yuxin in the future."

"Lihua, your friend is so pretty. If you had brought her here earlier, she might have made it big by now."

Guo Lihua said, "She's still in school. She got into university this year and is just here to earn her tuition. She doesn't want to enter this industry; she wants to be a doctor."

The women slapped their thighs in approval. "A doctor? Being a doctor is great! It's a stable, government-backed job... Girl, you've got a bright future!"

With that, the women had an even higher opinion of Meng Shengsheng. They showered her with praise and insisted on adding her as a contact, promising to recommend jobs to her whenever they came up.

Meng Shengsheng thought to herself that, indeed, secure public-sector careers like doctors, teachers, and civil servants were the most highly regarded in the eyes of people of this generation.

As they chatted warmly, Meng Shengsheng's phone vibrated several times in succession.

She checked it and saw that the leader of the "A Galaxy of Stars" group had sent several messages, flooding the chat.

"Where is everyone? The crew of *Straight to the Blue Clouds* needs six extras: three young women, two young men, and one elderly woman. Urgent, the director is waiting to shoot."

Just as Meng Shengsheng finished reading the message, Guo Lihua grabbed her arm and shouted at a man wearing a straw hat across from them, "Over here! We have people! I'll go, we'll both go!"

The man took a deep drag of the cigarette in his mouth, threw it on the ground, and remained seated in his vehicle. "I don't need that many. I need three pretty girls, two handsome guys, and one kind-looking elderly lady. Dongmei, Lihua, come with me. Yes, you, you, and you, follow me."

The man pointed out five people in succession but hesitated on the last one. The director had specifically requested pretty girls, but he knew the people under him well. Most of the girls in the group could only be described as pleasant-looking. They were fine for playing minor, ordinary roles, but it was impossible to find a striking, glamorous beauty among them.

Lihua's stage name was Lihua. Seeing that she had been chosen but Meng Shengsheng hadn't, she grew anxious and tugged on Meng Shengsheng's sleeve. "Here, here! My sister, how about her?"

The man had actually noticed Meng Shengsheng long ago. She stood out prominently among the crowd. However, he hadn't considered her as an extra at all. After all, with her looks and aura, she didn't seem like someone from an ordinary household; she looked more like a rich, privileged girl.

The man muttered, "Is this girl new? I thought she was a tourist. Alright, alright, you'll do. Hurry up! The six I just called, get in the vehicle and follow me."