General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Love of the Divine Tree (仙台有树)

Love of the Divine Tree (仙台有树; also romanized Xian Tai You Shu) is a 2025 Chinese television series in the xianxia (immortal-hero) and romance genres, produced by iQiyi and adapted from the web novel of the same name by the Jinjiang Literature City author Kuang Shang Jia Kuang (狂上加狂). It ran for 40 episodes on iQiyi from February 7 to February 22, 2025, airing at 18:00, with exclusive international streaming on iQiyi's global site.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title / English title	仙台有树 (Xian Tai You Shu) / Love of the Divine Tree¹
Broadcast	iQiyi, February 7 to February 22, 2025, 40 episodes, air time 18:00¹
Source material	Web novel Xian Tai You Shu by Kuang Shang Jia Kuang, published on Jinjiang Literature City²
Chief director	Yin Tao, previously director of Under the Power (锦衣之下) and Love and Redemption (琉璃)²
Leads	Deng Wei as Su Yishui; Xiang Hanzi as Mu Qingge / Xue Ranran²
Commercial performance	iQiyi heat peak above 8,500; about 927 million cumulative effective views by March 2026; first on the 2025 second-half xianxia heat ranking³
Japanese broadcast	Satellite Theater, as 仙台有樹～二度目の恋結び～, from June 7, 2026⁴

Spoilers

Premise and story

The story is built on a reversed master-disciple relationship across two lifetimes. Eighteen years before the main action, by iQiyi's official synopsis, the immortal-cultivation prodigy Su Yishui (Deng Wei) had his fate altered by his master Mu Qingge (Xiang Hanzi), an unconventional cultivator the world called a "female demon head"; she died bearing that stigma.² The fuller synopsis on DramaWiki explains the sacrifice: Mu Qingge, leader of the Xishan Sect, gave up her Golden Core (cultivator's condensed power core; sacrificing it means losing cultivation) to seal the Ling Quan, a spiritual spring connected to demonic creatures, inside her disciple Su Yishui, to protect the people. The world misread her act as that of a demonic leader, and the four major sects attacked her jointly. Su Yishui learned the truth before her death, found the Tree of Reincarnation, and offered half of his own Golden Core to help her be reborn.¹ The two sources differ on the interval before rebirth: DramaWiki's synopsis says twenty years, while iQiyi's says eighteen years.¹^•²

After rebirth, Mu Qingge lives as Xue Ranran. Su Yishui, now head of the Xishan Sect, takes in the frail, dying Ranran and vows to protect her for life, so the master-disciple roles are exchanged: the former disciple becomes the teacher of his former master.¹^•² The main conflict follows the demonic cultivator Dun Tian (Zhang Rui), who seeks to use the loosening seal on the Ling Quan to create a demonic son and harm the living. Su Yishui risks his life to reseal the spring into the ghost realm, is framed by Dun Tian in the process, and loses his memory; even without it, he falls in love with Xue Ranran again, and the two ultimately defeat Dun Tian's conspiracy.¹

Production and cast

The series was produced by iQiyi with Shengge Film and Zhushen Alliance Pictures, with Yin Tao as chief director and Liu Fang as screenwriter.⁵ Alongside Deng Wei and Xiang Hanzi, the credited cast includes Chen Xinhai as Su Yu, Zhang Weina as Mu Ranwu, Zhang Rui as Dun Tian / Ye Xin, and Deng Kai, Cheng Zi, Cao Yuchen, and others in supporting roles.⁵^•⁶

The production used a "grounded cultivation" (落地修仙) setting intended to show a cultivation world with everyday, lived-in texture, and the drama's marketing leaned on the phrase "cyber cultivation" (赛博修仙) during its run.⁵ The original soundtrack includes the opening song 《一树一双人》 and tracks sung by Zhou Shen (《若仙》) and Liu Yuning (《缘圈》).⁶

Reception and performance

A slow start, then a long tail. Early reception was polarized. Critics at premiere called the plot formulaic, pointing to familiar xianxia elements such as the master-disciple bond, reincarnation, and tragic romance, and criticized the lead actors' performances and styling; one review noted that mid-run the drama's in-platform heat was lower than that of a barely promoted legal drama.⁷ A later retrospective in the same outlet described the premiere-period heat as unremarkable and the word of mouth as split, but concluded that the drama told a coherent story whose setups paid off, and that it developed a pronounced long-tail effect after broadcast.⁸

The commercial numbers bear out that trajectory. The iQiyi heat index peaked above 8,500, the drama held first place on several of the platform's overall and rising rankings, and by March 2026 it had accumulated about 927 million effective views across the web, an average of 23.194 million per episode. It placed first on the 2025 second-half xianxia heat ranking, and its fusion communication index of 93.96 put it fourth on China Audio-Video Big Data's (CVB) national IPTV VOD weekly chart, with repeated first places on the Kuyun, Beacon, and Vlinkage rankings.³ Industry coverage called it a benchmark case of an "IP-less comeback" for iQiyi, crediting a multi-channel marketing campaign that included fan-organized subway posters in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Xi'an, cinema pre-roll advertising, and creative offline events.³

Aggregated scores reflect the split reception: iQiyi's own page shows 8.5 out of 10,⁹ while DramaWiki's user rating stood at 4.77 from 13 votes.¹ Douban reviewers praised the adaptation's fidelity to the novel, the reversed master-disciple structure, and a finale that resolves its foreshadowing,¹⁰ while an English-language review site judged it a competent teacher-disciple romance whose distinguishing choices are the female-lead-as-master setup, balanced power and screen time between the leads, and a happy ending with few casualties, but found the storytelling and side characters thin.¹¹

International release

In Japan the series airs on the Satellite Theater channel under the title 仙台有樹〈せんだいゆうじゅ〉～二度目の恋結び～ (Love of the Divine Tree: The Second Bond of Love), with a first broadcast on June 7, 2026, Sundays at 22:00 and rebroadcasts on Saturdays at 06:00, in all 40 episodes. The channel's introduction bills it as a fantasy romance starring Deng Wei, who broke out with Lost You Forever, and Xiang Hanzi, directed by Yin Tao.⁴

Place in the xianxia genre

Commentators placed the drama within a genre crowded with master-disciple and reincarnation plots, but noted what set it apart: the master-disciple identity swap between the two leads, a world in which immortal and demonic cultivation are presented as alternative paths rather than absolute moral categories, and a "grounded" cultivation setting with everyday detail.⁸^•¹² A Tianjin Daily piece on drama production cited the show among examples of xianxia series adjusting content in response to viewer feedback during broadcast.¹³

References

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