The Wish-Powered Detective

Shen Qinglan can smell the scent of people’s wishes.

Regret carries the damp, earthy smell of mud. Desire burns with the smoky fragrance of scorched embers. The will to survive is as sharp as the scent of trees in a deep forest.

When a wish is tampered with, its fragrant patterns instantly fall into disarray, trembling in the air like a broken thread of fate.

While investigating a rainy-night disappearance involving a “wish whose scent didn’t match,”

she forms an investigative team with wish-force analyst Fei Che, profiler Zhou Qi, and cultural researcher Su Li. Together, they scour the city’s outskirts, tracking down scattered traces of wish-force from around the world.

Prayers sent off with river lanterns, incense burned at festivals, the old scent of cold pines in Northern Europe...

Different cultures’ wishes intertwine in layers of fragrant patterns beneath her nose,

ultimately pointing to a transnational wish organization called the Wish Return Bureau.

The deeper she digs into the case, the more clearly she catches that familiar yet unfamiliar scent.

It is the wish stolen from her, and the truth behind her childhood disappearance.

Wishes can be traded, copied, and transplanted,

and the world is heading toward a “wish-force storm” powerful enough to tear people’s hearts apart.

To stop wish-force from collapsing, she must enter the heart of the mist belt

and mend the severed thread of fate as a “Wishforce Watcher.”