Mo Dao Zu Shi (Donghua)

Mo Dao Zu Shi (魔道祖师), released internationally as The Founder of Diabolism, is the Chinese animated adaptation of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's danmei novel. It was produced by Tencent Penguin Pictures with B.C May Pictures and ran for three seasons and 35 episodes between 9 July 2018 and 16 October 2021 on Tencent Video.

Wei Wuxian (voiced by Zhang Jie) died at the siege of the Burial Mounds, blamed for a war he was accused of turning against his own side. Sixteen years later he is pulled back into a living body by a summoning ritual and finds himself standing next to Lan Wangji (voiced by Bian Jiang), the one cultivator who never signed on to the story the clans agreed to tell. A severed arm, a haunted town and a trail of unexplained killings send the two of them back through everything that happened before.

Of the three big adaptations, the donghua sits closest to the novel in tone. It keeps the book's chronology, its atmosphere and the weight of the flashback material, where the 2019 live-action The Untamed reorganises the story for a broadcast audience. A 30-episode chibi comedy spin-off, Mo Dao Zu Shi Q, ran alongside it between July 2020 and January 2021.