Love on the Turquoise Land: Drama Info and Recap Episodes 1 to 8

Introduction

This drama is an adaptation of a best-selling novel, weaving ancient Qin Dynasty mythology and the quest for immortality into a modern setting. It follows a sculptor and a wealthy heir who uncover secrets about a mysterious army and face supernatural foes, offering a rich world that slowly unfolds at a satisfying pace.

Besides finding love, both protagonists have their each life mission to accomplish. A Female Lead, who is the descendant of the mysterious army yearning for a simple and peaceful life, and a Male Lead, who seeks truth and purpose beyond his family’s control.

While watching the drama, I was afraid that the drama would end with a sad ending, with either the Male Lead or the Female Lead dying, or it would have an unsatisfying ending. Modern fantasy/supernatural dramas are not usually treated well because they are deemed superstitious by the Chinese review agency NRTA. Therefore, I waited until the drama finished airing to see the ending before I proceeded with writing this recap series.

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Drama Info

Drama title: Love on the Turquoise Land (Native title: 枭起青壤 )
Alternative title: Xiao Qi Qing Rang, An Owl Rising from the Green Soil 
Genres: Thriller, Fantasy, Supernatural, Romance
Aired: 22 Nov, 2025 - 6 Dec, 2025
Episodes: 32 |  Duration: 45 min.
Directors: Tian Li (田里) - chief director, He Tan (何坦), and Meng Yuan (孟远)
Screenwriters: Liu Xin Dan (刘馨丹), Lu Zi Xuan (陆子轩), and Chen Si Yi (陈思旖)
Adapted from the novel "An Owl Rising from the Green Soil" (枭起青壤) by Wei Yu (尾鱼)

Where to read the English translation novel: ReadtheDrama or MyDramaNovel
Where to watch: WeTV, Tencent Video, and Viki

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OST

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Trailer

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Synopsis

Hundreds of years ago, during the Qin Dynasty, an elite military unit was sent to seek the elixir of eternal life—only to vanish without a trace. Now, in the present day, Nie Jiu Luo, a sculptor and descendant of this mysterious army, would rather live quietly devoted to her art. But her heritage and dangerous prowess inevitably plunge her into an ancient plot. The mysterious Lin Xi Rou has hatched a dangerous plan involving the elixir, manipulating the wealthy Yan family for her own gain. Yan Tuo vows to learn the truth about Xi Rou, and a chance meeting with Jiu Luo leads the duo to join forces as they look to uncover Xi Rou’s secrets. Can they foil the forces of evil and find love on the way? (Source: Viki)

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Characters

Main Characters

Relationship Chart

The chart is divided into two big groups: the Nanshan Hunters (light green), that connected to Jiuluo, and the Earth Fiends/Roadside Chemical (dark green), that connected to Yan Tuo. The rest are Jiuluo and Yan Tuo’s family members.

Supporting Characters

Nanshan Hunters

Earth Fiends

Others

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My Rating

My rating for this drama was based on MyDramaList’s scoring system, which is from 0.0 to 10.0. For any drama/movie/show I completed, I gave a minimum rating of 6.0 to appreciate the hard work of the production team, and to adjust to MyDramaList’s overall score base. From 6.0, this drama has additional scores of:

1.0 for the unique story

1.0 for the leading characters

1.0 for the CGI

My final rating is 9.0/10.

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Recap Episodes 1 to 8

Episode 1

PROLOGUE: In ancient times, a meteor fell upon South Mountain. Flames devoured forests, and scorched earth bred anomalies, forming Turquoise Land. From this area emerged fiendish beasts that fed on human flesh and terrorized people. They were named Earth Fiends. Warriors marched to South Mountain to exterminate them, and sealed the remaining fiends beneath dark iron gates. The guardians who remained evolved into a secret organization monitoring supernatural threats, the South Mountain Hunters. Each having its own art, the three clans, Blade, Hound, and Whip, maintained strict codes and gathered quadrennially to patrol the mountains, protecting humanity across generations. As time has passed, people believe that fiends had all been vanquished. But while fangs are easily spotted, human disguises hide sinister hearts. Beneath the Turquoise Land, Earth Fiends may have infiltrated mankind, lurking in wait, ready to shatter the peace.

Nie Jiuluo, or Female Lead, whom I will call Jiuluo from now on, arrived in South Mountain by taxi. The driver, the local guy Mr. Sun, enthusiastically told her about local legends, including a crazy old woman who adopted orphans but was, in fact, a man-eating fiend. Jiuluo didn’t seem to care about local legends and wanted to see the deity statue in an abandoned temple instead.

Meanwhile, in a local orphanage, the Male Lead, Yan Tuo, who is the GM of a company named Roadsound Chemical, which also owns the orphanage, made a company visit to introduce a new teacher named Gou Yan to the orphanage. Creepily, Gou Yan seemed to be a monster. Another guy next to him, Xiong, who later we knew was Lin Xi Rou’s henchman, nudged Gou Yan to keep an eye on a boy wearing a green shirt and told him that the boy was his “blood bag”. Yan Tuo secretly watched the two men. Later, when the others were busy welcoming the new ‘teacher’, Yan Tuo sneaked into the orphanage office to look for documents. Later, he was attacked by Gou Yan, who had turned into a monster.

We’re back to Jiuluo, who was now cleaning a dusty deity statue at the abandoned temple. Mr. Sun waited for her, and it was dusk now. He went away to the nearby forest to release himself and call his wife. Not long after, Jiuluo heard him screaming. He saw women’s clothes hanging on a tree branch, so he went to check them out. Soon, he was attacked by a monster, who turned out to be Gou Yan. Jiuluo saw Mr. Sun running, being chased by Gou Yan. Mr. Sun jumped into the taxi and drove away, leaving his passenger behind!

The stranded Jiuluo looked for help and walked towards the orphanage. She saw a man who put a body into the jeep trunk. He was Yan Tuo, who thought he had killed Gou Yan. Yan Tuo ignored Jiuluo, so she walked passed him. Later, Xiong came and examined Gou Yan. Yan Tuo explained that the teacher was bleeding when he attacked Yan Tuo. Xiong searched the area and found a female body, who was an orphanage teacher who escorted Gou Yan. Earlier, we noticed that she had a wounded hand, so Gou Yan might have attacked her because of the blood. Xiong also found a phone (belonging to Mr. Sun) and a hotel room number where Jiuluo was staying.

Somehow, Jiuluo made it back to the hotel. Okay, Mr. Sun also stayed at the same hotel, and that hotel room number was his room. Jiuluo visited Mr. Sun, who was nervous and kept mentioning “mountain fiend”. He urged her to leave. Suddenly, there was a power outage and the fire alarm went off. Xiong did it, and sneaked into Mr. Sun’s room and knocked Mr. Sun’s out. Jiuluo fought Xiong and escaped. The hotel patrons evacuated from their rooms, and Jiuluo was among them. Xiong yelled at Yan Tuo, who just entered the hotel, to catch Jiuluo. They bumped into each other in the hallway.

Episode 2

Yan Tuo was initially inside the jeep. When he checked Gou Yan’s body again, the latter had his eyes open, staring at him! Yan Tuo heard the hotel fire alarm go off and rushed inside. In the commotion, he bumped into Jiuluo, and they recognized each other immediately. She slipped into her room immediately after pulling Mr. Sun’s body. Is he dead? There was an animal claw mark on him, which worried Jiuluo.

Beautiful but creepy

Xiong called his boss, Lin Xi Rou, whom I would call Boss Lin, who was eating raw meat and forcing her adoptive daughter Lin Ling to eat it, too. Though, honestly, the steak looked cooked either rare or blue rare doneness, not raw. The boss was angry when she heard that Gou Yan killed a woman because he smelled the blood on her wound. Xiong mentioned that her adoptive son, Yan Tuo, was also present. Boss Lin called Yan Tuo and warned him not to mess with the business and ordered him to bring Gou Ya’s body back.

Jiuluo managed to remember Yan Tuo’s jeep license plate number and sent it to Jiang Bai Chuan to investigate. Mr. Jiang is Nanshan Hunter’s leader. We met the other hunters. They also mentioned someone named “Mad Blade” (who was none other than Jiuluo), who was personally trained by Mr. Jiang but not in the patrol team. These Nanshan Hunters didn’t look particularly cool, despite the name. Some didn’t want to be in the patrol team, and some others didn’t want to come to the meeting. Mr. Jiang lamented the unreliability of recruits, the aging veterans, and the absence of key members.

Lin Ling called her adoptive brother, Yan Tuo, and asked him if his cover had been revealed. She overheard the convo between her adoptive mother and Xiong earlier. Yan Tuo assured her that his cover hadn’t been compromised. But he was stopped by one of the Nanshan Hunter’s member, Big Head, who disguised as a road rescue worker during a landslide. He sniffed the teacher’s fiend smell in Yan Tuo’s jeep and texted the group. Big Head must be from the Hound Clan? Big Head tried to divert Yan Tuo, but the latter figured out his trick and escaped.

Back in the hotel, Jiuluo knew that Xiong was watching her. She disguised herself as a hotel worker to transport Mr. Sun’s body out, but Xiong saw her in the security camera. She escaped with Mr. Sun’s body and drove his vehicle, only to collide with Yan Tuo, who tried to escape from Big Head!

Episode 3

Jiuluo woke up and found herself being tied up by Yan Tuo. She feigned having an asthma attack and asked him to find her breather in her bag. She then knocked him out and tied him. Jiuluo brought the three people to Mr. Jiang. Apparently, Jiuluo wanted to be free from being a Nanshan’s Hunter, so she hunted down earth fiends to buy her freedom. She asked Mr. Jiang to save Mr. Sun, because he was an innocent victim. Thank goodness that poor guy didn’t die! However, Mr. Sun was already infected by the monster’s bite. The monster was what both Mr. Jiang and Jiuluo concluded as a human-form earth fiend. About the third person Jiuluo brought, Yan Tuo, he was a human, but he seemed to work for the Earth Fiend.

Her childhood friend, Xing Shen, tried to talk to Jiuluo not to leave the Nanshan Hunter group so soon, especially now that they had found a human-form earth-fiend, as well as a human who worked for Earth Fiend. We then got a flashback of Jiuluo’s past. Her mother was a Nanshan Hunter from the Blade Clan. She died during the patrol, and her father committed suicide. Mr. Jiang then took the little Jiuluo. She and Xing Shen, from the Hound Clan, trained together. Jiuluo stated she wanted to live as a normal, ordinary person and return home.

Xing Shen interrogated Yan Tuo. Huh, Yan Tuo didn’t know what Earth Fiends were? Did his adoptive mother keep him in the dark? He told Xing Shen that he had only gotten to know Gou Yan yesterday and asked his interrogator a bunch of questions about Earth Fiends and their organization. Xing Shen told them that although he is not an earth fiend, he sure worked with them.

Episode 4

The Earth Fiends engaged in a fierce battle with the Nanshan Hunters to rescue Yan Tuo and Gou Yan. Yan Tuo seemed to become a person of interest, because he’s a human, but he’s valuable enough to be rescued by the earth fiends. Mr. Jiang then contacted Jiuluo and vowed that she could be free to pursue a normal life immediately if she could capture Yan Tuo back.

Boss Lin asked her adoptive son questions about the Nanshan Hunters, but Yan Tuo didn’t tell her what questions or info from the Hunters. In fact, both were secretly wary of each other. Yan Tuo only said that his captors expressed particular interest in Gou Yan. When he asked his adoptive mother about her reason for capturing Gou Yan, Boss Lin claimed to be developing special medicine and that his captors were rival companies.

Since he didn’t get any answer from his adoptive mother, Yan Tuo went to see Jiuluo in the middle of the night, while she was sleeping! She was not happy with this unwanted visitor and regarded him as an intruder. She fought him, which caused some damage to her works. When her housekeeper woke up, Jiuluo threw Yan Tuo from the second floor.

However, Yan Tuo was not discouraged and kept looking for an answer from Jiuluo. He disguised himself as a taxi driver when she went to an art exhibition. He drove her towards the beach, demanding answers about the Earth Fiends. When she refused, he deliberately drove the car into the ocean! What a crazy guy! Jiuluo panicked as she had a hydrophobia (fear of water) and passed out. Later, she woke up in her bed and wondered if she was dreaming. Her housekeeper told her that she found Jiuluo in front of the door, soaked wet in water, and a jeep drove away. Jiuluo lied that she was drunk. Later, she got a note from Yan Tuo, mocking her fear of water.

With Yan Tuo bothering Jiuluo, it’s time for her to return to the battle! She went to a locked room where a sculpture holding a pipa was standing. Jiuluo played a certain melody on the pipa, and a sword slowly emerged from within the instrument.

Episode 5

Yan Tuo insisted on reaching Jiuluo for help after reading his (bio) mom’s diary in the previous episode. He even bought three pieces of her unmarketable sculptures anonymously, and asked her to meet in a … cemetery! He took her to his mom’s graveyard and told her about the past. When his mom was pregnant with his sister, his father came home with a beautiful woman, who was introduced as his friend’s sister, who would do the household chores from now on since his wife was pregnant. It seemed the woman became his mistress. Later, after Yan Tuo’s mother died, the woman told him to call her with his mother’s name, which was Lin Xi Rou. He believed his adoptive mom ruined his family and told Jiuluo that Boss Lin was the one who put Gou Yan at the orphanage as a teacher. He suspected that Boss Lin knew how to transform Earth Fiends into humans and asked Jiuluo to help him avenge his mother.

The walk to the temple

Jiuluo was still wary of Yan Tuo, especially since he threatened her with her weakness, hydrophobia. He could easily drown her again in the water. Though she was disgusted, she took him to a temple that depicted the legend of Earth Fiends. Jiuluo told him about the legend, as we already learned. Sharing this info with an outsider was against the organization’s rule, but she would be free from now on, and leave Yan Tuo alone learning about the legend. Eventually, she agreed to work with Yan Tuo, but on a limited basis, since she didn’t want to entangle with him.

At home, Yan Tuo shared the info with his adoptive sister, Lin Ling, who was an insider spy for him. They concluded that their adoptive mother was also an earth fiend. They remembered that when they were young, they stumbled upon experimental subjects in a mysterious underground cave. Yan Tuo suspected this was Boss Lin’s secret facility for transforming Earth Fiends. He went there to check it out.

Episode 6

Inside the secret facility, Yan Tuo met a Nanshan Hunter, who was captured by Earth Fiends in the previous episode. However, not long after he tried to talk to Mr. Crip, the captive’s name, the alarm went off. Yan Tuo hurriedly left but met Xiong outside the facility. Instead of letting Xiong be suspicious of him, Yan Tuo pretended to be angry and confronted Xiong, asking why he, the General Manager of Roadsound Group, was treated as an outsider, knowing less about core operations than Xiong himself. Yan Tuo said he was suspicious because his adoptive mother kept looking young, and Xiong’s wound recovered fast. Yan Tuo demanded full disclosure, stating that if he couldn’t truly become one of them, he wished to end his involvement and be free. Later, Xiong reported to his boss.

Yan Tuo immediately met Jiuluo and told her about the Nanshan Hunter who was held captive at the secret facility. As a payment for this valuable info, Yan Tuo asked Jiuluo to agree every time he wanted to meet her, hahaha! She relayed the info on Mr. Crip’s whereabouts to Mr. Jiang and decided to join the mission. Jiuluo, with a resolute expression, took up her mother’s ancestral sword and embarked on the adventure.

The enemy was ready with Nanshan Hunter’s plan to rescue Mr. Crip. They hung the old hunter in a tree as bait. Jiuluo joined the group later, moving with agility through the forest. She detected the Earth Fiends’ trap and threw her sword to cut the rope holding Mr. Crip. As the Nanshan Hunters launched their attack, a monster showed up. Jiuluo and the Hunters fought it together.

Episode 7

The monster was swift and powerful. Only Jiuluo could match its speed and strength. However, when fighting it, suddenly Jiuluo saw that the monster was wearing a necklace! Distracted, she was almost attacked, but Yan Tuo suddenly showed up and blocked the attack. He had been watching the battle from a hiding place. Yan Tuo suffered severe injuries in the process. The monster escaped, and Jiuluo took Yan Tuo away.

The monster turned out not to be Gou Yan as everyone suspected, but Locust, Xing Shen’s pet, an Earth Fiend which had been captured 20 years ago and tamed by him. He used a unique whistle to summon Locust, which connected to the necklace it wore. Locust somehow escaped from its confinement. His colleagues were angry because he never told them such an important matter. On the other side, Xiong also realized the monster was not Gou Yan, so he reported to Boss Lin. Immediately, she sent him back with the other men to search for the monster. They didn’t find the monster, which Xing Shen had already called to retreat into a cave. However, they managed to capture Mr. Jiang, the leader of the Nanshan Hunter!

Meanwhile, Jiuluo rushed Yan Tuo to the mountain’s highest peak to catch the sunrise. Not for a romantic date, of course! His wounds had to be treated with natural fire, which was sunlight; otherwise, they would cause fatality. The treatment was very painful, since Jiuluo had to put hot stones heated bu the sunlight on the wounds, causing scorching pain. The treatment was successful, and Yan Tuo was healed. For a thank you, he cooked instant noodles for Jiuluo. Cooking the noodles brought back his childhood memory with his sister Xinxin, who had disappeared a long time ago.

Uh oh, Boss Lin and Mr. Jiang apparently had a history together. No, not a romantic history. Boss Lin revealed her true identity: an Earth Fiend monster! They had met twenty years ago at the Golden Gate incident, during which Mr. Crip lost his leg. She managed to escape, while the Nanshan Hunters could only capture the young one, which was Locust. She knew the monster they captured, which was also the one in the woods last night, was her Earth Fiend comrade.

After Yan Tuo recovered, they came back down the mountain. After the incident, their relationship became friendlier, and Yan Tuo told Jiuluo about his missing sister, which seemed to be related to Boss Lin.

Episode 8

Sigh, Yan Tuo wanted to meet Jiuluo again, but she didn’t want to have anything to do with him, Earth Fiends, or Nanshan Hunters. She warned him not to mention her to anyone and urged him to keep working with Nanshan Hunters to avenge his mother and find his missing sister.

Unfortunately, her hope to live in peace didn’t come true, since she got news from Xinshen that Mr. Jiang had been captured by Boss Lin. Later, she asked Xinshen to help Yan Tuo, who wanted to take revenge on Boss Lin. While they were talking, came another bad news: Mr. Sun had escaped! He was Jiuluo’s taxi driver and tour guide, who was injured by Gou Yan last time. Luckily, they could locate Mr. Sun right away, because he stole a Hunter’s phone with a GPS. Xing Shen and Jiuluo chased Mr. Sun to his uncle’s house and arrived at the right time when he tried to attack his aunt.

The next day, Jiuluo messaged Yan Tuo, asking him to meet. Yan Tuo was so happy, it was like he would have a date with Jiuluo, and he left hurriedly. Jiuluo told him about Mr. Jiang, who was captured by Boss Lin. Yan Tuo agreed right away. Jiuluo then gave him a bracelet that contained a hidden weapon.

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Conclusion

Hmm, so much interesting stuff is introduced in these early episodes! So many questions, and I’m particularly interested in what happened to Yan Tuo’s sister. I can’t find her name in the cast list, unless she goes by another name after she becomes an adult. Let’s see if I can get a hunch in the second part of this article series about her identity!

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