Till the End of the Moon

We haven't watched this one. This section is based on the official episode synopses, the production's own descriptions and Chinese coverage, and we'll replace it with a verdict once we have one.

The story moves through three layers. The first third is a mortal court drama: Susu, inside Ye Xiwu, tries to undo the cruelty her body's owner did to Tantai Jin while he manipulates everyone around him. The middle section shifts into a dream realm set tens of thousands of years in the past, where both leads play new characters and a second love story explains how all of this began. The last stretch returns to the present for a war between the immortal sects and the Devil God. Viewers on Chinese platforms often said the timeline jumps were confusing, and the middle section divided the audience.

The visuals are the biggest talking point. The production borrowed heavily from the Dunhuang cave murals for its costumes, colors and architecture, and Chinese coverage praised it for looking unlike any other xianxia drama. Luo Yunxi's performance as an emotionless villain who slowly learns to feel was also widely praised; he won Outstanding Asian Star at the 2023 Seoul International Drama Awards.

The complaints were mostly about the script. Douban viewers criticized the pacing and the changes to the novel, and the score reportedly fell from 6.2 at launch to 5.6 by the finale, according to Taiwanese coverage. The ending in particular split viewers.

If you're coming from other xianxia dramas, expect a less sweet romance than usual. For much of the first act the leads are trying to outmaneuver each other: Susu is under orders to stop or kill him, and Tantai Jin assumes everyone around him wants him dead, which is usually true. The romance builds through his growing confusion at feeling anything at all. Several of the most discussed scenes in Chinese coverage are about him learning emotions he has never had, rather than grand romantic gestures. Bai Lu plays three different women across the timelines, and Chinese reviewers noted how differently she pitches each one.

The supporting cast carries a parallel story. Ye Bingchang and Xiao Lin's marriage, and Ye Bingchang's own ambitions, get a lot of screen time, and some viewers on Douban said they found that thread as interesting as the main one.

Content notes: there is abuse and torture of a child and a young man in the early episodes, war violence, self-sacrifice and several deaths.

Commercially it was a hit. Youku's heat index reportedly passed 10,000 within 29 hours, a platform record at the time, and the drama took a 22.76% market share on its first day. Merchandise sales passed 21 million yuan, Youku's app downloads reached their highest level since 2018, and towns associated with the filming locations saw a tourism bump. It won TV Series of the Year at Weibo Night 2023.

Five hundred years from now, the world will fall to a Devil God. Li Susu, daughter of the leader of the Hengyang Sect, is sent back in time to stop him before he rises. She wakes in the body of Ye Xiwu, the spoiled third daughter of a general, on the day she is married off to Tantai Jin, a despised hostage prince from the kingdom of Jing. He is the future Devil God. He is also, for now, a starved, abused young man who feels nothing, plots everything and has every reason to hate the woman he believes his new wife to be. Susu's plan is to remove the "evil bone" that will turn him, or to kill him if she can't.

Till the End of the Moon (长月烬明) is a 40-episode Youku xianxia drama starring Luo Yunxi and Bai Lu, with Chen Duling and Deng Wei in the second leads. It's adapted from the JJWXC novel Hei Yue Guang Na Wen BE Ju Ben (黑月光拿稳BE剧本) by Teng Luo Wei Zhi (藤萝为枝). It premiered in China in April 2023, and Netflix released it in several countries that spring.

Till the End of the Moon premiered on Youku on April 6, 2023. Members watched ahead: English Wikipedia gives May 9, 2023, as the date of the last episode, while Chinese Wikipedia dates the full run, including free viewers, to May 29. The drama was directed by Kuk Kok-Leung (谷国良) and Wang Haiqi, produced by Youku with Otters Studio, and filmed at Hengdian World Studios from October 2021 to March 2022.

Netflix released the first eight episodes on May 6, 2023, in several countries and added the rest by early June. We couldn't load Netflix's title pages to check which countries still carry it. From the US on October 25, 2026, all 40 episodes were free with ads on Viki, and Youku's international site had episode 1 free and the rest for VIP members. It has also streamed on LINE TV in Taiwan and Viu in Hong Kong.

The opening theme, "The World I Love" (我爱的这个世界), is sung by Liu Yuning. Zhang Bichen and Mao Buyi sing the ending theme, "Black Moonlight" (黑月光), and the soundtrack includes "Boundary" (界) by Tia Ray.

There is no second season, and Youku hasn't announced one.