With a seven-day holiday ahead of her and no boyfriend to keep her company, Yu Fanfan was left to her own devices.
Bored of scrolling through her phone in her cramped two-bedroom rental, she suddenly had an idea. She dug her camping gear out of the storage closet, where it had been gathering dust, and packed up for a trip to Flower Sea Park nearby.
After pitching her tent, laying out her sleeping pad, and happily munching on a bag of meat she’d bought at the supermarket, she found herself wondering why so many people were out stargazing that night.
It’s still summer break, she thought, but in the age of 5G, when even elementary schoolers are glued to their phones playing games, why are there so many people in the park at night?
Puzzled, she crawled into her tent to avoid the crowds. As she settled onto her air mattress, she heard a young boy shout nearby.
“Dad, hurry up! You’re taking too long! The Five-Planet Alignment is almost over. This is a once-in-a-century event! Hurry, Dad, hurry!”
The voice faded into the distance, leaving Yu Fanfan even more confused. The Five-Planet Alignment? What’s that?
But Yu Fanfan wasn’t some astronomy nerd, so she didn’t give a damn about whatever the hell a “Five-Planet Alignment” was. This was a rare camping trip, and she was going to sleep it off, making sure her fancy gear didn’t go to waste.
Just before she drifted off, she tapped the screen of her phone to black it out, certain she’d seen the date and time: August 19, 2021, 8:20 PM.
Slap!
“I’ve got it! It must be that Five-Planet Alignment crap. It must have sucked me, poor me, into this strange new place!”
Yu Fanfan clapped her hands, convinced she’d solved the mystery.
The only reply she received was the familiar caw, caw of a crow overhead and the pitiful whimpering of a dog nearby.
This devastating blow left Yu Fanfan in a state of sheer panic. It wasn’t even about her own predicament.
What a shame for her parents—she was their only child. Her mother was from an ethnic minority, so even before the two-child policy was relaxed, the government had been encouraging them to have another baby while other families faced fines.
The local women’s committee director had even visited their home daily, trying to persuade them to have another child.
But her parents had been stubborn, refusing to have another child. Even after the two-child policy was relaxed, and other couples in their forties and fifties were rushing to comply, her parents held out to the bitter end.
Now she had completely screwed up. She had transmigrated. If her parents ever found out… Yu Fanfan couldn’t bear to imagine it. What a horrific scene it would be if they traveled thousands of miles only to find her corpse.
They always said, The child wishes to care for the parents, but the parents are gone. Her situation was even more tragic: The parents are not yet old, but the child is gone. Who would take care of them in their old age? How would her white-haired parents endure the grief of losing their black-haired child?!
The thought overwhelmed her with sorrow.
She hadn’t cried when she first realized she was in a strange land.
She hadn’t cried when a ferocious beast stared her down.
She hadn’t cried when she thought she was about to die.
She hadn’t even cried while swinging her fists in a desperate fight for her life.
But the thought of her parents broke her. She sobbed like a child, her ninety-pound frame shaking.
Waaaah…
Yu Fanfan’s sobs were soon joined by the pained whimpers of the wolf-like creature nearby. The beast’s whimpers were so pitiful and choked with frustration that they miraculously snapped her back to her senses.
She sniffled and wiped her tears, trying to find some solace in her desperate situation.
Don’t panic, Yu Fanfan, she told herself. Maybe this is just a dream transmigration. Maybe you’ll wake up from this nightmare and find yourself back in your own body.
After all, she’d just been sleeping comfortably at a campsite. There had been no life-or-death struggle, no natural disaster, no freak accident. How could she have died so inexplicably?
She couldn’t let herself spiral. She had to think positively.
Besides, she reasoned, even if I am dead, my parents are still young. Mom had me when she was twenty; she’s not even forty-five yet. Dad’s only forty-eight. They’re still young enough! Some men become fathers at seventy. If they put their minds to it, they could still have another child—a little brother or sister for me!
And if they can’t conceive naturally, there’s always IVF.
Yes, that’s right!
Dad has always been gentle, open-minded, and resilient. Mom might have a temper, but she’s also a straightforward, cheerful woman. And they love each other so much—they’ll definitely be able to move on, right?
Mom complains about me all the time. If I’m gone, they’ll recover from the news in no time, right?
Yu Fanfan frantically tried to comfort herself, afraid to dwell on the grief. She forced her attention away, her eyes darting around restlessly. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the whimpering creature in the distance.
She quickly changed the subject aloud, her voice exaggerated.
“Alright, alright! As a model youth of the new society, it’s wrong to mistreat small animals! I’ll be the bigger person and forgive you this once. You’d better remember my kindness, doggy, and not repay me with ingratitude!”
Though the animal she was facing was anything but small, she remembered their scuffle from earlier. The creature had been barking—woof, woof, woof—not howling. Yu Fanfan’s heart softened. She stood up and walked toward the whimpering beast, intending to see if it could be saved.
Hearing her approach, the injured wolf-dog’s eyes flashed with a cold light. It bared its teeth and let out a threatening low growl, clearly both terrified and too stubborn to surrender.
Yu Fanfan’s heart softened even further as she watched the big dog struggle to rise, only to collapse back to the ground in a pathetic heap.
Though she had no desire to play the Good Samaritan, she used the moonlight to get a closer look at the creature. She cautiously prodded it with her small, broken stick. The response—a series of furious, barking growls—confirmed her suspicion.
She finally released her grip on the stick, nodding in satisfaction. “Yep, definitely a dog’s bark, not a wolf’s.”
She poked the poor dog’s tail again. “And the tail is up, not tucked. Definitely a dog.”
She then examined its build and fur. “You look exactly like Big Blackie from my Fourth Grandpa’s place. He’s a wolf-dog, so you must be one too, huh?”
Yu Fanfan clapped her hands together, concluding her analysis. Finally, she peered at the dog’s head, focusing on the two symmetrical black dots of fur between its eyes and on its bridge. She grinned.
“Hey! You’ve even got markings! Not bad, you’ve got one more eye than Erlang Shen. How about I call you Four-Eyes from now on?”
A wolf-dog…
Yu Fanfan’s mother was a Miao woman, and since she had registered her own household status through her mother, Yu Fanfan was half-Miao herself. While her parents were busy running a medical clinic in the county seat, she had grown up with her grandparents in the Miao Village.
Her grandfather had seven brothers. The fourth oldest, who lived next door, was a dog lover. His dog, Big Blackie, was a fierce one—he could hunt rabbits in the mountains and catch bamboo rats.
Yu Fanfan had always loved dogs, mostly because she envied the steady supply of wild game at Fourth Grandpa’s house.
But the hunting ban eventually came, and the government began educating the public on the dangers of wild meat. That put an end to the days of endless game. Yu Fanfan firmly supported the new policy, but that didn’t mean she stopped loving dogs.
She recalled a movie about prehistoric times where the hero wounded a wolf and eventually tamed it. She had wounded a dog, and dogs were far more loyal than wolves. Perhaps she could find her first true friend in this strange new world.
Maybe it was loneliness, or perhaps it was the fear and vulnerability she felt in the face of the unknown.
So, Yu Fanfan threw down the small stick she had used as a weapon. Drawing on the superhuman strength granted to her by the original owner of this body, she pinned the dog down with brute force and decided its fate unilaterally.
“Look, Four-Eyes,” she said, her tone leaving no room for negotiation. “Since we’ve broken the ice, don’t you dare try to be an ungrateful dog. I’ll treat your wound, and in return, you’ll shake my hand and we’ll be friends. Deal?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Ignoring Four-Eyes’ resistance, she seized his uninjured front paw, gave it a firm shake, and then reached out with her “demon claws” to examine his wounded leg.
Having grown up in the Miao Village under the tutelage of a Great Apothecary, Yu Fanfan had a deep-rooted medical background. Her father was a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine who had later earned a Western medical degree.
Though she had resisted the idea of inheriting the family’s lucrative clinic, she had still absorbed a wealth of knowledge. She knew everything from treating sprains and applying poultices to gathering and preparing medicinal herbs—knowledge she’d internalized so thoroughly she couldn’t forget it if she tried.
While she was no surgeon, Yu Fanfan was perfectly capable of treating fevers, snakebites, inflammations, sprains, rheumatism, and cleaning wounds. In fact, she was quite good at it.
If she hadn’t been so naturally gifted, why else would her parents have been so dead-set on her returning home to inherit the family business?
With a few swift movements, Yu Fanfan set Four-Eyes’ broken leg. She snatched up the very stick she’d used as a weapon, snapped it, and tore a strip from the hem of her ancient-style robes—which were clearly not modern clothing. She deftly bandaged Four-Eyes’ leg, finishing the job with a neat bow.
Before letting go, she gave the dog’s head a firm, affectionate pat.
“There,” she said. “Treating your wound counts as my apology. From now on, we’re going to get along peacefully. Don’t you dare be ungrateful, Four-Eyes!”
Four-Eyes…
He couldn’t fight her. He couldn’t even out-snarl her. It was a tragedy. He, who carried the bloodline of the Wolf King and was destined to inherit all his wives and concubines as the future Wolfhound King, had been unilaterally bound by this shameless two-legged beast. It was utterly detestable!
Yu Fanfan, however, was too preoccupied to notice his silent fury. She stroked the torn fabric of her sleeve, confirming its material, and sank into deep thought.
If she wasn’t mistaken, her clothes were made of silk.
Silk? Why would a frail young woman dressed in such luxury be left all alone in the middle of the desolate wilderness, where even the ghosts would beat you to death?
Yu Fanfan, who was skilled in medicine, took the opportunity to examine her own body. She knew this physical form was in terrible condition—she was still running a fever.
The more she thought about it, the worse the situation seemed. She was completely in the dark, desperate to uncover the original owner’s past and memories, yet no clues came to her. Her mind felt foggy and dull; the harder she tried to think, the more nauseous and dizzy she became.
Finally, unable to fight her body’s instincts, Yu Fanfan succeeded in thinking herself unconscious.
Slumped against the tree stump, she drifted into a dream. Fragments of images flickered past, one after another—these were the memories of the original owner…