Two Lives as an Extra, and Now I'm a Top-Tier Star

In a year of devastating floods, Lin Chuxia braves the downpour in search of food. On her way back to the village, she stops to rest against a tree and is struck by lightning, landing in a bizarre “monster den.” Metal boxes that eat people, houses reaching into the clouds, and someone handing her a slip of paper: “Extra, unlimited boxed meals, fifty a day!” She’s heard that fifty yuan can buy a hundred steamed buns. Lin Chuxia’s hands tremble like leaves. Her late husband starved to death for lack of food! Lin Chuxia bursts into tears, then travels back to ancient times that very night and wakes her gentle mother-in-law, sensible brother-in-law, and young twin siblings. “Mother, Brother, the crops have all drowned. We can’t stay in the old days and wait to die. I’ve found a land of immortals. All we have to do is lie on the ground and pretend to be dead, and they’ll give us white rice and spicy chicken.” The next day, Hengdian’s period drama gets the most dedicated “corpse troupe” in history. Her mother-in-law plays a desperate old woman, and one heart-rending scream makes every tough guy on set cry. Her brother-in-law plays a burly refugee, his eyes blazing with a beastlike ferocity as he fights over half a steamed bun. Lin Chuxia plays the starving heroine’s maid. She lies on the ground and can even hold her breath for three minutes! The director goes wild: “Where the heck did you find these method actors?!” When the day’s wages arrive, Lin Chuxia’s family of five huddles in their rental apartment, clutching two roast chickens and fifty jin of rice, and cries their eyes out. Just as Lin Chuxia becomes an overnight sensation for her “agonizingly realistic sense of hardship,” the cold, calculating, trillionaire actor and investor who plays the male lead corners her in his van. “Miss Lin, I hear you’re short on money. I own ten large farms and need a lady boss. Room and board included. Care to do me the honor?”