General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The World of Fantasy (灵域)

The World of Fantasy (灵域), also known as Spirit Realm or Ling Yu, is a 2021 Chinese streaming television series adapted from Ni Cangtian's (逆苍天) web novel of the same name. It premiered on iQIYI on January 9, 2021, and ran for 36 episodes of about 45 minutes each.¹^•² The story follows Qin Lie, an amnesiac teenager who carries a sealed artifact called the Soul Suppressing Orb (寄灵珠) and gradually uncovers the truth of his origins while defending the spirit realm continent alongside his childhood sweetheart Ling Yushi and their companions.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original title	灵域 (Ling Yu); English titles The World of Fantasy and Spirit Realm²
Premiere	January 9, 2021, on iQIYI; 36 episodes, about 45 minutes each¹^•³
Source	Web novel by Ni Cangtian (逆苍天), 1,841 chapters and nearly 5 million characters, completed at the end of 2015⁴
Directors and writer	Liang Guoguan and Ma Huagan (Jones Ma); screenwriter Guo Baoxian¹
Lead cast	Fan Chengcheng as Qin Lie/Gong Mulie; Cheng Xiao as Ling Yushi/Wu Chun¹
Production companies	iQIYI and Straw Bear Entertainment¹
Ratings	Douban about 7.1 to 7.3; IMDb 8.2/10 (95 votes)⁴^•⁵^•²

Spoilers

Plot and setting

The drama is set on the Chilan continent (赤澜大陆) within a world called the spirit realm, where warriors and spirit artifacts are ranked in strict hierarchies and family and sect powers occupy defined classes.⁶ Qin Lie, played by Fan Chengcheng, grows up in Ling Family Town as the young master of the Qin household but has no memory of his identity. A Soul Suppressing Orb sealed in his mind blocks all memories from before age ten, and he can glimpse his childhood only in dreams without understanding who sealed it or why.⁶

Drawn into a conspiracy, Qin Lie sets out both to train and to solve the mystery of his birth, gathering companions along the way, including his childhood sweetheart Ling Yushi (Cheng Xiao), who carries a fire poison in her body and trains water spirit arts in the Seven Fiends Valley (七煞谷) to cure it.⁷^•⁸ After a battle with the Youming clan devastates Ling Family Town, Qin Lie avenges his family, attracts pursuers, and begins a journey toward greater power.⁸ In the finale, with the return of the four spirit artifacts and the emergence of the Nine Nether Evil Canon, Qin Lie awakens as Gong Mulie (贡穆烈), son of the war god who carries both human and Botian clan (搏天族) blood, and sets out on a new journey with his companions.⁹^•¹⁰

Cast

Fan Chengcheng, a singer who debuted through the 2018 iQIYI survival show Idol Producer, took the lead role of Qin Lie in his first acting job.⁵ Cheng Xiao plays Ling Yushi, also known as Wu Chun. The supporting cast includes Liu Yitong as Song Tingyu/Ye Xian'er, Nie Zihao as Du Shaoyang, Ma Yue as Xie Jingxuan/Tang Siqi, Zheng Yibin as Gao Yu, Wang Yiming as Hua Yuxin, Ge Xinyi as Ling Xuanxuan, and Ding Yongdai as Qin Shan.¹^•¹¹

Production

The series was directed by Liang Guoguan and Ma Huagan from a screenplay by Guo Baoxian, and produced by iQIYI with Straw Bear Entertainment.¹ Filming began in April 2019 and wrapped at the end of July 2019, about four months of shooting, leaving roughly a year and a half for post-production before the January 2021 premiere.⁴ Straw Bear's 2021 interim report states that a large number of special effects were added in the filming and post-production stages to create the spirit realm world.¹²

Fan Chengcheng said in a 2021 interview that taking the role brought considerable pressure, since he had no prior screen experience, the production was a costume drama, and most scenes were shot in front of green screens requiring acting without physical props.⁵

The source novel and earlier adaptations

Ni Cangtian's novel Ling Yu was a representative work of the xuanhuan (Eastern fantasy) genre on the Qidian platform, running 1,841 chapters and nearly 5 million characters before its completion was announced at the end of 2015.⁴ The novel had reportedly generated close to ten million clicks on a single platform and over one hundred million across all platforms.¹³

The property was developed across several media before the live-action drama. In August 2015, the game studio 西山居 and iQIYI jointly acquired the adaptation rights, with 西山居 developing a mobile game and iQIYI producing animation.¹³ The animated series premiered exclusively on iQIYI on October 22, 2015, and passed one million views within six hours of release; its first season eventually accumulated 144 million views.¹⁴^•¹³ By the time the sixth season, Ling Yu: Retrospective (灵域追忆篇), aired in 2018, the animation had run five prior seasons and stood among the longest self-produced serialized animations in China; its sixth season reached a Douban score of 8.3, against 6.8, 7.1, 6.8, 6.9, and 7.0 for the first five seasons.¹⁵ The live-action drama therefore arrived as the newest link in a franchise that already spanned web fiction, animation, and games.¹⁶

Reception

The drama opened to divided reviews. A Sina commentary gave it a Douban score of 7.3 and argued that compressing a novel of nearly 5 million characters into 36 episodes left the pacing rushed, with background events handled in passing and the larger story framework never fully laid out.⁴ The Lianhe Zaobao reported a Douban score of 7.1, called that mark acceptable for a fantasy drama, and noted that many positive ratings came from fans of the two leads; it judged Fan Chengcheng's performance passable though sometimes overacted, and found Cheng Xiao's acting flat by comparison.⁵ A Sohu piece on the franchise put the drama's Douban score at 7.2, down slightly from 7.5 at the start of its run, and observed that criticism centered on the leads' acting.¹⁷ Another Sohu account described the Douban evaluations as sharply polarized, with the negative reviews concentrated on whether the two leads' acting measured up.¹⁸ On IMDb the series holds 8.2 out of 10 from 95 votes.²

Early viewer reaction was mixed from the first night: the platform released eight episodes at once on January 9, and some netizen commentary criticized the plotting, pacing, acting, and special effects, while much of the online discussion centered on the two leads' looks and the show's comedic moments.¹⁹

Coverage of the franchise noted the drama's commercial reach: its Weibo reading volume reached 950 million with 3.807 million discussions, and its Douban score exceeded those of all the preceding animated seasons.¹⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026