General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Longest Promise (玉骨遥)

The Longest Promise (玉骨遥) is a 2023 Chinese fantasy romance television series adapted from Cang Yue's (沧月) novel Zhu Yan (朱颜), the prequel to her Jing (镜) fantasy series. Directed by Jiang Jiajun (蒋家骏) and written by Wu Yingying (吴迎盈), it stars Xiao Zhan as Shi Ying (时影) and Ren Min as Zhu Yan (朱颜), and premiered on Tencent Video on July 2, 2023, running 40 episodes of about 45 minutes each.¹

Key fact	Detail
Source material	Adapted from Cang Yue's novel Zhu Yan, the prequel to her Jing (镜) fantasy series¹
Premiere	July 2, 2023, on Tencent Video; also streamed on Netflix¹
Format	40 episodes, 45 minutes each; produced by Shanghai Tencent Penguin Film, distributed by Jinghe Media¹
Lead cast	Xiao Zhan as Shi Ying, Ren Min as Zhu Yan; Fang Yilun and Wang Churan in special roles¹^•²
Opening performance	First-day Tencent heat passed 27000, the fastest of any 2023 Tencent drama; it passed 28000 on July 12¹
International reach	No. 28 on the Netflix global daily TV chart on July 16, 2023 (FlixPatrol); No. 1 on Tencent Video's overseas charts in the United States, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore¹^•³
Filming	March 29 to August 4, 2021¹

Spoilers

Premise and setting

The story takes place on the fictional continent of Yunwu (云荒), home to the Kong Sang (空桑) people, the Jiao (鲛) people led by Zhi Yuan, and the Ice Tribe's ten shamans. Shi Ying, the aloof heir of Kong Sang, and Zhu Yan, the warm-hearted princess of the Chi tribe, are bound by a "fated calamity" (命劫): prophecy holds that Zhu Yan is destined to kill Shi Ying. Through a twist of circumstance the two become master and disciple for three years, and the series follows their companionship, their growing bond, and their defense of the Kong Sang kingdom.⁴^•⁵

Shi Ying is both the Kong Sang heir and a divine official (神官) of Jiuyi Mountain (九嶷山). The drama frames its magic as something mortals attain through discipline rather than godhood: Shi Ying vows from youth to protect all living beings, and as the young Grand Master (少司命) he takes as his creed "to reach upward to the virtue of the divine and establish a heart for all things; to follow the way of the four seasons below and rescue the people from peril." When he sees a god delighting in the suffering of mortals, he resolves that if a mortal has never slain a god, "then let it begin with me, Shi Ying."⁶^•⁷

Themes and critical reading

Chivalric spirit. Commentators in Wenyi Bao described the series as rooted in a core purpose of "protecting all living beings," carrying the Chinese chivalric ideal that "the greatest hero serves country and people," and staging philosophical reflection on divinity, humanity, and fate. The character of Shi Ying, who knows Zhu Yan is fated to kill him yet cannot bring himself to harm her, was read as an embodiment of the traditional gentleman's virtue in the saying "the orchid blooms in the hidden valley, and does not cease to be fragrant because no one sees it."⁷^•⁴

Handling of familiar tropes. A review in The Paper placed the series squarely within the conventions of the xuanhuan (Chinese fantasy genre blending myth, magic, and cultivation) and xianxia genres, including the master-disciple romance and the "killed by the one who loves you" device, and judged that it did not transcend the genre framework. It credited the drama, however, with making the central romance credible: the "fated calamity" is traced to their childhood, when Zhu Yan was the only person who mourned the supposedly dead heir, and Zhu Yan's repeated acts of rescue and her years-long effort to revive him explain why Shi Ying moves from reluctance to kill her to unwillingness to lose her.⁸

The adaptation itself was noted for departing substantially from the novel: one Douban reviewer observed that beyond the character names and the broad story frame, the series is a new work, and that unlike the novel Zhu Yan, which is a prequel, the drama is a self-contained story in which Shi Ying defies fate.⁹^•¹⁰

Production and aesthetics

The series was announced at a launch ceremony on March 29, 2021, with Tencent Video as exclusive broadcaster.¹¹ Opening scenes were filmed in the Alxa League of Inner Mongolia, where grass-filled valleys contrast with the desolation of the surrounding Gobi; the fictional landscapes of Kong Sang and Jiuyi Mountain were built as elaborate sets in a style critics described as blending the real and the fantastic.⁷ The drama's use of Jiuyi Mountain drew attention to the real mountain of the same name in Ningyuan County, Hunan, whose scenic area promoted itself to fans of the show.³ The opening theme is "Xu Wo Yi Sheng" (许我一生) and the closing theme is "Naihe" (奈何).¹

Reception

Commercial performance. The series was released without advance promotion and immediately topped Tencent Video's 2023 first-day heat ranking, surpassing The Three-Body Problem, and led the Maoyan, V-linkage, Kuyun, and Yunhe charts.⁴ On Maoyan it opened at a peak heat of 9893.9, the highest single-day figure among summer dramas at that point, before settling around 9700 as episodes progressed.¹² By July 18, 2023, on-screen danmu (bullet-comment) interactions had passed 100 million, the fastest Tencent drama of 2023 to reach that mark.¹ The series also sold broadcast rights to a Korean television station, announced January 4, 2024.¹

Critical response. Reception was mixed. The series ranked sixth in the 2022–2023 Weibo costume-drama comprehensive influence ranking and won the 2023 Weibo TV Awards annual work prize in the costume and fantasy category; in September 2024 it received an award for outstanding international communication of Chinese digital audiovisual content at the third Global Digital Trade Expo.¹ At the same time, a hot search topic asked "why didn't The Longest Promise explode," and much of the discussion centered on Ren Min's styling as Zhu Yan, which drew sustained criticism from viewers, though some attributed the reaction to makeup and cinematography rather than the actress.¹³^•¹² Industry coverage in late July 2023 noted that the drama had strong heat driven largely by the lead actor's fan base but had not generated breakout conversation beyond the plot, and that its Douban score had not yet opened.¹²

References

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