General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Miss the Dragon (遇龙)

Miss the Dragon (遇龙) is a 2021 Chinese costume fantasy romance web series adapted from the Orange Light (橙光) text game of the same name, starring Wang Hedi (Dylan Wang) as the dragon king Yuchi Longyan and Zhu Xudan as the maidservant Liu Ying, whose love story spans four lifetimes.¹ It was produced by Tencent Penguin Pictures and Can Ling Pictures, directed by Min Guohui, and premiered on Tencent Video on May 10, 2021.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	遇龙 (Yù Lóng), international title Miss the Dragon¹
Source	Orange Light text game 遇龙 by the author "我是YT", originally a story-within-story of the game 逆袭之星途闪耀³
Lead cast	Wang Hedi as Yuchi Longyan; Zhu Xudan as Liu Ying across her four incarnations²
Broadcast	Tencent Video, from May 10, 2021; 36 episodes of 35 minutes each (WeTV lists 37 episodes)¹^•⁴
Production	Filmed in Hengdian from April 15 to June 2020; reported investment above 100 million yuan¹^•⁵
Reception	Douban 3.7/10 from 35,916 raters (August 28, 2025); Tencent Video 8.3/10¹

Spoilers

Plot

Liu Ying, a maidservant attending the noblewoman Xiahou Xue, rescues what she believes is a snake. The creature is in fact Yuchi Longyan, a dragon king who has cultivated his powers for a thousand years.⁴ Wishing to repay her, he takes Liu Ying away, but the misunderstanding leads Xiahou Xue to search for her missing maid; on the way she meets a wolf demon and is accidentally killed by Yuchi Longyan himself.⁴

At Liu Ying's request, the dragon king saves Xiahou Xue and then guards Liu Ying through her successive reincarnations. She lives as a fisherwoman, a general, and finally as the cultivator Gu Qingyan in her fourth life, when she first becomes aware of Yuchi Longyan's existence. To save him from punishment under the heavenly rules, Gu Qingyan's soul is absorbed by the villain Mingge Xingjun (the Star Lord of Destiny, played by Zhu Zanjin); the remaining half of her soul merges with the dragon king and helps him defeat the villain.⁴^•²

A secondary romance pairs the cold-faced lord of Luofeng Pavilion, Xue Qianxun (Deng Wei), who governs the life and death of all beings in the three realms, with the little bird demon Qing Qing (Pan Meiye).⁶^•³

Origin as a game spin-off

The series has an unusual pedigree among Chinese costume dramas, which are mostly adapted from novels. Its source is a text-based interactive game on the Orange Light platform, created by the author "我是YT".³ 遇龙 began as a drama-within-the-game: in 逆袭之星途闪耀, one of Orange Light's most popular titles, it was the television drama the game's heroine Su Cheng performs in. The segment proved so popular with players that the author developed it into a standalone game.³ The game sold its screen rights at a high price the year after Orange Light sold more than ten of its works for adaptation in 2016.⁷

The game's tragic tone was part of its appeal: the line "Since your name is Liuying, let me gift you a sky full of fireflies" became a signature among players, and the sad ending moved many.³ Before filming began in April 2020, the original author said on Weibo that the production team, worried the script would drift from the source, invited his advice; after reading part of the script he found the dragon king's characterization diverged sharply from the game and proposed changes, which the team adopted.³

Director Min Guohui, a former stunt performer and action director with two decades in the industry, spent half a year researching female-oriented drama after finishing 九州天空城2 in 2018 before taking on the project.³

Adaptation problem and reception

The central difficulty critics identified was scale. The game supplied only a story framework of four lifetimes, far too little material for a 36-episode series, so the production had to invent a large amount of new content.⁵ Commentators noted that the drama followed a common pattern in 2020s costume-idol production: breaking up and recombining plots from earlier works in the same genre.¹

Despite a reported investment above 100 million yuan, the series drew sustained criticism after its premiere.⁵ Viewers complained that Wang Hedi's performance was expressionless, that fight scenes appeared to rely entirely on special effects, and that the maid Liu Ying was dressed better than her mistress, undermining the premise.³ The dragon king's white wig and stiff acting were widely mocked, with commenters using labels such as "AI face".⁵^•⁸ The main leads were also judged to lack on-screen chemistry.³

The scores split sharply by platform. On Douban the series opened to a wave of negative reviews and settled at 3.7/10 from 35,916 raters as of August 28, 2025, while Tencent Video's in-house rating stood at 8.3/10.¹ By contrast, the source game held a Douban score of 8.6.⁷ Positive commentary praised the sweet, fast-paced early episodes and the visual effects in scenes such as the dragon king carrying Liu Ying across the sky and the flower-filled Falling Petal Valley.¹ The second-lead couple, the "Xun-Qing" pair of Xue Qianxun and Qing Qing, was widely judged the show's most successful element.³

Context among game adaptations

Miss the Dragon became a case study in adapting female-oriented (乙女) games. Industry commentary argued that a story designed to serve a game, where the player chooses and inhabits the heroine, loses its appeal when detached from that medium; the same pattern had affected earlier Orange Light adaptations such as 逆袭之星途璀璨 (2017) and 绝世千金.⁷^•⁹ A Wenhui Daily survey of 2021 adaptations listed Miss the Dragon among the year's poorly received adaptations, in contrast to hits like 山河令 that rebuilt their source material for television.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Iv to My

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?