The Actor's Comeback Day

Shang Zhengshu is thirty-two years old, a professional actor with twelve years in the industry.

When he was twenty, Shang Zhengshu was studying directing and screenwriting. After accidentally walking into the wrong classroom, he was spotted by a teacher in an acting class and recommended to audition for a minor male role in the new film by one of the country's top directors.

Desperately in need of money at the time, Shang Zhengshu gritted his teeth and accepted. With almost no acting experience, he spent half a month cramming and studying the role. In the end, his astonishing empathy and emotional power moved the director, and he landed the lead role!

And so began Shang Zhengshu's spectacular acting career.

This darling of fate reached the pinnacle of acting within just two years. He went on to win the Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Cannes Palme d'Or. Countless media outlets rushed to cover him, with newspapers and magazines splashing the news across their front pages:

[Shang Zhengshu, the brightest diamond in early twenty-first-century cinema. No one can compare!]

Yet in the same year he won the Palme d'Or, he retired from the film industry. Over the next ten years, he produced only a handful of works and virtually disappeared from the public eye.

Ten years later, Shang Zhengshu returned to the entertainment industry, appearing on a singing and dancing competition show, Brothers Beyond Compare.

A long-running hit IP on Mangmang TV, the show differed from traditional boy-band competitions. It was open to male entertainers in their thirties to fifties, with the goal of rekindling the brothers' youthful drive through the passion of singing and dancing onstage and the joy of living together.

This was already the show's fifth season, and the production team had practically exhausted all the veteran entertainers with even a little fame in the first four seasons.

With no other choice, the team launched a special season: Brothers Versus Younger Brothers. It would expand the age range of the guests, bringing in young people to deliver exciting performances for the audience together.

No one expected Shang Zhengshu, the award-winning actor hailed as "the most heartbreaking absence in film history," "a rose that withered too soon," and "a genius like a shooting star," to appear on the guest list.

[??? Is it just someone with the same name? Am I dreaming?]

[Shang Zhengshu??? The Shang Zhengshu I know?]

[You've got to be kidding! Are you exploiting the buzz around a retired actor? Hope your show sinks straight to the bottom of the earth :)]

The year Shang Zhengshu retired, Weibo hadn't launched yet, and the country was still in the era of print media.

The year Shang Zhengshu returned, the internet had flourished, and online dramas, online variety shows, short videos, livestreams, and other new forms of entertainment had taken over the entire domestic entertainment industry.

Before the show aired, no one could have imagined that this acting genius, abandoned by the times, would carve out a path to the top once more in a world where popularity ruled!

He is a diamond, a rose, a crown.

He is a butterfly, a bird, the wilderness.

He is the God of Beauty.

Theme: Ideals never die.