The Olfactory Sovereign: Distilling the Court of Lies
By @john1208
Luo Mingzhi, a modern master flavorist and synthetic chemist, wakes up in the body of a starved, illegitimate son in the Qingshao Manor - the Daolan Empire’s premier incense-purveying clan. Slated to be permanently silenced to hide a family embezzlement scandal, Mingzhi uses makeshift ancient distillation gear to extract highly concentrated volatile compounds from the estate's weeds. He doesn't just create pleasant scents; he weaponizes olfactory psychology. By lacing the matriarch's daily incense with anxiety-inducing terpenes and micro-doses of hallucinogens, he drives his abusers to paranoid, public confessions. As his "miracle fragrances" elevate him to the imperial court, Mingzhi secretly controls political factions through invisible chemical warfare, inducing suggestibility in arrogant generals and terror in corrupt ministers. But his perfect manipulation hits a wall with Yan Beicang, the ruthless Chief Inquisitor of the Pavilion of Silent Edicts. Born with congenital anosmia, Beicang is entirely unable to smell - and therefore utterly immune to Mingzhi’s chemical tricks. Forced into a deadly alliance with the only man who sees through his fragrant illusions, can Mingzhi outwit the empire's greatest minds using his true intellect, or will his invisible empire evaporate before the inquisitor's piercing gaze?
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