Love Between Fairy and Devil: the mid-budget xianxia that went viral on word of mouth

2022 · iQIYI · Esther Yu (虞书欣), Dylan Wang (王鹤棢)

Why this one

Love Between Fairy and Devil, adapted from Jiu Lu Fei Xiang's novel Cang Lan Jue (苍兰訣), went into its August–September 2022 run on iQIYI without a big marketing push or high pre-release expectations — and turned into a dark-horse hit anyway, its audience building almost entirely through word of mouth and short-video clips until it became one of the year's biggest xianxia (仙侠, "immortal-hero fantasy") hits. It's a useful corrective to the idea that this genre only breaks out when everything is stacked in its favor.

The setup

The premise leans into a classic xianxia tension: Dongfang Qingcang (东方青苍), the Moon Demon Lord, and Xiao Lanhua (小兰花), a young fairy, end up bound together by a mutual curse after a war between their peoples. What the show does well is let that bind generate both the romance and the conflict at the same time — every step toward affection is also a step deeper into a curse neither character asked for, which keeps the central relationship from ever fully relaxing into comfort.

Note — Devil vs. demon in xianxia: English subtitles often use "devil" and "demon" close to interchangeably for xianxia's 魔 (mó) characters, but the term doesn't carry the same moral-absolute baggage it does in English. A "devil" protagonist in this genre is typically a member of a rival cultivation faction, not a literally evil being — closer to "the other side" than "damned."

What a Chinese viewer already knows

Lead actor Dylan Wang (Wang Hedi) was already a known quantity from 2018's Meteor Garden, but this show was a modest bet by comparison — not the kind of high-expectation tentpole a studio marks as its next big thing. That the leads' chemistry, rather than pre-release hype, became the thing viewers actually talked about is a meaningful part of how the show's overseas buzz built: it read as organic in a way that's harder to manufacture.

Cast and crew worth knowing

• Esther Yu (Yu Shuxin) as Xiao Lanhua, the fairy lead

• Dylan Wang (Wang Hedi) as Dongfang Qingcang

• Xu Haiqiao (徐海乔), Guo Xiaoting (郭晓婷), and Zhang Linghe (张凌赫) in supporting roles

• 36 episodes, aired August 7 – September 22, 2022

Where to watch

• Netflix — English subtitles, availability varies by region

• iQIYI — official platform, English subtitles

Its echo outside China

This is one of the clearer recent examples of a C-drama's overseas reach outrunning its domestic marketing budget — clips circulated widely on short-video platforms well beyond China before the show had any kind of coordinated international release push, and it landed on Netflix internationally on the strength of that organic pull rather than the other way around.