Everthing Behind the Coroner's Diary

On the evening of July 23, The Coroner's Diary (朝雪录) quietly climbed to the top of Weibo's trending list. It wasn't a mega-IP. It didn't boast big-name stars. Most media outlets hadn't even included it in their "most anticipated dramas" roundups. But somehow, it became iQIYI's third show in 2025 to break the platform's elusive 10,000 heat index mark.

Funny enough, the night before, the show already hit Weibo's No.2 trending spot—almost there, sitting at 9991. People clicked in expecting to see a celebration. Instead, they found everyone holding their breath for those last 9 points. Then came the moment: the number ticked over.

Producer Quan Haojin posted the milestone on his WeChat moments with three crying emojis. Director Li Huizhu, known for keeping things professional, used three "extremely"s before she even said the word "happy."

"Honestly? This did way better than we expected," Quan said. "We worked on this for over four years. Hitting 10,000 is lucky. But even if we hadn't, I still wouldn't regret making it."

Strong Numbers, Real Watchability

Before the show aired, Quan was worried. Really worried.

The Coroner's Diary wasn't showing up in any of the pre-season hype lists. Media didn't mention it. Even when they were just listing upcoming dramas, it didn't make the cut.

"No big IP, no top-tier cast," Quan said. "It felt like no one even knew we existed. That pressure was real."

What gave him a bit of hope? An internal screening.

At iQIYI, whenever a drama wraps post-production, there's an internal review where people from different departments give feedback. The team screened the first ten episodes. "The feedback was overwhelmingly positive," Quan said. "Even later, when we showed it to the media and actor teams, they mostly had good things to say."

By this point, he'd already watched the episodes countless times. He knew they had something solid. But this was when he started thinking maybe—maybe—they had more than just a decent show.

From day one, the show's popularity just kept climbing. By day eleven, it hit the 10K mark. By day four, it had already topped Yunhe's market share charts, eventually peaking at 28.5%.

Of course, in the age of echo chambers, praise always comes with skepticism.

So Quan shared an internal stat that might matter more than general ratings: the "Episode 3 Retention Rate." Basically, of everyone who started the show, how many stayed to at least episode 3? It's a lot tougher than the usual "episode 1 drop-off" metric—and way more honest about whether people actually want to keep watching.

For Coroner's Diary, that number was 81%. And it stayed consistently high across the board—above the platform average even compared to other hit shows. According to iQIYI's ops team, they were honestly shocked by how strong the numbers were.

"Data doesn't define success. It's a tool. Everyone's free to interpret it their way," Quan said. "But from iQIYI's own dashboard, this show performed incredibly well. Healthy, strong growth all the way."

Quan still remembers the chaos one week before Coroner's Diary aired.

Suddenly, a bunch of clients started reaching out with requests for custom ads—brand collabs that needed to be shot, fast. So the team split into multiple crews and raced off to shoot in Beijing, Chengdu, Xinjiang, and Hengdian (a major Chinese film production base). It was brutal: shoot during the day, edit that night, and then stay up the next evening to finalize everything.

Everyone was running on fumes. But when they saw clients increasing their ad budgets mid-way through? That exhaustion started to feel... worth it.

Quan knows full well that data matters for long-format dramas. But it's not the only thing that determines whether a show survives—or thrives.

"Both White Moon, Sacred Star and Coroner's Diary are like our team's babies," he said. "Coroner's Diary@ was lucky enough to break 10K. Sacred Star almost made it. Each show has its own fate—there are so many factors. But not hitting 10K doesn't mean it's not a good drama. Sacred Star actually ranked No.1 in effective viewership on Maoyan (a Chinese entertainment analytics platform) for the first half of the year. It's had incredible long-tail success."

Where It All Began: The Story, The Casting

Back in January 2021, Quan had just joined iQIYI. He was tasked with building a fully in-house drama team.

And he didn't want to just copy what everyone else was doing. The goal wasn't another assembly-line romance in costume.

He read through dozens of IPs. Two stories stood out: Kunning and The Autopsy Consort. The first would later become Story of Kunning Palace, and the second? That's Coroner's Diary.

What grabbed Quan about Kunning was the "one girl, three men, and rebirth" setup. Autopsy Consort, on the other hand, hit something deeper. "It brought me back to watching Young Justice Bao and Medical Examiner Song Ci as a kid," he said. When he found out the rights were still available, he jumped on it and greenlit development right away.

By June 2023, the first full script for Coroner's Diary was done, and it cleared internal approval at the platform.

Next step: find a director.

Quan brought the script to Li Huizhu herself—a veteran who'd directed classics like Palace, Legend of Lu Zhen, and Princess Weiyoung. She's often called "the godmother of costume idol dramas" in the industry.

Li read the script carefully. Her reaction was instant and excited: "This is good. I've never done one like this!"

Despite her long resume of historical dramas, she'd rarely seen a script where the crime-solving parts were this detailed and logical—where the autopsy scenes actually mattered. Even more, she was drawn to how naturally the romance developed between the leads. "There's no artificial sweetness here," she told the team. That authenticity got her fired up.

Once the director was locked in, the next big challenge was finding the right actors for the two leads: Qin Wan and Yan Chi.

Finding Qin Wan took forever.

"This character is incredibly hard to pull off," Quan said. "She has to be young, beautiful, look intelligent—and also handle tons of forensic dialogue. That means serious acting chops and strong delivery."

They went through a lot of options. But the moment they saw Li Landi, something clicked. She checked every box.

Before meeting her, Quan did a little digging online and found clips of her—turns out she wasn't introverted at all. She was bubbly and funny in interviews and variety shows. And in person? Exactly that: bright, talkative, confident.

After reading the script, Li Landi basically echoed Director Li's reaction: "This role is so good. I've never played anything like it. It's exciting."

During the shoot, Quan was amazed. There were lines—long, technical ones filled with forensic jargon—that he could barely pronounce. But Li Landi? She nailed them. Smooth, flawless delivery, like she'd memorized them in her sleep.

As for Yan Chi, played by Ao Ruipeng—that connection actually started during White Moon, Sacred Star.

After White Deer (Bai Lu) was confirmed as the female lead, Quan and director Zhu Ruibin started scouting for someone new to play the male lead, Fan Yue. "He had to look great, act well, and—most importantly—feel real," Quan explained. "Otherwise, it just becomes another dating sim in costume, and audiences check out."
The moment Quan met Ao Ruipeng, three words popped into his head: "He feels alive."

"He's just incredibly genuine," Quan said. "Whether he's working or just hanging out, there's no pretense. He doesn't act like some big star, doesn't have any of those diva habits you sometimes see with traffic idols (流量明星, i.e., hype-driven celebs). He's got that boyish look, sure—but his mind's sharp and mature. All he needed was a real opportunity."

Quan still remembers reading about Ao Ruipeng joining the wildfire rescue efforts in Chongqing back in 2022—riding a motorbike up into the mountains to help. "Chongqing has rivers everywhere," he joked. "Even now, if Ao sees water, he'll take his shirt off and jump right in for a swim. If anyone wants to casually bump into him, just hang around the rivers in Chongqing."

After their great experience on Sacred Star, Quan handed him the script for Coroner's Diary. And watching the drama later, Quan often felt: Ao's performance was even better than what we wrote on the page.

On Set: No Egos, No Fuss, Just a Really Good Vibe

Filming officially kicked off in April 2024.

Looking back, director Li Huizhu had one word for the production atmosphere: happy.

Li Landi, so bright and lively off-camera, would instantly flip the switch once she was in costume. As soon as she started talking about the role, she'd turn focused, serious, and sharp—just like her character, Qin Wan. In one of the most intense scenes, where Qin Wan falls into the water during the "Hundred Herbs Garden" case, Li Landi was on wires for six hours straight. Her back nearly gave out. But not once did she complain.

Ao Ruipeng had that same switch. The moment the cameras rolled, he was all in—analyzing how to shape his scenes, where to land each emotional beat. "He's not like Yan Chi in personality," Li Huizhu said, "but they both have that honesty and cleverness in common."

Between takes, neither actor ever disappeared into their trailers. If they weren't glued to the monitors watching other scenes, they were talking through the next one. And the rest of the cast started following suit.

They'd never worked together before, but you wouldn't have known it. The chemistry was effortless.

Li Huizhu saw it too. "Whether they were in a scene or off set, Landi and Ruipeng felt like one unit." Ao Ruipeng never even asked to see his own footage—but he always stayed to watch Li Landi's, often murmuring next to the monitor, "Wow… she's so good."

"The scene I remember most vividly," Li Huizhu said, "was the one in the secret chamber. Yan Chi's tenderness, Qin Wan's inner conflict… they're finally alone, away from the world, opening their hearts to each other. It was incredibly romantic."

And the two actors pulled it off with grace.

"They delivered it with such subtlety," she said. "Just right. Nothing overplayed. It was perfect."

Right before the shoot, Quan sent both Li Landi and Ao Ruipeng the same book—full-color, photo-heavy, and entirely focused on corpse decomposition. It was part educational, part test: "Let's see how brave they really are."

To his surprise, they loved it. Both actors flipped through the pages with genuine interest. Li Landi even kept going, "Ah! So that's how it works!" like she'd just solved a mystery. On set, she was even braver than Ao.

So yeah, when asked if they'd want to work together again, both Quan and director Li Huizhu had the same answer: "Absolutely."

"I'd love to team up again with Landi and Pengpeng—and honestly, the whole Coroner's Diary cast," Li Huizhu said. "Any genre's fine, as long as the story's good."
Big Budget, No Waste. The Corpses Had to Be Perfect

Quan revealed that Coroner's Diary was made using iQIYI's S-tier production budget—basically the platform's highest internal bracket. But being a fully in-house project meant that every cent went directly to production, no fluff, no markup. And for Quan, that meant zero compromise on quality.

"You can't set a budget just by looking at the cast's traffic stats," he said. "You'll never get a solid drama that way. If the story's not strong, nothing else matters."

Director Li Huizhu spent a large chunk of that budget on props—specifically, the forensic details. The "corpses" that Qin Wan examines throughout the show were all life-sized body models, crafted by a professional FX team using actual anatomy references. They even bought stacks of forensic medical texts to make sure every detail—rigor mortis, skin tone, livor mortis (尸斑), wound morphology—was medically accurate.

Li Huizhu was careful, though. While the murders had to look brutal enough to be believable, she didn't want to go overboard with gore.

So they toned down the blood effects and used cooler color grading for the visuals. Qin Wan's autopsy scenes were shot with clinical calmness—no screaming, no dramatics—just a woman doing her job, explaining the process. And to help viewers understand, they added "anatomical perspective" visuals, kind of like CGI diagrams showing what's going on inside the body.

Tight Edits, No Fluff, and a Ruthless First Episode Cut

Shock value alone doesn't carry a drama—pacing matters even more.

During prep, Li Huizhu worked closely with the writing team to cut everything that didn't push the plot forward. If it didn't serve the story or character, it was gone. "Fluff scenes" (水戏) were out. That's just how she works.

Based on feedback from iQIYI's internal review board, she even re-edited the first episode—completely cutting out all the setup scenes before Qin Wan enters the Qin household. "First episodes are critical. If the opener flops, it's really hard to win people back."

Rewriting the Novel: Less Rebirth, More Mystery

In the adaptation process, the writers skipped the original novel's complex reincarnation plotline entirely. Instead, they jumped straight into the murder cases and focused the structure around eight core investigations.

On the romance front, they emphasized the original's "double-strong leads" (双强). That meant no melodrama. The mystery arcs stood on their own; the relationship evolved naturally in the quieter moments in between.

"At the start, Qin Wan and Yan Chi are wary of each other. It's only through solving cases together that they begin to understand, then admire, and finally fall for each other," Li Huizhu explained. "We didn't force any ‘sweet moments.' Their chemistry builds through shared experience, unspoken trust, and small gestures."

The night the show broke 10,000 in heat index, fans had one question: Where's the kiss from the leaked set photos?

Quan posted on Weibo the next day. "During editing, we all felt it made more sense for them to just hug, not kiss—especially with Yan Li and Yue Ning watching. But if you really want to see it…"

The day after that, he released the full kiss scene online.

10K Wasn't the Finish Line. It Was a Starting Point.

For creators, nothing beats being seen and heard.

Whether it's praise or critique, Quan and Li are the kind who take notes—literally. They reflect, adjust, improve. The 10K milestone wasn't an ending; it was a checkpoint. Proof that the work mattered.

Not just to the audience, but to everyone who spent four years making it happen.