The Detective with a Keen Tongue

In Niah Port, a sprawling metropolis known as the crossroads of the world, countless cultures blend together. It's a paradise of opportunity and a hotbed of conflict. The city's cuisine is its calling card, but also an unspoken “battleground” between its different communities.

Ling Yan, the protagonist, is a mixed-race man with Eastern features and European ancestry. He runs an unremarkable late-night private kitchen. Though he seems ordinary, he possesses an innate gift: “taste empathy.” He can taste the strong emotions left behind by whoever made a dish, long-buried memories, and even secrets too painful to put into words. Lies taste like bitter metal, love is a mellow sweetness, and murderous intent is cold, piercingly salty. With this ability, he has become a “Sin Eater,” moving through the city's gray underworld and solving problems for a select few.

The story begins when a renowned culinary master, hailed as a “god of flavor” and devoted to healing the rift between the city's two opposing communities, is mysteriously found dead in his own kitchen. The police are at a loss. The only clue at the scene is an unfinished “forbidden dish” combining the cooking traditions of two radically different cultures.

The victim's family secretly approaches Ling Yan and asks him to finish and “taste” the deadly dish, so he can identify the killer hidden behind its flavors.

When Ling Yan puts the final piece of food, the one containing the truth, into his mouth, will he taste the killer's wickedness, or the salvation of an entire civilization? Can this “Sin Eater” finally swallow a monstrous crime capable of tearing Niah Port apart?