General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Love on the Turquoise Land (枭起青壤)

Love on the Turquoise Land (枭起青壤) is a 2025 Chinese urban fantasy television series adapted from Wei Yu's (尾鱼) novel of the same name, starring Dilraba Dilmurat as the hunter Nie Jiuluo (聂九罗) and Chen Xingxu as Yan Tuo (炎拓), who join forces against the Dixiao (地枭), subterranean creatures that pass among humans in human form¹^•². Produced by Tencent Video with Xian Gongfu Culture, it premiered on Tencent Video on November 22, 2025 and ran for 32 episodes¹^•³.

Key fact	Detail
English / Chinese title	Love on the Turquoise Land / 枭起青壤³
Source	Novel by Wei Yu (尾鱼), published April 2024 by Sichuan Wenyi Literature and Art Publishing House; Douban score 8.3 from 4,501 ratings⁴
Premiere	November 22, 2025, Tencent Video, finale December 6, 2025¹^•³
Lead cast	Dilraba Dilmurat as Nie Jiuluo, Chen Xingxu as Yan Tuo, Zhang Li as Lin Xirou¹^•⁵
Directors	Tian Li as chief director, with He Tan and Meng Yuan as co-directors¹^•⁵
Filming	Ningbo, Zhejiang, from March 2024 to August 9, 2024¹
Opening performance	Passed 25,000 heat value 81 minutes after launch, a Tencent Video record for modern dramas; overseas rights sold to 115 countries⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Premise

The story is set in the present day, in a world where mobile phones, surveillance cameras, cars, and airplanes all exist, and places folk supernatural legend inside that modern setting⁸. Centuries ago, according to the series' synopsis, an elite military unit of the Qin Dynasty was sent to seek the elixir of eternal life and vanished; in the present, the sculptor Nie Jiuluo, secretly a descendant of that army and an inheritor of the "mad blade" of the covert Nanshan Hunters organization, is drawn into an ancient plot alongside Yan Tuo, a man manipulated for years by the Dixiao leader Lin Xirou, who has taken the identity of his mother²^•⁹.

The Dixiao are creatures that originally lived underground and now walk the surface wearing human skin, organized at scale and imitating human intelligence, which makes the conflict between humans and Dixiao a hidden, deceptive one rather than open monster-hunting⁹. The series frames the two groups as species in a millennium-long struggle for survival rather than as simple good and evil: the Dixiao leader Lin Xirou's schemes aim to lift her kind out of the underground darkness, and the show uses the "other" perspective to question human-centered assumptions about civilization and predation⁹.

The source novel

Wei Yu published Xiao Qi Qing Rang in April 2024 through Sichuan Wenyi Literature and Art Publishing House with the Motie Book imprint, as a three-volume set priced at 135.00 yuan; it was billed as a new worldview built after her Long Gu Fen Xiang (龙骨焚箱) series, drawing on myths such as Kuafu chasing the sun and Nüwa creating humanity⁴. Readers rated it 8.3 on Douban⁴. A 2021 review in the China Writers Association's youth recommendation list praised how the romance between the leads, the mystery of their backgrounds, and the origin of the Dixiao interlock in three plotlines that repeatedly break reader expectations¹⁰.

Wei Yu is a prominent author of suspense-romance web fiction whose work blends the supernatural, thriller, mystery, and romance; after the 2021 success of the adaptation Rattan (司藤), her IP became sought after, and Tencent Video acquired screen rights to five of her works, including Love on the Turquoise Land, announcing a "Wei Yu universe" slate at its 2021 showcase¹¹^•⁶. Her adaptations have a mixed record, and in November 2021 she publicly complained that apart from Rattan she strongly opposed every adaptation script that had reached her¹¹^•¹².

Production and filming

Chief director Tian Li and the production company Xian Gongfu Culture had earlier built a reputation in folk-supernatural drama with the Tientsin Mystic (河神) series⁸. Filming began in March 2024 at a cultural center in Haishu District, Ningbo, and wrapped on August 9, 2024, with locations across Ningbo including the Southern Song Stone Sculpture Park at Dongqian Lake, Bai Art Museum, Yongshou Street, Lianqiao Di, Zhuangqiao railway station, and the Songlan Mountain coastal resort in Xiangshan, where the yacht lighthouse and Taiji Bay beach host key cross-time scenes¹. The production chose over 200 real locations nationwide rather than relying on studio sets¹.

Before broadcast, the drama had surpassed 3 million reservations on Tencent Video as of November 17, 2025¹.

Adaptation choices

Director Tian Li described the project in an interview as, in a sense, a monster movie, and said the central problem was grounding the fantasy: how the Dixiao came to exist and become human needed an explanation that was roughly plausible within modern civilization, "even if a bit strained"⁸.

Balancing genres. Tian Li faced a positioning question: centering the romance, as in Twilight, would have allowed weaker worldbuilding logic, while centering Chinese-style fantasy adventure would have meant cutting emotional material. He chose the "want both" path, keeping the hybrid of Eastern supernatural fiction, modern urban setting, and emotional bonds, accepting the risk that neither audience would be fully satisfied⁸. To fit screen pacing, the adaptation explains core concepts such as the Nanshan Hunters and the Dixiao early, so viewer anticipation rests on events rather than on decoding character backgrounds⁸.

Specific changes. The novel's Chantoujun (缠头军) group, whose strong fictional premise resembled "vampire hunters" and sat in a gray zone, was rewritten as a relatively righteous secret organization, partly to satisfy censorship constraints⁸. Commentators noted other softening: in the novel Nie Jiuluo is decisive and ruthless, while the drama version rounds her edge, and core settings such as Yan Tuo's adoptive mother's identity and the blood sac are revealed early, with much of the running time given to the leads' scenes together¹³.

Design and sound. The Dixiao creature design combines three elements: a humanoid primate body, a head built only from the hard shell form of a bird's beak rather than a full bird head, and a membrane covering the body that hints at its transformation; the creatures' lair, Heibai Creek, was built as a set resembling the internal cavity of a giant organism, extended with visual effects⁸. Fight choreography was directed to avoid stylized wushu patterns and to be hard-hitting and fierce, while the much-discussed opening rain knife fight between the two leads had to be both brutal and beautiful, carrying a sense of fate between the characters⁸. The score draws on Huayin Laoqiang, an old folk vocal genre from the region of southern Shaanxi where the novel is set, chosen for its earthy, everyday character⁸.

Reception

The premiere set a Tencent Video record for modern dramas, passing a 25,000 heat value 81 minutes after launch, and overseas distribution rights were sold to 115 countries⁶^•⁷. After the strong start, however, the show plateaued: by the time of Jiemian's report the platform heat was stuck around the 27,000 range, its market share peaked at 13.8 percent despite an S+ rating from the analytics firm Yunhe, and it had been overtaken on Yunhe's screen-dominance chart by The Great Businessman for several consecutive days⁶.

Critical coverage was divided along predictable lines for a Wei Yu adaptation. Praise centered on production quality, the worldbuilding, and Dilraba's action scenes as the dual-identity sculptor and hunter, with the character read as an unusually self-directed female lead⁹^•⁷. Criticism targeted pacing that dragged, a romance line introduced too quickly, insufficient depth in portraying Nie Jiuluo's core appeal, and an opening that was unfriendly to viewers who had not read the novel⁷^•⁶. The original author's endorsement, attending a screening of the drama, was treated by some fans as an authoritative answer to adaptation complaints¹⁴.

The series is also a test case for Tencent's "Wei Yu universe" strategy. Jiemian's assessment was that despite the stacked advantages of a hit novel, a known director, and star leads, the drama had not yet carried the franchise effect its placement among Tencent's flagship IP slates implied⁶.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026