General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Sword and Fairy (祈今朝)

Sword and Fairy (祈今朝, Qi Jin Zhao) is a 2024 Chinese xianxia (Chinese fantasy genre of immortal cultivators and magic) television series adapted from the single-player role-playing game Chinese Paladin 6 (仙剑奇侠传六) by Softstar Entertainment, starring Xu Kai and Esther Yu as two amnesiac companions searching for their origins¹^•². It ran for 36 episodes on Tencent Video beginning January 18, 2024, one day after the rival platform iQIYI premiered Chinese Paladin 4, setting up a head-to-head airing of two dramas from the same game franchise²^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title	祈今朝 (Qi Jin Zhao); international title Sword and Fairy⁴
Source material	The game Chinese Paladin 6 (仙剑奇侠传六) by Softstar Entertainment¹
Broadcast	36 episodes, Tencent Video, premiered January 18, 2024²
Lead cast	Xu Kai as Yue Jinzhao and Bian Luohuan (double role); Esther Yu as Yue Qi⁵
Director and music	Liu Guo Nan (with Sun Meng Fei); score by Yuki Kajiura and Mak Chun Hung¹
Filming	August 5 to November 30, 2022¹
Reception	Douban 4.9 as of February 6, 2024; Tencent danmu interactions passed 15 million by January 30, 2024⁶^•²

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The story opens with Yue Jinzhao (越今朝) and Yue Qi (越祈) waking in Wuyan Village three years before the main action, with no memory of their pasts and a mysterious "resonance" (共鸣) linking them. They travel the jianghu (the martial-arts world of wandering heroes and factions) together as companions, hoping to recover their lost memories and identities⁷. Their journey draws them into a cult's unrest (the Qihun Sacred Sect) and the blood-sacrifice mysteries of the Luo family stronghold, and during the fight against the sect a seal on Yue Qi's memories and emotions is unexpectedly broken⁷.

Along the way the pair gathers a six-person party: Luo Zhaoyan, head of the Luo family stronghold; Ju Shifang, a maker of mechanical devices; Xian Qing, a thousand-year wolf demon; and the master-and-disciple pair Gu Hanjiang and Ming Xiu, who hates demons⁸. Four factions converge on the plot: the Zhengwu Alliance, the Qihun Sacred Sect, the Hengdaozhong, and the Yu demon tribe, as the protagonists work to uncover the mystery of the "Nine Springs" and save the world⁷^•⁸.

Xu Kai plays a double role as Yue Jinzhao and Bian Luohuan, a gentle mentor who resembles the male lead; the drama makes Bian Luohuan, who has little connection to Yue Qi in the game, into a one-sided love interest, an adaptation choice that divided viewers⁵^•⁸. The supporting cast includes Fu Xinbo as Xian Qing, Wan Peng as Luo Zhaoyan, Bai Bingke as Ming Xiu, and Zhou Lijie as Ju Shifang⁵.

Production

The series was directed by Liu Guo Nan and Sun Meng Fei, with Wang Hong leading a team of screenwriters; the score was composed by Yuki Kajiura and Mak Chun Hung, and production companies included Shandong Film & TV Media, Linique Pictures, Asian Stars, and Soft Stars¹. Filming ran from August 5 to November 30, 2022¹. Internationally the series streamed on WeTV, simulcast with the Chinese release in Thailand from January 18, 2024⁹.

The soundtrack leaned on nostalgia for the earlier Xianjian dramas: new insert songs were performed by the duo JS and Zhang Yunjing, singers associated with the classic Chinese Paladin and Chinese Paladin 3 television soundtracks⁸.

Reception

Engagement metrics were strong even as critical scores were low. On January 19, 2024, one day after premiere, Tencent announced the drama had set the platform's 2024 record for the fastest TV drama to pass one million danmu (bullet-comment) interactions, with a total of 1.5 million¹⁰. Interactions passed 10 million on January 25 after seven consecutive days above one million per day, and 15 million by January 30¹¹^•². In the ArtEnt content index for late January 2024 it ranked ninth among all web dramas with a play index of 342.63¹².

Critical reception was mixed to negative. As of February 6, 2024 the drama held a Douban score of 4.9, in the platform's low-to-mid range, against 4.2 for Chinese Paladin 4; a later report gives its opening score as 5.1⁶^•¹³. Common criticisms targeted the idol-drama styling and makeup, the perceived childishness of some comedic scenes, and Esther Yu's high-pitched delivery, while reviewers generally judged the mystery and adventure plotting to be within the franchise's framework and reasonably paced⁶^•¹⁴. A fan-community assessment called it the most faithful live-action adaptation in the Xianjian series, estimating roughly 80 percent script fidelity while noting heavy changes to the Bian Luohuan storyline and low-budget large-scale scenes¹⁵.

The drama's official account reported that its soundtrack was the most-streamed drama original soundtrack of 2024 on NetEase Cloud Music and that the series placed in WeTV's 2024 global top five most popular Chinese costume dramas¹⁶. A Sina entertainment piece credited it with a faithful rendering of the game's characters and a nuanced treatment of chivalry across opposing factions, noting praise from Yao Zhuangxian, the creator of the Xianjian series, and from the game's original artist¹⁷.

Place in the Xianjian franchise

The drama belongs to the Legend of Sword and Fairy (仙剑奇侠传) franchise, a long-running Chinese RPG series spanning nine generations of games, several of which have been adapted for television¹⁸. It was one of three Xianjian dramas released in early 2024, alongside Sword and Fairy: Youjian Xiaoyao (a remake of the first game's story) and Legend of Sword and Fairy 4¹⁸. CMGE Technology Group, the IP holder, later cooperated with the team behind Qi Jinzhao to develop a series of micro-short dramas exploring supporting characters from across the nine game generations¹⁸.

References

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