General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Fated Hearts (一笑随歌)

Fated Hearts (一笑随歌) is a 2025 Chinese historical romance television series produced by iQIYI, adapted from the novel Yi Xiao (一笑) by Chi Yi Qian Yu (炽翼千羽), and starring Li Qin as the archer Fu Yixiao and Chen Zheyuan as the prince Feng Suige¹. It premiered on iQIYI on October 2, 2025 at noon and ran for 38 episodes of about 45 minutes each².

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title	一笑随歌; international title Fated Hearts; TVB broadcast title 宿敌契约¹^•³
Source	Novel Yi Xiao (一笑) by Chi Yi Qian Yu (炽翼千羽)¹
Directors	Zhu Ruibin, Lan Zhiwei, Gu Zhiwei¹
Screenwriters	Qing Mei, Wu Cong, Wang Xiaodan¹
Leads	Li Qin as Fu Yixiao; Chen Zheyuan as Feng Suige⁴
Run	38 episodes, about 45 minutes; premiered October 2, 2025 at noon on iQIYI²
Filming	July 6 to October 26, 2024⁵
Genre tags	Historical, romance; amnesia, enemies to lovers, conspiracy, investigation¹

Spoilers

Plot

The story opens at the Battle of Pingling. As the Kingdom of Jinxiu faces defeat, its red-clad master archer Fu Yixiao fires a single decisive arrow that strikes Feng Suige, the eldest prince of the invading Kingdom of Susha, and turns the tide of the battle⁴. Shortly afterward Fu Yixiao falls from a cliff and loses all her memory; she is rescued by the Ling family of the Righteous Villa (正念山庄), a household known for practicing medicine¹.

At the villa she unexpectedly reunites with her former enemy. Feng Suige, himself hunted and exhausted, infers that her condition is connected to what happened to him at Pingling, and each has a reason to stay near the other: he wants to use her to uncover the conspiracy behind the battle, while she needs his protection to survive the pursuit⁶. Former mortal enemies a month earlier, the two fight their way through the turbulent capital city of Yujing, and love grows through repeated brushes with death as they work to expose a plot spanning both kingdoms⁶.

The supporting cast includes Xia Meng as Feng Xiyang, Chen Heyi as Xia Jingshi, Zuo Ye as Murong Yao, Qin Tianyu as Xia Jingyan, Sheng Yinghao as Xiao Weiran, Wang Ziteng as Lu Ke, and Eddie Cheung as Zhuang Shen¹.

Production

Filming began on July 6, 2024, and the production announced its wrap on October 26, 2024⁵. The drama was produced by Beijing iQIYI Technology Co., Ltd. together with Bodi (Ningbo) Film and Television Culture Co., Ltd.³, and Ningbo media later covered it as a locally produced drama⁷.

The episode count changed during post-production. Early promotional posts listed 36 episodes; in May 2025 the drama obtained its distribution license with the count changed to 38³. Promotion ran through 2025: couple stills in March, a relationship poster and story trailer in April, a place in iQIYI's IP recommendation slate in July, and the premiere date announcement on September 30, 2025³.

Adaptation from the novel

The television version departs from its source in structure. In the original novel Yi Xiao, the plot centers on Fu Yixiao's personal revenge and the political-intrigue line is comparatively shallow; the drama reworks the story so that Fu Yixiao loses her memory and joins Feng Suige in fighting a range of enemies, building a dual-lead revenge plot in which the two are matched in strength⁸. Reviewers described the result as a departure from formulaic sweet romance: the leads begin as battlefield enemies, with Fu Yixiao's arrow wounding Feng Suige in the opening and her later flogged as his prisoner, before circumstances force them into an alliance⁸^•⁹.

Reception

The drama performed strongly on its home platform. iQIYI's own page listed it at the top of its in-house drama ranking with a 9.8 user score⁴, and the official Weibo account announced that the show had placed in the 2025 global top 10 most-watched Chinese-language dramas¹⁰. Its afterlife was unusually long for a costume drama: on March 24, 2026, 169 days after the premiere, it re-entered iQIYI's soaring chart at number 2 with a heat value of 4146, and Yunhe data recorded an average of 19.85 million views per episode during its hot run, still above 19 million per episode two months after the finale¹¹. The tie-in reached offline commerce, with an archery range in Ningbo offering a "Fated Hearts" course whose bookings were filled into the second quarter of 2026¹¹.

Critical opinion was more divided than the platform numbers. An English-language review site scored it 7.5 out of 10, praising Li Qin's portrayal of a female soldier as the drama's core strength⁹. Chinese commentary credited Li Qin with making the female-general character convincing, her archery and fight scenes in particular, while faulting the male lead's emotional transitions and the reliance on familiar tropes such as the amnesia plot⁸. On Douban, a November 2025 review argued that the 6.5 rating understated the drama, but conceded that the later Fengyumeng and Jinxiu story arcs were drawn out and crowded out the main plot¹².

The broadcast schedule itself is reported inconsistently: iQIYI's album page marks finale-related content on October 31, 2025¹³, while TVmaze lists the final three episodes, including episode 38, on October 16, 2025⁶.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Cr to In

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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