As of my time of writing, there are 65 chapters of the manhua out, and it has only covered up to the very start of the Ghost City Arc, which is pretty much where the donghua left off. I will reference content that is currently novel-only, but only to an extent at which those caught up can understand.
If you haven't touched the series at all, expect spoilers.
Now, I've never really considered myself a super fan of anything before. There've been phases and overarching favourites, but I've never really found a series that was just... the series. And of all the ones it could've been, I really wasn't expecting it to be historical BL that'd been all but forgotten due to the overwhelming popularity of its predecessor.
This manhua really just took me by surprise, so much so that I, someone who had only read one fairly short light novel literally ever, immediately went to pick up its web novel and binged all 244 chapters of it in about four days. And let me just say, I my expectations were far succeeded.
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The story revolves around our main character, Xie Lian, a fallen and vastly despised god, ascending to the Heaven Realm for the third time after hundreds of years. Hoping to repay the debts he owes, he takes on a task to solve a mystery down in the Human Realm regarding the disappearance of several brides. While luring out the ghost rumoured to be behind it, he meets a peculiar man, one dressed in red and surrounded by silver butterflies, whose face he can't really make out. After all's solved and the mystery unravelled, he's left wondering just who that person was. Soon, he'll meet a young man who goes by the name San Lang, who isn't quite who he seems; someone has been keeping tabs on Xie Lian for a very long time.
As far as wuxia and god stories go, that sounds relatively basic. I mean, you can guess what happens afterwards, right? Thing is, it's nowhere near as simple as it sounds from a brief summary of the first arc.
I'll admit that the reason I actually started this series was because I hadn't read a decent BL in a long time, and I was really just looking for something enjoyable and highly-rated that wasn't fetishised to high hell. Let's just say that the romance, while also equally well-done, wasn't the main reason I stayed. I will mention though that it's nowhere near as creepy as I somehow made it sound in that summary; things get get blown out of proportion when both the main character and his love interest are 800-year-old supernatural virgins.
What truly intrigued me about the synopsis of Heaven Official's Blessing was the way the plot kept to a regular arc-by-arc, no-complex-sagas, you-can-piece-it-apart-and-it-won't-look-overly-confusing storyline, all while still leaving in all these little references to what's yet to come. It weaves in plot threads that would normally be forgettable but that it's most certainly going to revisit in the future, and plants the seeds of future arcs from the word go. It's also supremely good at tying up loose ends in a way that's honestly pretty refreshing for me, especially since I'm used to reading rushed weekly shonen manga that leave more plot holes open and forgotten than explained. Even just in the early arcs that the manhua has adapted, you can tell how well things were thought through.
For once, I have absolutely no complaints about the way the story was paced. The manhua, from what I remember, is entirely faithful to the novel, which meant it spent just the right amount of time on everything, and didn't seem particularly rushed in any places despite the source material's almost daily release. It helps that the manhua has a far wider spread release schedule due to its artistic detail, which presumably means more time can be spent plotting out how the story will work once adapted graphically.
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I would not be exaggerating if I told you that the art in this manhua is some of the best, if not the best, graphic novel art I've ever seen. It would still be impressive if it was in the regular, black and white manga format, but the fact that it's a manhua and is thus coloured makes it even more amazing to me.
I was genuinely surprised upon finding out that STARember, the series' illustrator, hadn't worked on any other series prior to Heaven Official's Blessing, nor were they particularly well-known beforehand. Their art is picturesque; any given panel from any given chapter is good enough to look like something from the colour page of volume cover of a beautifully-crafted manga (yes, even the chibi panels, chibi SQX lives in my head rent-free), and the fact that the entire series looks this way is absolutely insane to me. There's absolutely no fluctuation in quality as well, literally all of it looks as beautiful as it does in the banner and cover image AniList has displayed for it, and it stays consistent style-wise throughout as well.
Regarding character designs, the manhua was actually the first piece of media, if my memory serves, to visually adapt the novel's characters, and I really couldn't have asked for more. From the plain but exceedingly pretty Xie Lian to the handsome but still slightly cheeky-looking San Lang, they all look exactly as one would picture them when reading the novel. The donghua had great character designs as well, but I have to give the best designs award to the manhua here; the donghua just didn't have all those little flairs that the manhua has (read: the donghua didn't give San Lang nor Hua Cheng fangs and I'm still malding over it), though this was probably just for the sake of keeping things simpler for the animation staff.
All in all, to describe the art in a word, it's really just perfect.
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There isn't all that much I can say about the series' wider cast of characters without spoiling 90% of the plot twists, so let's just focus on the mains.
Xie Lian — It's scientifically impossible to make it past chapter 10 without developing an extremely strong feeling of "holy shit he's the purest boy I've ever seen, I've only had him for a few minutes but I'd already take several bullets and sacrifice my firstborn for him" towards him. He's good-natured, kind, and entirely desensitised to any form of insult directed towards him, which really just leaves you asking yourself how the hell he became one of the most frowned upon beings in the heavens in the first place.
Of course there's a certain depth to him, even early on you're left to wonder why it is that he became the way he is, which is gradually revealed through the instalments of his backstory that are told throughout the plot. Xie Lian is really just one to take as you go; you'll love him, I promise.
Hua Cheng — Out of all the sexy ghost kings I've encountered in media, which admittedly isn't a lot but shut up, Hua Cheng has to be my favourite. His personality starkly contrasts Xie Lian's, as he's rude, nonchalant and is beyond caring about others' feelings and what they think of him, which is pretty much all down to his status as a supreme and the fact that there are very few beings in existence who dare not fear him.
What makes him so intriguing is that this demeanour does a complete 180 when he acts towards Xie Lian. Xie Lian is the one person he cares for in the world, and he'll always treat him with kindness and do all he can to support him. Isn't that adorable?
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I really don't really have very much to say here. I've sung the manhua's praises so much in the other sections, but finding anything concrete to complain about proved pretty difficult.
I actually had a paragraph typed out about the novel, however, but then I realised that the manhua's ability to have a visual representation of everything pretty much nullified what I'd planned on saying. If the manhua continues the way it's going, I have high hopes that it'll surpass the novel once it's completed.
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I'll say it: this is probably the closest manhua has yet come to perfection, and I hope it holds up along the rest of the adaptation.
I'd recommend this to anyone, even those who don't usually read BL, since I, too, barely touched it due to the stigma that shit like Love Stage! & Yarichin Bitch Club attached to it. It's more than a romance story, really.
I don't know if anyone's actually going to read every word of this review, but if you did then I appreciate it! I'm not at all experienced when it comes to reviewing things, so if anything I said seemed off then you know why.
Thank you for reading!