Introduction
I admitted when I discovered this drama, my eyes automatically stared at the main poster. No, not on who’s on it, but the colorful tails. I thought I had seen enough dramas with nine-tailed foxes in different colors: white, pink, red/brown, but never different colors on a nine-tailed fox!
When I saw the cast, I noticed the leading actress’ name, and I was even more surprised to find out about the directors. This is the production team of My Uncanny Destiny (保护我方城主大人), alright! If you have seen that drama, you know what I’m talking about. Expect a zany joyride!
Because of the tight plot and short duration (for a historical fantasy), the stuff going on is a bit confusing and doesn’t follow a normal timeline. I had a feeling they wouldn’t cover each timeline in only 24 episodes… So I decided to make a recap of this drama to clarify things. However, for the comedy part, what I wrote here is just a glimpse of the farce. You’d better enjoy the humor by watching it!
Drama Info
Drama title: Eternal Love of the Fox (Native title: 九尾藏不住)
Alternative title: Jiu Wei Cang Bu Zhu
Genres: Mystery, Romance, Comedy, Xuanhuan
Aired: 22 Jan, 2026 - 25 Jan, 2026
Episodes: 24 | Duration: 45 min.
Directors: Zeng Huang Wu (曾黄武) and Xu Sheng Wang (徐胜旺)
Screenwriter: Wang Jun (王俊)
Where to watch: iQiyi
Trailer
Synopsis
After Huo Zhongren, the registrar of Muxi City, goes missing in the palace, his daughter, Huo Xiangjiu, infiltrates the palace as a maid to investigate. Amid inexplicable incidents one after another, she discovers that Feng Mochen, a powerful and favored court official, is actually a thousand-year-old fox spirit, and their souls even swap by accident. Are there other spirits stirring trouble, or is it the doing of wicked mortals? With their own agendas, Xiangjiu and Mochen join hands to solve a series of strange cases with a comical flair, while also uncovering an affecting love story, spanning over seven lifetimes, that has been buried for a thousand years. (Source: iQiyi)
Characters
Main Characters
Zhang Yue Nan (张悦楠) as Huo Xiang Jiu / Qing Hua / Hua Xi / Yao Qing / Wei Jun
Huo Xiangjiu is a straightforward, passionate, and witty mortal girl. She enters the palace to find her father. After her soul is swapped with the fox demon Feng Mochen, she starts a hilarious investigation and a seven-life love affair.
The other characters’ names are Xiangjiu’s names in other lives.
Sun Chen Jun (孙晨竣) as Feng Mo Chen
Feng Mochen is a millennium-old demon with an aloof and noble personality. He is the Fox Demon Supreme.
Feng Mochen meets Huo Xiangjiu, who is searching for her missing father, and the two uncover the mystery together. In their shared experience, Feng Mochen gradually discovered the feelings in each other’s hearts.
Supporting Characters
Bai Yu/Bai Chai (Zhang Jiong Min) – eunuch, Xiangjiu’s betrothed, demon hunter
Ning Shuang (Wang Jia Li) – Crown Prince’s sister
Le Ning (Zhang Qing) – Xiangjiu’s friend, palace maid
Mao Jin (Qi Wei) – Feng Mochen’s loyal servant
Fu Jing Yun (Wang Xing Wei) – Crown Prince
Song Lian (Zhang Chang Ning) – Crown Princess
Gongsun Hao (Zhang Fei Fei) – Gongsun Wu Gui’s son
Gongsun Wu Gui (Zong Feng Yan) – head minister, Gongsun Hao’s father
Xiao Hua Yao (Tian Jing Fan) – palace maid, flower demon
Huo Zhong Ren (Chen Chuang) – Huo Xiang Jiu’s father
Madam Chen (Ding Zi Di) – Ning Shuang’s nanny
Empress (Xu Mei Ling) – Ning Shuang’s mother
Demon elder (Jerry Huang)
My Rating
I will add the rating once I finish watching.
Recap Episodes 1 to 6
Episode 1
Huo Xiangjiu went looking for her father, Bronze County Registrar, Huo Zhongren. Her father had gone running away topless, lol, after saving and covering a little fox in the cage with his robe. She chased her father into a spooky house. Xiangjiu didn’t see him, only a very old man and a wild-looking young man in a big cage. She asked the old man about her father’s whereabouts, and the old man forced the wild man to transform into Huo Xiangjiu, stating that the wild man was a fox demon. Seeing the old man whipping the fox, Xiangjiu intervened. Just before she got hurt, the wild man transformed into a powerful fox demon and broke off the cage.
Xiangjiu woke up in a tree. Her friend and fellow palace maid, Le Ning, told Xiangjiu that she sleepwalked again. Xiangjiu told her bestie that she dreamed of the demon again. But she didn’t pay too much attention, because her mission was now to find her father, who had gone missing since he entered the palace to submit a complaint to the Emperor. Xiangjiu needed to find a registry book that recorded the entry date of her father’s visit. The book was at the Fucang Palace, where the super-powerful Lord Feng lived.
This Lord Feng was none other than our fox demon Feng Mochen. Since the fox demon was long-living, I wonder if he had known the emperor since His Majesty was little. Every time the emperor was dying, Mochen would go to the palace to revive the Emperor. What he did pissed off the Crown Prince Shi Zi, who couldn’t wait to take over the throne. After waking up, the emperor told him not to waste his internal energy, since Mochen needed to find his “ferryman”, who could help him to be an immortal.
Besides the emperor, it appeared Bai Yu, a eunuch, also knew that Mochen was a fox demon. Bai Yu was a demon hunter who entered the palace to hunt the fox demon. He pretended to be a eunuch, but he actually was betrothed to Xiangjiu when they were children. Xiangjiu was not happy seeing Bai Yu, since someone knew she entered the palace in disguise.
When she could finally sneak into Fucang Palace, she was found by Mochen. Xiangjiu ran away and fell off the balcony, only to be caught by Mochen. When their eyes met, Xiangjiu was shocked to recognize that Mochen was the wild man fox demon in her dreams. I wondered if that was not merely a dream, but her past life? A supernatural energy surge happened. Xiangjiu and Mochen swapped bodies!
Episode 2
Mochen, was unhappy to be stuck without power inside a frail mortal body. On the other hand, Xiangjiu, who suddenly got a cultivation power, was so happy to exercise her instapower conjuring objects, including an ancient television (for real!), which Mochen said it was a fish tank with the antenna being a fish rod, lmao! Mochen warned Xiangjiu not to play with his superpower and to impersonate him well. He gave Xiangjiu a crash course on how to use some of his power inside her.
After enough messing with the newfound superpower, Xiangjiu went down to business of searching for her father and found the register book, but the entry page of the date she was looking for was ripped off. Xiangjiu was suspicious that Mochen had taken her father. Mochen’s loyal servant, Mao Jin, was none other than a tugou, a Chinese Pastoral Dog, a Lord Howling Celestial Dog demon. He and Xiangjiu, could smell the faint fragrance on the register book. Mao Jin identified that the fragrance belonged to certain royal family members, though he didn’t remember who. Luckily, tonight was a royal banquet to celebrate the Emperor’s recovery.
Well, not luckily enough, if Mochen and Xiangjiu knew that the head of the officials and Crown Prince’s lackey, Lord Gongsun, planned to poison Mochen! Xiangjiu went to the banquet and pretended to acquire a new magic technique to predict fate through smell. As she personally toasted with each guest, she was shocked to smell the fragrance in both the Crown Princess Song Lian and Gongsun Hao, Lord Gongsun’s son.
The poison started affecting Xiangjiu, who felt agonizing pain. Having shared bodies, Mochen felt the same thing outside the banquet hall. The Emperor asked Eunuch Bai to take Mochen home. Bai Yu used this chance to kill Mochen, since he knew Mochen was a fox demon. However, he was unaware the person in front of him was not Mochen, but his own fiancée!
Episode 3
Luckily, Xiangjiu didn’t die, because Mochen used his internal energy to save both of them from poisoning and Bai Yu’s attempt to kill Mochen Xiangjiu. Mere mortals could not kill Mochen. However, there was a generational family feud between the fox demon and the Bai family. The Bai family was always demon hunters. One of Bai Yu’s ancestors died when hunting Mochen down, that was where the blood feud came from.
Crown Prince Shi Zi and Lord Gongsun believed that Mochen had died and celebrated their victory. Lord Gongsun took the chance to ask the crown prince to marry his sister, Ning Shuan, to his son Gongsun Hao, to solidify his power. However, Gongsun Hao and Ning Shuan loved each other in the past before she entered the palace to marry the crown prince. This Shi Zi was a cruel man and had abused his wife. Now I wondered why they both had the same fragrance Xiangjiu had smelled?
In Xiangjiu’s body, Mochen suffered from hard work as a palace maid and abuse from the supervisor. On the contrary, Xiangjiu enjoyed her new status, practiced Mochen’s magic skill, and even could reveal his nine tails. She thought the all-white tails were boring, so she painted them in colors, hahaha! Mochen, who, with the help of Bai Yu (who liked Xiangjiu), managed to meet Xiangjiu, and was horrified that his nine tails were colorful! Bai Yu was shocked when they told him that they had switched bodies, since that meant he attempted to kill his own fiancée last night. Xiangjiu, looking at him sweetly in Mochen’s body, created a BL vibe, lol!
Bai Yu tried to help them switch the bodies back with his family secret technique called Spirit-Detachment Technique, but failed many times. Instead, they were transported to the prehistoric era, etc, lmao! While waiting for Bai Yu to master his family’s technique, Mochen and Xiangjiu agreed with a pinky swear to help Xiangjiu search for her father.
By the way, Xiangjiu’s mission at the banquet was not completed because she got sick from poisoning. There were only two people whom she hadn’t tested yet: Princess Ningshuang and Nanny Chen. Mochen, as a maid, couldn’t help her as he lost his fox’s sense of smell to Xiangjiu. Xiangjiu could only enter the palace harem as Mochen.
Episode 4
Xiangjiu managed to sniff a similar fragrance from Prince Ningshuang, so she was sure the princess was involved. However, getting the last proof from the Nanny was not easy, as the fiery Princess Ningshuang suspected Mochen of being a pervert, trying to flirt with palace ladies, even an old nanny! She could only leave and went to find Mochen.
Unfortunately, Mochen was bullied again by the maid supervisor and her lackeys. At this time, Mochen was forced to eat dried chili peppers until his mouth was swollen. Seeing this, Xiangjiu was enraged. Not only because she was kindhearted and couldn’t stand such bullying, but also because her own body was being mistreated. Xiangjiu and Mochen beat the mean supervisor mercilessly.
The Crown Prince was livid when he heard that Mochen was still alive and healthy, so he executed some people. When Lord Gongsun begged for his life to be spared, the Crown Prince took the chance to humiliate him by taking his son, Gongsun Hao, to be his guard. With the humiliation, Lord Gongsun lost his hope to climb the social ladder by marrying his son to Princess Ningshuang. The Crown Princess, who wanted to interfere with the execution, was also harshly punished.
At night, while Xiangjiu slept in the luxurious Fucang Palace, Mochen retaliated against Xiangjiu by sleeping in a pig pen. However, Xiangjiu couldn’t sleep soundly, since a demon came to look for Mochen. She is Ru, a flower spirit. Ru’s spirit was disappearing, but she was restless since she felt she had an unresolved business before dying. Although Mochen didn’t want to help, the kindhearted Xiangjiu promised to help her.
Can’t help it, but I had to add another image in this episode, because the encounter of Xiangjiu and the flower spirit was so funny with cute CGI!
Mochen and Xiangjiu then went back to Fucang Palace to sleep. The next day, the ecstatic Bai Yu arrived, claiming that he had mastered the Spirit-Detachment Technique. The three circled together, but Bai Yu still couldn’t return their bodies. Instead, his body was also mixed up with the two hilariously. Finally, after several tries, Xiangjiu got her body back, but Bai Yu and Mochen’s bodies were still swapped! Xiangjiu stepped out to let the two resolve their body switch. However, her freedom was short-lived. She was taken by the Crown Prince’s men. They forced her to go with them to the Crown Prince’s Eastern Palace.
Episode 5
The Crown Prince heard that Xiangjiu was quite close to Mochen. He praised her, since he planned to use her as his spy to Mochen. He asked if she wanted to move to the Eastern Palace. Xiangjiu knew that the Crown Prince was a cruel man, so she had to be wise in answering. She agreed, stating that she needed to ask Mochen’s permission first. This struck the Crown Prince’s ego, as if Mochen’s status was higher than his. The Crown Prince then wanted to rape her. Luckily, Crown Princess came to the rescue, stating that it would be a problem if the Emperor heard of what happened in the Eastern Palace. The Crown Prince got angry and whipped the Crown Princess. Seeing this, Xiangjiu pretended that she would punish the Crown Princess and pulled her away.
The Crown Princess knew that Xiangjiu was a good girl from a good family. She urged Xiangjiu to run away because the Crown Prince had set his eyes on her, and even gave Xiangjiu a valuable bangle she could sell for travel expenses. Xiangjiu promised to repay the Crown Princess’s kindness and left. Unfortunately, right after she stepped out of the Eastern Palace, she was stopped by the Crown Prince and his guards and forced to return.
At this time, Mochen and Bai Yu already gotten their bodies back after many tries. Sensing Xiangjiu’s distress, Mochen remotely channeled his powers to her. Xiangjiu fought the Crown Prince and his guard fiercely. Bai Yu forgot about killing Mochen, bonded by their cheering on Xiangjiu beating the guys. Because of this incident, rumors spread in the palace about the Crown Prince being beaten by a maid. The Prince, now, even vowed to possess her. Xiangjiu realized she had to hide from everyone!
Poor Xiangjiu, she was not only chased by mean humans, but also by a scary demon. Later that night, as Xiangjiu cautiously emerged from her hiding place, a figure wearing a terrifying mask suddenly attacked her. Mochen appeared, and the person(?) ran away. He then took Xiangjiu back to Fucang Palace, but acknowledged that the evil entity was no weaker than him. Afraid, Xiangjiu wanted to finish all her missions quickly, helping Ru and looking for her father.
Well, helping Ru first should be easy, because Xiangjiu remembered Ru was a palace maid. However, searching her name amongst the long list of palace roster was not as easy as she thought. Tired, they had to enlist help from Mao Jin. Mao Jin had taken a fancy to Le Ning after seeing her being kind to a palace dog. From Mao Jin, we also knew that Mochen had known that Xiangjiu was the one he was looking for and would help him transcend and ascend. Although Mochen hadn’t revealed their other connections to Xiangjiu, she started getting visions of their other encounters. Mao Jin assured Le Ning that with Mochen, her bestie would be safe from the Crown Prince’s clutch. Mao Jin found that the only “Ru” who was missing was Xin Qiaoru from the Imperial Wardrobe Bureau.
Xiangjiu was not safe from the Crown Prince, since he issued an order to catch her, with the accusation that she wanted to assassinate him!
Episode 6
The Crown Prince and his guards found Xiangjiu at the Fucang Palace, so he demanded that Mochen surrender Xiangjiu to him, as she was an assassin who wanted to kill him, after failing to seduce him. Mochen, who had seen how the Crown Prince treated Xiangjiu through his power vision in Episode 5, calmly recited word by word what the Crown Prince told Xiangjiu. Embarrassed, the Crown Prince tried to dismiss the incident as a misunderstanding. Mochen didn’t back down and demanded that the Crown Prince drink a bucket of dirty water for an apology. Crown Prince refused, so Mochen threw him a dagger and told him to kill Xiangjiu instead. While holding a dagger, the Emperor arrived at Fucang Palace. Mochen had set the Crown Prince up! The Emperor demanded an explanation, and Mochen calmly said it was just a joke. They had played a game, and the Crown Prince lost a bet. The Emperor believed that his son was upright, so he ordered the Crown Prince to drink the filthy water to honor the bet, haha!
Later, after the Crown Prince left and the Emperor was playing chess with Mochen, Xiangjiu took the opportunity to report to His Majesty about his beloved son abusing his wife. The Emperor promised to investigate the matter.
The Qiaru’s case was finally resolved. With Mao Jin’s help, Mochen and Xiangjiu found out what happened to the poor maid. She was framed by people at the Imperial Wardrobe Bureau for ruining Princess Ningshuang’s dress and thus imprisoned at Cold Palace. There, Qiaru befriended a palace dog. However, her bullies didn’t stop there and threatened to kill the dog if Qiaru didn’t sacrifice herself for it. Qiaru then hung herself. Qiaru remembered that her unresolved matter was her pet dog, Qiafu, and the dog came to see her. She felt peace now. Qiaru was actually a flower demon. She had exhausted her core energy to be a human, so after she died, she changed back into a flower plant. As for the bullies, they were eventually apprehended by the palace guards.
After noticing that the Crown Princess looked haggard, the Emperor issued an order that anyone, including the Crown Prince, harm the Crown Princess as if harming His Majesty himself. With her new courage, the Crown Princess asked for a divorce.
Meanwhile, Qiaru, who was no longer having a body or a spirit, appeared to thank Xiangjiu and Mochen in the form of a lingering shadow. Qiaru told Xiangjiu that when Huo Zhongren entered the palace two years ago, she saw a suspicious man dressed as a eunuch. She warns Xiangjiu that this man entered a terrifying, forbidden area of the palace that she must never visit. However, before Qiaru told her the location, she was struck by the same person wearing a mask whom Xiangju encountered last time, and Qiaru vanished!
Conclusion
Bruh, for several initial episodes, it was ridiculous and funny, but then we have looming darkness in the palace. Not only that, we have witnessed the sadness of the people of lower status being abused inside the thick wall of the palace. The drama also wants to show a depiction of real ancient life, I assume. Not sure where the drama will take the viewers. Huo Zhongren’s disappearance was still a big mystery, and now, with a scary thing in the chase, I wonder what the identity was. A human? A higher-level demon? I guess the story ahead will be full of angst. Will we see Xiangju and Mochen’s other lives, too? Let’s continue to the second part of the recap series!
