It all started with a poem Lin Yue definitely did not mean to write.
She'd been drinking a suspiciously strong rose-infused rice wine—gifted by a "friendly witch who just got out of prison"—while lounging half-draped across a moonlit balcony and complaining about the empire's terrible romantic prospects. The moon was full. The air was sensual. Her patience was thin.
"I just want someone with good eyebrows and worse decision-making skills," she sighed.
Su Ya, laying beside her with a dumpling stuffed in her cheek, mumbled, "I just want someone whose idea of foreplay isn't a duel."
"Speak for yourself," Lin Yue muttered. "A little blade flirting never hurt anyone."
She scribbled something onto a silk scroll without looking. A line of half-drunk, half-inspired verse that read:
> "If love is war, I demand shirtless surrender."
And because fate is a drunk bastard with a glitter fetish, the scroll—enchanted accidentally weeks ago during a "poetry plus aphrodisiac herbs" experiment—awoke.
It shimmered. It sparkled. It cooed seductively.
Then it multiplied.
By morning, hundreds of silk scrolls were flying through the capital, purring erotic haikus, matching strangers into "soulmate quadrants," and occasionally slapping bashful nobles on the ass with magical ribbons.
The people adored it.
The Ministry of Moral Conduct had an emergency existential crisis.
Yun read one aloud at breakfast:
> "Your aura screams yes,
Let's undress destiny now—
Signed, Fate's favorite slut."
He blinked. "Why is it talking to me?"
Lin Yue stared at her tea. "It thinks you're single and tense."
"It's not wrong."
That's how the empire's first matchmaking epidemic began.
They named it Lovelust.
A living matchmaking spell. A scandalous, sapient romantic algorithm with zero regard for political boundaries or traditional family planning.
Lovelust began inserting itself into society with the speed and subtlety of a glitter bomb. It enchanted lanterns to float toward compatible lovers. It whispered pickup lines through soup steam. It turned wanted posters into dating profiles. Even monks weren't safe; one scroll convinced a celibate master to write erotic fanfiction about his past life.
"I just wanted enlightenment," he cried. "Now I know the karmic positions of the lotus tango!"
The scrolls began delivering more than just suggestions. They delivered results.
Within a week, ten duels were cancelled due to "sudden emotional intimacy." Two long-feuding clans held a joint wedding instead of a war. A notorious crime lord announced he was retiring to "focus on cuddles and consensual biting."
And in the background, like a flirty whisper carried on perfume-scented wind, emerged a new force.
The Blush Bandits.
A roving collective of ex-assassins, renegade poets, and dramatic orphans who used Lovelust to reshape romance across the empire.
They operated in secret, dressed in pastel silks and lingerie armor, leaving enchanted notes, confidence charms, and unsolicited flirting tips in their wake. Their leader, known only as Velvet Vixen, had a reputation for seducing nobles into therapy and then vanishing with their jewelry.
Their motto: "We steal hearts. Occasionally earrings."
Lin Yue was conflicted.
"I don't approve of vigilante matchmaking gangs," she said one morning as her hair braided itself into seduction waves, "but gods damn it, I admire their branding."
Su Ya, who had received a corset and a consent scroll from them, shrugged. "At least they're not trying to kill us. Yet."
Yun, now fully immune to the chaos, sipped tea. "The tax minister proposed to a cactus yesterday. I think reality's on vacation."
The Emperor, of course, was unaware of everything. He'd been cursed into a deep meditative state by an overzealous yoga scroll two weeks ago and was now a glorified paperweight in the palace sauna.
So naturally, power shifted.
To Lin Yue.
To Charm Chancellor Lin Yue, technically—but no one was bothering with titles now.
She tried, truly tried, to restore decorum.
She failed gloriously.
One of her new laws, passed under the title "Sensual Emotional Infrastructure Reform," made it mandatory for all marriage contracts to include a poetic metaphor and a post-coital snack clause.
"It builds trust," she argued.
Yun, scribbling furiously, asked, "What about unplanned courtships?"
"They get metaphors retroactively and snacks in advance."
That week, the Council received anonymous letters delivered in lace-trimmed envelopes. They were dripping with perfume, flirtation, and unsolicited political suggestions. The Chief Minister of War choked on his tea.
"This is treasonous!"
"Actually," Lin Yue corrected him, "this is foreplay with legislative flair."
The Blush Bandits, meanwhile, began issuing their own subversive policies.
They orchestrated street dances that doubled as compatibility rituals. Left magically responsive lingerie on balconies ("for your inner goddess and outer hussy"). And one particularly bold faction installed a "confessions bench" outside the Ministry of Discipline, which glowed whenever someone sat on it with impure intentions.
The bench caught fire within the hour.
Lin Yue became something of a celebrity matchmaker herself—though unwillingly.
One scroll declared her "the Aphrodite of Bureaucracy."
Another showed up at her bathhouse with a prophetic message: Your soulmate has imperial blood, a dangerous smile, and a secret dungeon fetish.
"Could be Prince Li Xian," Su Ya offered.
"Could be me," Yun muttered, half-joking.
"Could be a trap," Lin Yue replied, reaching for her anti-kidnapping hairpins.
But the scroll wasn't finished. It unfurled further and sang—actually sang—a love ballad that described Lin Yue's alleged future wedding night in disturbingly accurate detail.
There was whipped cream.
There was poetry moaning.
There was something called "The Twelve-Petaled Tantric Tempest."
The scroll ended with sparkles and a discreet wink.
Yun bled from his nose. Su Ya demanded copies.
Lin Yue filed it under "Possible Prophecies, Terrible Porn."
Unfortunately, the scrolls weren't done. They began delivering spontaneous love challenges.
One morning, at precisely tea hour, a noble suitor was forced into a surprise serenade by a scroll-induced compulsion. He sang to Lin Yue from atop a camel wearing a silk robe and holding a basket of peaches.
The song? A screechy ballad titled, "Let Me Lick Your Destiny."
The camel wept in shared shame.
Lin Yue had him arrested. Not for the song—but for rhyming "treasure" with "moisture."
Things reached peak madness at the Courtly Affection Symposium, a formal diplomatic summit that was suddenly overrun by enchanted scrolls quoting erotic proverbs and delivering horoscope-based dating advice.
Lin Yue tried to bring order by organizing a poetry duel—naturally.
Two delegates, from rival provinces, were made to stand in a circle of glowing roses and seduce the audience using only verse and eyebrow waggling.
One was a retired general. The other, a genderfluid prince-priest with stunning cheekbones and a dramatic cape that seemed to flutter on command.
The general roared:
> "Your gaze strikes like lightning—\n> My heart, a flaming battlefield—\n> Let me conquer your silence!"
The priest responded:
> "I am thunder clothed in silk,\n> You are rain begging to fall—\n> Meet me between breaths, and burn."
The audience fainted. Yun dropped his inkbrush. Lin Yue fanned herself with a treaty.
"That was a draw," she declared, voice hoarse. "And also an emotional pregnancy."
Peace was signed immediately between the rival provinces.
"I guess love is diplomacy with better thighs," Su Ya shrugged.
Even the Empress's cat found a mate.
Then the dark side emerged.
A new scroll arrived. It looked the same—sensual, seductive, lace-edged—but something was wrong.
It didn't purr. It growled.
It delivered a single, ominous message in shimmering red ink:
> "All shall love... or all shall moan. Publicly. Relentlessly. Uncontrollably."
It signed itself: Lovelust Prime.
The original scroll.
The god-scroll.
The Alpha Flirt.
Lin Yue blinked at it.
Yun said, "Did that just threaten to turn the entire Empire into a giant… orgy?"
"Not if we seduce it first," Lin Yue said, cracking her knuckles.
Su Ya: "Wait, WHAT?"
Lin Yue: "Figuratively. Maybe."
Lin Yue assembled a crack team for her mission to seduce/save/suppress Lovelust Prime.
Team members included:
Su Ya, tactical flirt, close-combat expert, and wearer of aggressively high heels.
Yun, sarcastic strategist, master of deadpan poetry, and owner of several emotional wounds he refused to address without wine.
Mistress Killsalot, who appeared uninvited but had excellent lipstick and a dagger that could slay metaphors.
Prince Li Xian, who insisted on tagging along because "I'm technically your husband in three alternate timelines and I deserve screen time."
Their goal? Enter the Scrollspire—a forbidden magical archive in the Eastern Mountains said to house ancient living enchantments and at least two emotionally repressed spirit librarians.
"I've had worse first dates," Lin Yue muttered.
The Scrollspire was a moaning, glowing, velvet-draped tower that pulsed with ancient romantic energy. It looked like a giant erotic incense stick.
Inside, sensual scrolls fluttered like butterflies in heat. Love potions brewed themselves. Couches sighed when you sat on them.
A talking chaise lounge tried to seduce Su Ya.
"I'm flattered," she said, "but I prefer my furniture quiet and not cursed."
At the top of the tower, they met Lovelust Prime.
It was huge. Glowing. The color of sin and good intentions. It hovered above a pedestal, pulsating like a strip club deity, surrounded by heart-shaped fireflies and a choir of whispering moans.
"YOU WROTE ME," it thundered.
"I was drunk!" Lin Yue shouted.
"AND BRILLIANT."
"…also true."
Lovelust Prime flared. "I seek only to fulfill my purpose: unity through irresistible longing. But the Empire resists."
Lin Yue took a deep breath, stepped forward in heels of divine confidence, and said, "Because love isn't forced. It's messy, inconsistent, has weird boundaries, and occasionally involves snacks in bed."
"WHAT IS... BOUNDARIES?"
"Oh boy."
Thus began the Great Seduction Debate, a passionate, semi-musical argument where Lin Yue taught a rogue sentient matchmaking spell about consent, foreplay, and emotional complexity.
She read it poetry.
She offered a foot rub.
She told it the story of the Emperor who fell in love with his bodyguard by arguing over dumplings for ten years.
Eventually, Lovelust Prime sighed.
It shimmered softer.
Its glow became cozy, like candlelight and cuddles after battle.
"I understand now," it whispered. "You do not need eternal passion. You need terrible choices wrapped in sincerity."
"Exactly," Lin Yue said, wiping tears of glitter from her eyes.
And with that, Lovelust Prime rewrote itself. It no longer enchanted strangers into spontaneous serenades or made bathhouses erupt in moans. Now, it simply whispered encouragement. Boosted confidence. Helped people say awkward things like "I like your face" and "You make my intestines flutter."
The Empire stabilized. Kind of.
The Blush Bandits threw a retirement party/orgy/festival of fondling.
Lin Yue returned home to find someone had redecorated her room in silk sheets and peach blossoms.
Prince Li Xian lay across her bed, reading her secret poetry journal.
"Rude," she said.
"You rhyme 'power' with 'devour' at least eight times."
"It's a motif."
He smiled. "So... want to test the post-coital snack clause?"
Lin Yue grinned, kicked off her shoes, and pounced.
Somewhere, Lovelust Prime sighed contentedly.
"Mission: messy love… complete."