Hong Kong variety show: The mastermind behind the scenes is emerging.

Winter, 202X, Shanghai.

At 11:30 p.m., the subway line 2, like a giant, steel-cast worm, wearily traverses the depths of the city's underground. The metallic scraping sound at the junction of the carriages is grating and monotonous, accompanied by the air thick with a mixture of perfume, sweat, and disinfectant, making one drowsy.

Lu Chen leaned against the corner armrest, the phone in his hand with a cracked screen already black, but he mechanically maintained the posture of looking down.

A young, slightly puffy face was reflected in the glass. Twenty-five years old, three years out of university.

His eyes were somewhat unfocused, and there were two dark circles under his eyes, marks left by long hours of staying up late and being repeatedly tormented by the client.

"Next stop, Century Avenue."

The cold, electronic female voice announcing the stops felt like a daily, routine trial.

Lu Chen raised his head, a hint of confusion flashing in his eyes.

Three summers ago, at a graduation dinner, he stood on a beer crate at a roadside food stall on the back street of the school, declaring to his buddies, "Brothers, after graduation I'm going to Shanghai! Three years! Give me three years, and I'll either return home in glory, or I'll settle down by the Huangpu River and make a name for myself!"

At that time, Lu Chen felt that the world was like a newly opened Blu-ray disc, pristine and brand new, even the reflections had rainbow colors, waiting for him to read and act out a wonderful story. He felt that he would be the protagonist, with his own background music, overcoming all obstacles.

Three years have passed.

Reality isn't a shonen manga, or even a tragic movie. Reality is a long, tedious documentary, devoid of background music, with shaky camera work and poor image quality.

As an orphan with no connections or background, I only attended an ordinary university and ended up working as a planner at a small-to-medium-sized company. The job sounded glamorous, with my business card proclaiming me a "Senior Creative Consultant," but in reality, I was just a copywriter. Every day, I faced bizarre client requests—"I want a vibrant, multicolored black," "The logo should be bigger but appear smaller," "This doesn't feel right; it's not sophisticated enough."

Lu Chen was still very happy, thinking he had taken the first step into integrating into Shanghai. He naively believed that hard work would earn him recognition, so he worked tirelessly every day, revising plans through the night, even rushing back to the company in the pouring rain for an urgent request. But what did he get in return? His meticulously crafted ideas were casually taken by his superiors, becoming fodder for his presentations; the credit earned from countless all-nighters was ruthlessly stolen by his boss, leaving him only with a few perfunctory words of praise. Even his only promotion opportunity, which he had eagerly awaited for a year, was mercilessly given to the boss's cousin, a newcomer who couldn't even make a decent PowerPoint presentation.

Later, he learned to fake a smile at people he disliked in the elevator, to reply "Received, will change it right away" late at night, and to chew up and swallow that thing called "ambition" little by little, turning it into the motivation to get up early the next day to squeeze onto the subway.

The feeling was like being cut with a dull knife—not fatal, but painful and persistent.

Only Lu Chen himself knew that the spirited young man was not quite dead, but had been hidden in a very deep place.

As I stepped out of the subway station, a cold rain began to fall.

The rain, mixed with snowflakes, stung his face. Without an umbrella, Lu Chen hunched his shoulders and hurried into an old, run-down neighborhood. This was the shadowy side of Shanghai's prosperity, lacking the dazzling lights of Lujiazui, only tangled wires and smelly garbage cans.

Pushing open the peeling security door, the 30-square-meter rented room remained deserted.

But when Lu Chen closed the door, shutting out the wind, rain, and noise outside, a glimmer of life finally appeared in his lifeless eyes.

Instead of washing up immediately, he went straight to the only place in the room that seemed out of place—a whole wall of custom-made solid wood cabinets.

That was his sanctuary, and his final spiritual refuge.

The cabinet was densely packed with thousands of Blu-ray discs.

It's not a streaming service membership like today, nor is it a few terabytes of resources on a cloud drive; it's a real physical disc with a beautiful cover.

Those are Blu-ray discs of many classic movies.

More precisely, it is mostly a microcosm of the golden decade known as "Hollywood of the East," from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.

Lu Chen's fingers gently traced over each familiar name, the movement as tender as caressing a lover's skin.

A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Prison on Fire, Young and Dangerous, Infernal Affairs, Election, SPL: Sha Po Lang, Flash Point, The Longest Nite...

He had meticulously preserved each disc, with not a single crease on the cover. In this fast-paced era of short videos, Lu Chen was an anomaly. He despised the AI ​​voice-overs that provided three-minute movie summaries, and he loathed the bland nicknames like "Little Handsome" and "Little Beautiful."

What he seeks is a sense of immersion, the unique granularity of that world.

In this cramped rented room, he was no longer the timid little planner; he was the king of this wall.

He enjoyed watching Chow Yun-fat's dashing yet tragic performance when he hid the gun in Maple Forest Pavilion. It wasn't about showing off; it was a last-ditch counterattack when someone was driven to the brink.

He liked watching Tony Leung's complex gaze when he said "I'm sorry, I'm a policeman" on the rooftop. That wasn't just a line; it was a cry from someone who had struggled in the deepest hell for ten years.

He enjoyed watching Sammo Hung smash a wine bottle on the steps with such domineering style, and he also enjoyed Donnie Yen's textbook-perfect alleyway fight in "SPL: Sha Po Lang," where every punch landed with brutal force and ruthlessness.

"tonight……"

Lu Chen's fingers hesitated between "Election 2: Peace and Harmony" and "Infernal Affairs 2" before finally settling on a disc with a yellowed cover—"Infernal Affairs 2".

This is his favorite film in the Infernal Affairs series.

It wasn't because of the most exciting plot, but because of that sense of destiny, and the man who almost controlled everything but ultimately fell—Ni Yongxiao.

"What goes around comes around."

Lu Chen softly recited that classic line, a self-deprecating bitter smile playing on his lips, and took out the disc.

"What am I? When you're out in the game, you don't even have a chance to pay it back, because nobody lends you money anyway."

He skillfully turned on the Sony Blu-ray player that had been with him for five years. This machine was considered a flagship model at the time, and it had cost him two months' salary before, but recently it had started to malfunction. It was very noisy when reading discs, and the cooling fan sounded like an old ox panting.

But he couldn't bear to change it, and he didn't have the money to get a better one.

Place the disc in the tray, and with a "buzzing" mechanical sound, the TV screen lights up.

As the familiar opening theme song began, its low, somber tone seemed to foreshadow the calm before the storm.

Lu Chen grabbed a can of beer from the refrigerator, and without turning on the light, he slumped onto the beanbag chair. Using the flickering light from the TV screen, he watched the show with great interest, even though he knew the plot by heart.

"Han Chen..."

Lu Chen looked at Eric Tsang on the screen, who was still eating his boxed lunch like an idiot, and shook his head.

"At this point, Han Chen was terrifying but also easy to control because he had a bottom line, or rather, he was still connected to this world by a rope named Mary. Once Mary died, Han Chen would become a mad dog without a leash. Ni Yongxiao lost because he was still a 'human,' he still had the bonds of family. But the later Han Chen was already a 'ghost.'"

Gradually, the movie reached its climax.

Ni Yongxiao was tricked by Han Chen, and the police surrounded everything on that food street. Ni Yongxiao collapsed into his younger brother Chen Yongren's arms, his trembling hand reaching into his brother's coat to find the bugging device.

That look in his eyes.

Shock, despair, and pain eventually transformed into a complex sense of relief. He covered his brother's clothes, never revealing to his brother that he was an undercover agent until his death.

Lu Chen's heart clenched suddenly.

No matter how many times he watches it, this scene always moves him. That's the charm of Hong Kong films; the villains are villains with flesh and blood, and the good guys are good guys with helplessness.

Sudden.

The screen froze.

Large patches of colored mosaic appeared on the television screen, and a piercing "buzzing" sound came from the speakers, like some kind of sharp electrical whistling, instantly ruining the entire atmosphere.

"Damn it! Not again?!"

Lu Chen frowned and cursed, the frustration of being forcibly pulled back to reality from his immersive world instantly igniting his anger.

"You let me down at the crucial moment, and now you're bullying me?!"

He stood up somewhat angrily and walked a few steps to the TV cabinet. The old Sony Blu-ray player was emitting an abnormal buzzing sound, and the body even faintly smelled of burning.

"Old buddy, stop messing with me, can you hang in there a little longer?"

As Lu Chen muttered to himself, he habitually reached out and patted the side of the machine. This was a "makeshift repair method" he had learned online, and it had always worked before.

But this time, fate played a cruel joke on him.

The instant his fingers touched the cold metal casing of the fuselage once more—

"Sizzle—!!!"

An unprecedented, extremely violent energy instantly pierced through his fingertips!

It wasn't the numbness of a normal electric shock; it felt like a raging thunder dragon rushing up his arm and into his torso!

In that instant, all the nerves were forcibly straightened and snapped!

Lu Chen couldn't even scream; his throat was locked by electric current, and he could only make strange "clucking" sounds.

His heart was pounding violently in his chest, the pain exceeding the limits of human endurance, as if his entire body was about to explode in the next second.

The world before my eyes instantly turned pitch black.

No, it's not pitch black.

In this endless darkness, Lu Chen saw countless shattered lights and shadows spinning wildly.

That was the afterimage of a neon light.

That was the trajectory of a bullet cutting through the air.

That was the cold glint of light reflected from the blood-stained blade.

The static in his ears was amplified infinitely, eventually distorting into countless noisy human voices, surging towards him like a tsunami.

"I'll take your life!"

"I'm so sorry, sir!"

"Officer, I haven't been a gang leader for a long time!"

"This is Causeway Bay, and I'm in charge here!"

Countless classic lines and familiar voices, mixed with the sounds of sirens, slashing, and dice rolling, flooded his brain, completely shattering his memories of modern society—the schemes, the rent, the fake smiles.

Amidst this intense pain, Lu Chen's consciousness began to plummet.

It's like falling from a height of 10,000 meters into the deep sea.

But he was not afraid.

On the contrary, in the last moment before his consciousness faded, he felt an unprecedented... liberation.

Finally... I don't have to rush through tomorrow's morning rush hour.

boom!