A Prophet
我不是大师
A 24-episode Republican-era con-artist revenge drama on Tencent Video and iQIYI, in which a ruined heir poses as a fortune-teller to bring down the swindlers who destroyed his family.
Save- Premiere
- Sep 24, 2026
- Episodes
- 24
- Where to watch
- iQIYI, Tencent Video
- Also known as
- 长风起 · Wo Bu Shi Da Shi · I'm Not a Master · Chang Feng Qi
About the drama
Some dramas are noticed on premiere day and others are found. A Prophet (我不是大师, Wo Bu Shi Da Shi, "I'm Not a Master") is the second kind. It premiered on September 24, 2026, on Tencent Video and iQIYI at the same moment and ran 24 episodes. On r/CDrama, one commenter in the premiere thread wrote, "I'm sensing a sleeper hit."
The draw is a premise most Republican-era dramas skip. A rich young man loses his family to a ring of swindlers who sell fate for a living. He does not take up a sword. He learns their trade, poses as a fortune-teller and turns it against them.
It needs no background in Chinese history: if you can follow a heist film, you can follow this. Forum viewers warn that the first three episodes are a prologue and the real story starts in episode 4. The tone is lighter than the ghost-story look suggests, with comedy among the revenge.
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Shangguan Chengming (上官诚明), played by Li Xian (李现), is the son of a rich family in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region. On the day of his wedding to Jiang Feiyan (江飞燕, Li Yitong 李一桐), a blind fortune-teller turns up uninvited and warns him that disaster will follow if he marries. He throws the man out. Within days his father is dead, his younger siblings are missing and the prophecy looks true.
An old swindler named Jin Buhuan (金不换, Wu Gang 吴刚), crippled in the legs, tells him the truth in a ruined temple: none of it was fate. It was a staged job by a fraud ring called the Tianxiang Sect (天相派), and his own wife was part of it. Shangguan becomes Jin's apprentice, learns the sect's methods and goes under a false name into the ring.
The series is set in the Republican era and draws on its folk belief: fate, past lives, birth-date horoscopes and ghosts. The Paper (澎湃新闻) claims a real network of fortune-telling swindlers, the Jiangxiang sect (江相派), existed then.
The source is the novel Wo Shi Ge Suan Ming Xian Sheng (我是个算命先生, "I'm a Fortune-Teller") by Yi Zhi (易之). The series was announced as Chang Feng Qi (长风起, "the long wind rises") and renamed less than two weeks before the premiere.
Douban (豆瓣) gave it 7.3 out of 10 from 37,123 ratings on October 16. The Paper compared it to Li Xian's earlier Tientsin Mystic (河神, He Shen), arguing that this one strips off the occult shell to show an assembly line of swindling techniques. Yangtze Evening News (扬子晚报) warned that a revenge story must earn its wins.
What China is saying
- Reddit
Even though it's a revenge story, it's not very heavy and a quite light and entertaining watch.
虽然是复仇故事，却不太沉重，看起来相当轻松有趣。
Full comment ↗ - Reddit
I'm sensing a sleeper hit
我感觉这部要成黑马。
Full comment ↗
Words to know
- Custom & craft八字'eight characters': the birth-date chart used in fortune-tellingBazi means 'eight characters'.
- Custom & craft赶尸'corpse driving': folk legend of walking the dead home across western HunanGanshi means 'driving corpses'.
- Fandom slang流量明星'traffic star': a performer valued for online attention, not craftLiuliang mingxing means 'traffic star'.
- Genre & trope武侠'martial heroes': swordfighter fiction with a code, no magicWuxia is fiction about martial artists who live by a code of honour.
Cast and crew
Trailers
Posters
Our coverage
A Prophet: The Republican-Era Con Drama Where Every Trick Has a Trick Behind It
A guide to the 24-episode Republican-era swindler drama A Prophet, which ended its run in October: a hero who poses as a master to take revenge on a fraud ring, the folk-superstition cons at its core, Li Xian and Li Yitong's second pairing, its rename, and the overseas viewers who found it by word of mouth.
Where to watch
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