He overdrinks, makes an inebriated declaration of love to Qiu Ya, and angers his wife Ma Dongmei, who publicly shames him for being a poor provider and husband.

Although Xia Luo appears his normal teenage self to everyone else in 1997, he retains all his memories of adult life, including around twenty years of as yet unwritten pop music — which he decides to present as his own work, to gain fame and to win the heart of Qiu Ya.

Over the next twenty years he becomes a pop megastar in China, taking the place of other superstar singers from the original 1990s to 2000s timeline, including ghostwriting famous TV themes for pop radio, duetting with Sarah Brightman at the 2008 Beijing Olympic opening ceremony in place of Liu Huan and producing and judging for a popular music talent TV series (based on The Voice).

Disappointed with how his life is turning out, Xia Luo makes a proposal to Da Chun, wanting to trade away all he owns in exchange for his wife, but the frustrated husband punches him into unconsciousness and he wakes up in a hospital bed, where it is discovered he is dying from AIDS.

At the moment of his death, Xia Luo awakes and finds himself back in the wedding venue bathroom where he realizes that Ma Dongmei is the true love of his life.