Iron-Boned Makeup

The entertainment industry has a "foundation general": he plays soldiers with immaculate makeup; his action scenes rely on stunt doubles and slow motion added in post-production; he rides a fake horse on rails and cries with eye drops.

His fans say, "Our oppa is so handsome."

Stuntman Zhao Tiecheng disagrees.

Director Zhou Weijiang throws him into a real reconnaissance battalion, where he eats, sleeps, and trains alongside actual soldiers. He runs five kilometers until he vomits, gets bruised all over in muddy hand-to-hand combat, and practices aiming his gun thousands of times.

The reconnaissance battalion's company commander, Han Zhenguo, tells him, "You don't become a general because of your face. You become one by putting your life on the line."

Three months later, he walks out of the barracks wearing a reconnaissance battalion armband and makes a TV series called The Commando Squad.

From then on, the entertainment industry has a new kind of handsome:

Not the handsome that comes from foundation, but the handsome that leaves salt behind when the sweat dries.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.