Do Wang Ling and Sun Rong ever kiss?

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Short version: not on screen, yes in the side stories, and the reason the question exists is that the two versions are extremely far apart.

What the animation does

The first season is fifteen episodes, and it ends with the world reset.

Not metaphorically. Time turns back to the tournament, the day's events are erased from everyone's memory, and Wang Ling's emotions are sealed again behind the talismans. Sun Rong is alive and does not remember what they had. He does.

That is the ending the whole season builds to, and it is a choice with a cost: it makes every romantic beat in the show retroactively a scene that will not be remembered by the person it happened to. A kiss in that structure would not be a payoff. It would be a cruel joke, and the show knows better than to stage one.

So the answer for anyone who has only watched the animation is no, and it is not an oversight. It is the genre's signature move played straight: a fated romance tribulation is a love that the plot turns into an obstacle, and here the obstacle is a reset, which is crueller than a rival and much harder to fight.

What the side stories do

The novel's side-story series is where the relationship actually happens, and it is much less shy.

The scene fans cite most is set on a photography trip. A rival is showing off, the photographer is waiting for the shot, and Sun Rong is in the middle of talking him down when Wang Ling kisses her mid-sentence. The chapter's own title is a joke about how long it took — the summary of it goes straight to the point about whose nerve failed first.

After that the side stories settle into domestic material: a wedding, a marriage, a house, a son, and a dao companion who runs a business while he hovers. There is a later chapter built entirely around a ring he forges for her, and several set after the child is born, where the running joke is that Wang Ling is quietly, catastrophically overprotective and she is enjoying it.

None of this is in the show, and very little of it is in the main high-school arc. It is a sequel's worth of material sitting in the extras.

Why the gap exists

Because the premise changes shape.

In high school, Wang Ling's defining trait is that he cannot afford to be noticed, and a relationship is the most noticeable thing a person can have — the point the realm page makes about the talismans applies to liking someone too. Every affectionate scene costs him something, so the series rations them.

In the side stories, the secret is no longer the point. He is an adult, the world has already been saved several times, and the comedy can be about a man who can rewrite reality being nervous about a ring size. That is a better joke and a warmer one, and it needs the earlier restraint to land. It also drops the plot device the genre normally uses in its place: a marriage destiny — 姻缘 — is an allotment made before the couple meet, and these two get to decide instead.

How to tell canon from fan work

This fandom has a lot of romantic material, and a real share of it is written by readers rather than by the author. The circulating chapters are presented as 番外, the author's extras, and the ones that appear to be genuine carry sequence numbers inside that extra series and are published through the official channel rather than reposted.

The practical test is therefore dull but reliable: does the source give a sequence number inside the extras, and does the same number appear in the publisher's own listing? A scene with a title and no number is the one to be suspicious of, however well written it is.

The questions people ask

Why does the donghua never show them kissing?

Because it stops early. The animation adapts the high-school arcs, where Wang Ling's whole problem is that he will not let himself be seen, and it ends its first season by resetting the relationship so nobody remembers it. A kiss at that point would contradict the ending.

Where in the novel does it happen?

In the side-story chapters rather than the main line, which is why chapter-number answers differ between fan sources. By the end of them she is his dao companion in the genre's sense and his wife in the book's. The scenes that circulate most are the photography-trip chapter, where a rival's provocation finally pushes him into it, and a string of later domestic chapters after the wedding.

Is this canon or fan fiction?

This is the honest answer without the drama.

Canon, and that distinction matters in this fandom because a lot of the circulating romance material is fan-written. The reliable marker is publication: chapters released under the author's own side-story series, with the numbering and titles that the author's official channels list.