In continuing celebration of the donghua’s fourth anniversary, the Heaven Official’s Blessing production team released a new animated short film for the series.
The film covers some of the events of the original web novel’s second arc (“Book 2”), which spans Volumes 2–3 of the English release from Seven Seas Entertainment. In that arc, we see Xie Lian and Hua Cheng’s first meeting 800 years ago in the fallen kingdom of Xianle. The short itself is an extremely abbreviated version of the arc; clocking in at under ten minutes overall and covering only two of its major moments: the Shangyuan Parade at which Xie Lian saved the young Hua Cheng (then known as Honghong-er) from falling to his death, and a tender moment at a Crown Prince Temple where Xie Lian, now a god, appears to Honghong-er to encourage him to keep living. Book 2 is very important to the overall plot of Heaven Official’s Blessing, so fans hold out hope that this is short film is simply a preview of what will be a much longer treatment later on.
The full version of the short film originally premiered at an event in China in October 2024 on the donghua’s official anniversary. This online release in February 2025 represents its first public availability outside of that specific event.
The short dropped on February 12 and received over 60K hits on YouTube in less than 20 hours. But later in the day, Bilibili privated the video without explanation on both their YouTube account and the official series Bilibili account. At time of writing, the video thumbnail is still viewable on Bilibili’s site, but clicking the link leads to a “missing video” error message; a different message than what would be presented for a region lock.
Thankfully, the short film is still available on the official series Weibo at time of writing. The video’s continued presence on this account indicates that its absence from YouTube and Bilibili is unlikely to be due to a legal matter. Furthermore, Bilibili has taken no action against fan reuploads of the original video; which are plentiful on YouTube and offer subtitles in a variety of different languages.
Currently, Bilibili’s YouTube and the official series Bilibili account only have a clip from the video available to watch; not the full video itself. Fans are left to speculate on why the original full uploads were removed from these two major video sites—perhaps it could be a tactic to tempt interest from companies like Crunchyroll into licensing it.
Previous to the release on February 12, the official series’ social media accounts hosted a countdown and provided new character art on each day. These pieces included exciting new designs for beloved characters like Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, as well as the long-awaited reveal of the donghua design for the Xianle state preceptor, Mei Nianqing:
Heaven Official’s Blessing (also known as Tian Guan Ci Fu/天官赐福 or TGCF) was adapted from the megahit danmei book series of the same name, written by best-selling author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (MXTX). The series began serialization on jjwxc in 2017 and ran for 244 chapters (plus 8 extra chapters). It has spawned numerous adaptations, including a donghua, a manhua, an unreleased live-action, and an ongoing audio drama.
DanmeiNews provides the below summary from its catalogue:
Xie Lian is an impoverished god tasked by the heavens to investigate supernatural occurrences in the mortal world. During his missions, he makes the acquaintance of the powerful Ghost King Hua Cheng. He finds himself drawn to the dangerously charming man, who seems to know Xie Lian very, very well indeed.
