The 84-episode serial was made by the China Teleplay Production Center and broadcast on CCTV in 1994, with Wang Fulin as chief director. Sun Yanjun plays Liu Bei, Tang Guoqiang plays Zhuge Liang, Bao Guo’an plays Cao Cao, Lu Shuming plays Guan Yu, Li Jingfei plays Zhang Fei, and Wu Xiaodong plays the adult Sun Quan. The title song uses Yang Shen’s ci, the same tradition as the opening of the Mao edition.

The plot follows the 120-chapter novel. The empty fort, the chain plot, and the borrowed arrows are all there. The series sometimes quiets the novel’s wonders. It does not switch its source to the Records. For many viewers the map and the relationships are these 84 episodes. Treating them as a filmed history turns Mao Zonggang’s chapters into a chronology.

The entry is marked romance. It is the novel’s most powerful retelling in the twentieth century.