Heaven Official’s Blessing is one of the biggest names in danmei in the west, and its stunning manhua adaptation rivals even its hit donghua adaptation in both popularity and recognizability.
So, why hasn’t that very manhua been made available yet in English print? And what’s been going on with the lack of updates?
Update, 6/3/2025: U.S. publisher Inklore announced their license to physically publish the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua in English. (You can still read on to learn about the manhua’s hiatus, though!)
What Is Heaven Official’s Blessing?
Heaven Official’s Blessing (天官赐福, also known as Tian Guan Ci Fu or TGCF) is a danmei series 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, an unreleased live-action, an ongoing audio drama, and a manhua.
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.
Mo Xiang Tong Xiu has also written two other hit danmei series that are available in English: The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (人渣反派自救系统) and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (魔道祖师).
The original Chinese webnovel for Heaven Official’s Blessing was picked up for English release in 2021 by Seven Seas Entertainment, and saw staggering success on sales charts; netting multiple New York Times Best Seller placements across its eight-volume run. In light of this achievement, Seven Seas announced in early 2024 that they would be re-releasing the series in deluxe hardcover format.
The Heaven Official’s Blessing Manhua by STARember
The manhua adaptation of Heaven Official’s Blessing is lavishly illustrated by artist STARember, and has been hosted on Bilibili’s Chinese manhua platform since its debut in late 2019. Over the course of its run, it has updated on a number of schedules (sometimes weekly, sometimes bi-weekly) and went on a number of breaks before the current hiatus that started in 2023.
It is quite understandable that art as beautiful as STARember’s needs time to craft. The manhua’s intricately detailed pages are rendered in full, vibrant color, in a decadent and immediately recognizable style that is well-suited for the series’ epic romantic tone. The manhua generally follows the original novel’s story beats, with some scene skips and alterations in the name of adaptation and adherence to legal limitations.
After 101 chapters compiled into six volumes, the series went on hiatus in 2023; having wrapped up what is considered “Book One” of the original novel (which is around halfway through Vol. 2 of Seven Seas’ English release). The series has remained on hiatus since this date.
Because STARember is currently working on an original project known as The Unnamed Sea (see below section), one may conclude that they do not currently have the bandwidth to continue regular work on the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua—however, they have not made any official statement that they have left the project. In fact, they provided new cover art for the Chinese physical release of manhua Volumes 5 and 6 (see below) when the books released post-2023.
Bilibili has provided no public comment on the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua’s future trajectory, and it is not clear how they plan to proceed with its release. Although STARember’s art for the manhua adaptation is iconic, they are not the IP holder and it is ultimately Bilibili’s responsibility to arrange a solution that will help STARember continue their work while also ensuring the series continues to move forward.
STARember’s Hiatus and The Unnamed Sea
Questions about the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua are further complicated by post-2023 rumors that artist STARember has left the project. It bears repeating that neither STARember nor Bilibili have made any official statement that STARember has left the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua, but the artist’s Weibo indicates that their focus is currently on their original work.
After the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua went on its current hiatus, STARember made a Weibo post on December 31, 2023 stating that they had begun an original project, entitled The Unnamed Sea (月沉海未名). The artist later stated in a post on April 4, 2024 that they would be primarily shifting their focus to work on this original creation. All of the artist’s Weibo posts since the December 2023 announcement have been focused on this project, which is on Chapter 4 as of April 4, 2025.
The story centers on 19-year-old Phineas Rolle, the partially deaf owner of the “Nautilus” antique shop in London, England. One day he accidentally frees the male mermaid Zuolin from a relic in which he had been imprisoned, and the two set out to the South China Sea to investigate an ancient conspiracy that may explain the mysterious disappearance of Phineas’ mother. Although it has a fully illustrated introduction, it is currently not a true “manhua,” in that most subsequent chapters are largely text-based with occasional illustrations interspersed. The series has not been officially licensed by any publishers in any region, and is currently only available through STARember’s Weibo updates.
Is the Heaven Official’s Blessing Manhua Legally Available in English?
The Manhua’s Physical Availability
As of May 2025, no North American publishers have publicly announced a license for the physical release of the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua in English.
Physical editions of the manhua have been successfully released in the original Chinese, as well as translations in German, French, and Spanish. Interestingly, the same English logo has been used on all international editions. This could indicate that Bilibili requires their licensees to use the same logo across the board, regardless of language.
Update, 6/3/2025: U.S. publisher Inklore announced their license to physically publish the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua in English.
The Manhua’s Digital Availability
Digital availability of the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua in English has been inconsistent over the years.
From 2019 to 2021, the manhua was only officially available in Chinese through Bilibili’s main site/app. English-speaking fans were reliant on the efforts of fan translators to enjoy the manhua’s storytelling, much as they relied on them to enjoy danmei novels in general.
Bilibili Comics launched an International version of their app in April 2021 to host English-translated manhua, including an official English translation of Heaven Official’s Blessing. They also contracted several fan translator groups who had previously worked on unofficial translations of the manhua to assist with the official release. However, Bilibili abruptly shuttered the International app with little warning in February 2024, leaving the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua (among many other series) in limbo.
Thankfully, webtoon platform Lezhin Comics announced in October 2024 that they had acquired the rights to host an English translation of the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua on their site. At time of writing, Lezhin’s site has released all the presently available manhua chapters, with the first four chapters available for free and the rest available for purchase with the in-app currency. This translation is identical to Bilibili’s original English translation, and leaves the original translator credit watermarks intact; indicating Lezhin purchased it directly from Bilibili.
These complications in digital availability only serve to highlight the importance of physical releases, and make the lack of a physical English release of the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua all the more concerning.
Why Is it Digitally Available, but Not Physically Available?
For such a popular series, it seems strange that no publisher has picked up the physical distribution rights in English. However, there are a few factors in play that could explain the matter. DanmeiNews provides our theories below.
When it comes to licensing a given series for release, physical and digital are considered separate rights and are handled on an individual basis—a publisher could get the rights to publish a series physically and digitally, or only one or the other. Digital licenses are generally less expensive to secure, and often represent less of an investment if there’s already a publishing platform like an app in place. Physical licenses come with the added cost of needing to print and distribute the finished product to customers.
The Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua is a very popular adaptation of a very popular series, with eye-catching art and a vast collection of associated merch offerings; which would make for a higher than average license cost. The North American English market is large and boasts a vast reach to many other regions; which would make buying a license for NA distribution more expensive than a license for other territories or languages. With all of these factors in play, it can be assumed that a license to physically publish the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua, in English, in the NA region, may be quite expensive. This would lock out smaller publishers and leave only the few publishers with the monetary means and marketing know-how to sell it to the danmei market.
The fact that multiple physical editions (in multiple languages) have been successfully released indicates that Bilibili is willing to sell publishers the rights to make those releases happen, and also indicates that publishers have faith it will make money. It is therefore unlikely that the reason lies with a lack of NA publisher interest, or a lack of licensor interest in the NA market.
It is worth noting that Seven Seas Entertainment has the physical English distribution license for the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua, which they acquired in 2022. This series appears to have respectable sales numbers per public rankings on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble—however, unlike the original novel on which it was based, it has not hit any best seller lists. These “underwhelming” numbers for a fellow MXTX adaptation may have scared Seven Seas off from pursuing the physical license for the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua, especially if the associated cost was more than Seven Seas expected to make back on sales. However, as a rebuttal to this theory, Seven Seas Entertainment began re-releasing the novel of Heaven Official’s Blessing in hardcover editions in December 2024, showing their ongoing faith in the franchise.
While Seven Seas remains the most likely publisher due to its association with the English release of the original novel and the author’s other works, it is entirely possible that another publisher has picked up the physical rights for the series without publicly announcing it yet. If that’s the case, they can’t stay quiet forever—there’s likely a lot of money they’ll need to make back eventually.
Update, 6/3/2025: U.S. publisher Inklore announced their license to physically publish the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua in English.
Aloha Comics and the Heaven Official’s Blessing Donghua Comic
In 2023, Bilibili released an adaptation of the Heaven Official’s Blessing donghua in comic format; consisting of still images from the series’ donghua adaptation. In 2024, North American publisher Aloha Comics announced they had acquired the English distribution rights for this adaptation, which they advertised as a Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua. The covers for all six volumes of this release are pictured above.
Although “manhua” is an accurate descriptor, it can result in confusion when discussing the series’ various adaptations; thus DanmeiNews has opted to call this release a “donghua comic” within our articles and catalog for the sake of clarity.
TL;DR
The Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua is digitally available in English through Lezhin Comics. There has been no news of a physical release in English, though it has been successfully released in multiple other languages.
No English publishers have announced their acquisition of the physical release rights, though this does not preclude the possibility that a publisher has the rights and has simply not publicly disclosed them.
Post-2023 rumors that artist STARember has left the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua project are simply rumors, as neither STARember nor Bilibili have made any official statement to confirm this. However, the artist’s Weibo indicates that their focus is currently on their original work.
Update, 6/3/2025: U.S. publisher Inklore announced their license to physically publish the Heaven Official’s Blessing manhua in English.
