Shrouding the Heavens Donghua: Is It Worth Watching?

The Shrouding the Heavens donghua (遮天, Zhe Tian) is worth watching if you'll give it 20 to 30 episodes to get going and you have a legal way to watch it. Outside China, that second part is the hard one. The show is good enough that fans who stuck with it defend it hard, and the slow opening is real. If you can't get it, the novel on Webnovel is the better bet, and we read its opening to check.

Who Should Watch the Shrouding the Heavens Donghua

Watch it if you like long cultivation shows that take their time and pay off later, and if you're already in China or on Tencent Video. Skip it, or start with the novel, if you need action by episode 5, or if your only option is a fan upload.

We didn't watch the show, so we aren't scoring the animation. What follows is what Tencent's own pages say about the run and what viewers who did watch it say.

What You're Signing Up For

Tencent runs it as a yearly show (年番): long runs of weekly episodes instead of short seasons. The third yearly run started on April 30, 2025, and the fourth on April 8, 2026. Even 208 isn't the finish line. In June, the animation team told Tencent's 2026 showcase that the fifth yearly run already has several specials planned.

Screenshot: Tencent Video, 遮天 episode 1 player page, October 26, 2026

The screenshot also shows the access problem. From our location, Tencent's player showed "您所在区域暂无此内容版权", meaning there are no rights for your region. Tencent's official YouTube channel, Tencent Video-ANIMATION, carries other shows in English, but searching it for "Shrouding the Heavens" and for 遮天 turned up nothing on October 26. On WeTV, Tencent's international app, the only Shrouding the Heavens title in search was the movie, marked Rent, with a three-minute trial.

The r/Donghua threads show what that means in practice. A UK viewer asked in May where to watch, because the YouTube channel they'd been using "appears to have been removed". Reddit's AutoModerator removed replies that pointed to unofficial sites. We don't link those either.

Why Fans Stay With It

Two reasons come up in the threads we read: how it looks and where the story goes. A June thread opened by praising the visuals, "The scale is awesome, the particle effects are gorgeous", before complaining about the fights. In an August thread asking "What's happened to the quality?", the top reply pushed back: "I just watched this episode on 4k and shii was beautiful". The same feeling shows up on Tencent's own episode 1 page. One commenter wrote in May 2025 that the 遮天 team had clearly stepped it up (制作组确认发力了).

The other reason is the bigger story. When a newcomer asked in October whether the show gets better, one reply pointed out that it's "part of a trilogy. In the correct order they are: Perfect World, Shrouding the Heavens and Sacred Ruins". If you've seen the Perfect World donghua, you'll recognise the links. If you haven't, Ye Fan's story starts on its own, on modern Earth.

What It Costs You

A slow start. That same October thread began with "i wasted 7 episodes so far and nothing about cultivation". The top reply: "Give it around the 20 mark. The beginning is admittedly slow, but it picks up quickly." Another viewer put it higher: "It took like 30+ episodes before he began cultivating". Chinese viewers said the same thing back in 2023. A comment on Tencent's episode 1 page from November 2023 jokes that Renegade Immortal got out of the starter village in 3 episodes, while this show was "30集了还在新手村跑酷", still parkouring around the starter village 30 episodes in.

Fights some viewers find floaty. A June post on r/Donghua said "the action has absolutely zero weight", and the replies mostly agreed. Even a reply defending the visuals in August said "i just feel the choreography has become rusted".

A long middle. "I've been feeling bored since around episode 130," wrote a viewer at episode 155 in a thread from August. They described the loop as: about to die, survives, wins, gets stronger, repeat. The top replies answered that this is just how cultivation stories work: "This is every MC in every series."

Money and patience. From episode 18, Tencent tags the episodes VIP, and new ones come out once a week.

Where the Movie Fits in the Shrouding the Heavens Donghua

The Shrouding the Heavens movie goes between episodes 156 and 157, going by release dates and by viewers. Tencent lists it under a separate 剧场版 tab rather than giving it an episode number. 背棺战王腾 (roughly "carrying the coffin to fight Wang Teng"; WeTV's English title is Shrouding the Heavens: The Imperial Path) came out on April 4, 2026, four days before the fourth yearly run began, and Tencent's episode data timestamps the episode before it on April 2 and the one after it on April 7. Viewers place it the same way. "There is a whole movie between 156 and 157 in case you missed it," one told a confused viewer in October. WeTV's copy runs 1:34:34, and its synopsis sets up "Ye Fan and Wang Teng, two top geniuses" facing "a fated battle."

Tencent's search page also lists titles that aren't part of the main show. There's a 50-episode spin-off about Jiang Taixu (遮天之白衣神王姜太虚), an 18-episode compilation (合集篇), a 2023 live-action film, 遮天：禁区, rated 6.8, and a live-action 遮天 drama for 2026 starring Yin Zheng (尹正) and Zhu Xudan (祝绪丹) that's listed as upcoming (预约). You can skip all of them.

Screenshot: Tencent Video, search results for 遮天, October 26, 2026

The other half of Chen Dong's trilogy, compared on screen and on the page.

Perfect World Donghua vs Novel →

The Novel: What We Read

The novel is the official English translation on Webnovel. On October 26 it listed 619 chapters, and the newest is titled Chapter 623 Dao Treasure Bottle, posted two months earlier with a "New chapter is coming soon" note underneath. Webnovel shows "Not enough ratings" for it.

We read chapters 1 to 3 and 9 to 12 in full on Webnovel's site, without signing in. Chapter 1 opens like a science-fiction story. On June 11, 2010, astronauts on the International Space Station look out at nine dead dragons, "all a hundred meters long", chained to a bronze coffin twenty meters long. Chapters 2 and 3 are a class reunion. Ye Fan, three years out of university, watches Lin Jia get into a rival's Toyota instead of riding with him. He sits through the digs about taking a taxi and says nothing about the Mercedes-Benz he recently bought. Tencent's episode 1 page has a joke about that Mercedes with 11,000 likes. By chapter 11 the coffin lies overturned on a five-colored altar that is "practically completely buried beneath russet sand." In chapter 12 the classmates find two huge characters carved into a boulder, 荧惑, and the translator's note explains it's an old name for Mars.

That matches what one r/Donghua reply says about the book: "it took them about 11 chapters just to leave earth". The book is slow too. The chapter list puts "What is Cultivation?" at chapter 38 and "Establishing the Sea of Bitterness" at chapter 41.

One thing to know before you switch: the English novel may not get you past the show. Webnovel's chapter 600, War King Wang Teng, sets Ye Fan against Wang Teng, the same matchup the movie is built around, and the show has aired 30 episodes since the movie. That suggests the donghua has already passed where the English translation stops. That's our guess from the chapter titles; neither Tencent nor Webnovel says so. Both late chapters we opened also show only part of the text on the website and ask you to open the Webnovel app for the rest.

How Webnovel's coins and passes work before you commit to a long book there.

Webnovel Coins and Fast Pass, Explained →

What to Watch or Read Instead

• If access is the problem: read the novel from chapter 1 on Webnovel. The opening chapters we read open in full without signing in.
• If you want more Chen Dong first: Tencent also adapts Perfect World, the first book of the trilogy; its episodes are on the same Tencent YouTube channel. See our Perfect World review for the book.
• If you only want a taste: WeTV rents the movie with a three-minute free trial. It lands 156 episodes in, though, so it's a spoiler-heavy place to start.

Our Take

Yes, it's worth it, with two conditions. You need Tencent Video access, and you need to accept that the first 20 to 30 episodes are mostly setup. Fans who got past that keep defending the visuals and the payoff of the larger story. The common complaints, weightless fights and a repetitive middle after episode 130, are the kind you can live with for a show this size. If you can't watch legally, don't hunt fan uploads. Read the first dozen chapters of the novel on Webnovel and see if Ye Fan's slow road off Earth hooks you. Just know the English translation stops in the six hundreds.

How We Checked This

On October 26, 2026 we opened Tencent Video's 遮天 episode 1 page and its search results for 遮天, and took screenshots of both. We read Baidu Baike's entry for the show and Tencent News's June 25, 2026 report on the 2026 animation showcase. We searched WeTV and opened the movie's page there. We searched Tencent's Tencent Video-ANIMATION YouTube channel for "Shrouding the Heavens" and 遮天. On Webnovel we read the book page and the full table of contents, read chapters 1-3 and 9-12 in full while signed out, and opened two late chapters, from the 600s. Reddit quotes come from six r/Donghua threads, May to October 2026. We didn't watch any episodes or the movie.

Related Reading

• Perfect World Donghua vs Novel
• Perfect World Review
• Renegade Immortal Donghua Guide
• Is Webnovel Worth It?
• Webnovel Coins and Fast Pass, Explained

References

• Tencent Video: 遮天 episode 1 player page
• Tencent Video: search results for 遮天
• Tencent News: 《遮天》年番动画发布新预告，《遮天》首部院线动画大电影官宣 (June 25, 2026)
• Baidu Baike: 遮天 (animation)
• WeTV: Shrouding the Heavens: The Imperial Path
• WeTV: search results for Shrouding the Heavens
• YouTube, Tencent Video-ANIMATION: channel search for Shrouding the Heavens
• Webnovel: Shrouding the Heavens
• Webnovel: Shrouding the Heavens table of contents
• Webnovel: Shrouding the Heavens chapter 1, The Huge Bronze Coffin of the Starry Sky
• Webnovel: Shrouding the Heavens chapter 600, War King Wang Teng
• Reddit r/Donghua: Shrouding the heavens (does it get better?)
• Reddit r/Donghua: Shrouding the Heavens is jaw-dropping, but it suffers from a lack of kinetic weight
• Reddit r/Donghua: Shrouding the heavens: What's happened to the quality?
• Reddit r/Donghua: Shrouding the Heavens feels boring now after 140-something episodes
• Reddit r/Donghua: Shrouding the heavens (episode 160s)
• Reddit r/Donghua: Where can i watch shrouding the heavens?