The Prophecy of Return

Shen Hengwu was a con artist.

He set up a stall to tell fortunes and sell fake talismans. His greatest talent was running away. When a gold ingot landed in front of him, he got carried away and made a boast:

“I call it a prophecy fulfilled. My word is as good as gold.”

He never expected the “Wayfarers” squad to genuinely be looking for a strategist. There was Pei Jun, their cold and taciturn captain; Shanglu, a quiet and gentle physician; Huo Qingshu, a scholar whose family had been wiped out; Ji Hanyi, a swordsman who had abandoned an assassin organization; and Niangao, a timid, animal-like girl with demon blood in her veins. This group fought demons and monsters with their lives on the line, yet trusted a charlatan from the martial world without question.

Shen Hengwu had planned to take the money and run.

But at some point, he started to care about them: the captain, cold on the outside but warm at heart, who tucked his blanket around him in the middle of the night; Niangao’s bright eyes when she called him “Brother Shen”; and his teammates, who complained about him to his face yet entrusted him with their lives.

His “prophecy fulfilled” was a lie, until the final battlefield, when the captain asked him, “Will we make it back alive?”

He looked at the people behind him and said, “You’ll all make it back alive.”

And afterward, they really did all make it back alive.

Except him.

For three years, Pei Jun gathered the scattered pieces of his soul one by one, nurturing them with his own life force.

On a winter night three years later, the bronze finger guard was once again slipped onto Shen Hengwu’s hand.

“Welcome back.”

This is the story of a liar who gave his life to make his lie come true, and someone who spent the rest of his life waiting for him to return.