Chronicles of the Shepherd God

The ancestral rule of the Great Ruins says: When it’s dark, don’t go out. In remote, desolate Oldridge Village, a handful of elderly and disabled villagers find an abandoned baby boy in a basket by the river. They name him Quinn Shepherd and, through hardship and grit, raise him as their own. Every night, as the last sliver of sunlight slips behind the mountains, an unnatural silence falls. Darkness rises from the west like a slow‑moving tide, swallowing mountains, rivers, roads, and forests, finally flooding over Oldridge Village. Only the four ancient stone statues at the village’s corners, glowing faintly in the dark, keep the horrors at bay. One such night, Quinn steps outside his home. “Be a villain who sways in the spring breeze,” the blind old man tells him. With a jade pendant of unknown origin at his chest and a childhood shaped by ruthless yet doting elders—a sharp‑tongued sorceress seamstress, a one‑armed warrior, a one‑legged killer with a kindly smile, a blind master of sound, and a limbless breathing expert—Quinn’s path is anything but righteous. Raised by monsters to survive among monsters, he will walk a road of cultivation through the haunted Great Ruins, ancient secrets, and corrupt cities, playing the villain with a grin while the world tries to decide whether he is its doom or its last, crooked hope. Quinn Shepherd’s rise as a so‑called "villain" has just begun.