Till the End of the Moon: a time-travel rescue mission aimed at the man who becomes the Devil God

2023 · Youku · Luo Yunxi (罗云熙), Bai Lu (白鹿)

Why this one

Till the End of the Moon (长月烬明) is one of the clearest recent examples of a xianxia (仙侠, "immortal-hero fantasy") drama whose success spilled out of the screen. Youku aired it from April 6 to May 9, 2023, and it is reported to have become the most-watched period drama since 2020, opening with a 22.76% market share. Its merchandise reportedly brought in more than 21 million yuan, and local coverage credited it with a tourism boost for the cities of Bengbu and Xuancheng, where it was filmed or set. It won TV Series of the Year at Weibo Night 2023, and Luo Yunxi (罗云熙) won Outstanding Asian Star at the Seoul International Drama Awards.

The setup

The premise is a rescue mission with a catch. Tantai Jin (澹台烬) is destined to become the Devil God, a figure of enormous destructive power who will threaten all three realms. Li Susu (黎苏苏), a cultivation disciple, travels back five hundred years to prevent that outcome by destroying his mortal form before he can transform. She arrives in the body of a woman named Ye Xiwu (叶夕雾), and discovers that Ye Xiwu is already married to Tantai Jin.

Her orders and her feelings pull in opposite directions. She sets out to kill him, develops feelings, and repeatedly saves him instead. The story then follows the long consequences: Tantai Jin spends five hundred years searching for her soul, and when he finally finds the reborn Li Susu again, his true nature is a danger to everyone. The drama is built around that irony: the person sent to stop the villain becomes the person he spends five centuries looking for.

Note — "BE" in the source title: The novel is titled Hei Yueguang Na Wen BE Juben (黑月光拿稳BE剧本), roughly "the dark moonlight holds a bad-ending script," by Teng Luo Wei Zhi (藤萝为枝). "BE" is web-fiction shorthand for a bad ending, as opposed to "HE," a happy one. The drama's title turns that self-aware, slightly tongue-in-cheek book title into something more solemn, and the tone of the two is a reasonable guide to how much of the source's humor survived the adaptation.

Cast and crew worth knowing

• Luo Yunxi (罗云熙) as Tantai Jin, who is also credited under the names Cang Jiumin (沧九旻) and Mingye (冥夜) across the story. He had earlier played Run Yu in Ashes of Love, also covered on this site.

• Bai Lu (白鹿) as Li Susu, credited also as Ye Xiwu and Sangjiu (桑酒).

• Directed by Kuk Kok-leung (鹞觉亮), with action direction by Wang Haiqi (王海岐).

• 40 episodes.

Where to watch

Availability varies by region; check current listings for English subtitles.

Its echo outside China

The most useful thing to take from this show's reception is that a xianxia hit's footprint is no longer only its viewership number. Merchandise, location tourism, and awards cycles were all part of how this one was measured in Chinese coverage. That is a shift from the 2015 model of The Journey of Flower, where the extension was a mobile game. By 2023, the show's setting and locations were themselves part of what the production sold.