The Pei Family Has a Little Ali

Transmigrate? Reborn? Neither.

A Li is just a little wild cub thrown into a wolf’s den and lucky enough to be raised by a she-wolf.

When she was three, heavy snow sealed off the mountains. The wolf pack brought her to the feet of Pei Dashan, a hunter. The Pei family’s nine branches, twenty-seven people in all, crowded into a ramshackle courtyard. Their grain jar was nearly empty, but they still gave her their last half of a coarse-grain cake.

“Once you’ve entered the Pei family’s home, you’re one of ours!”

No one expected that the filthy little cub could understand the language of beasts.

The sparrows told her there was grain spilling from a warehouse south of town. The old ox knew of a spring hidden beneath the barren slope. An injured fox led her to a mountainside full of medicinal herbs. Even the news that a flash flood was about to sweep away the entire county came from the swallows in advance.

Ever since A Li joined the family, the Peis went from poor hunters who couldn’t eat their fill to the biggest medicinal-herb merchants for miles around. Her brothers also grew more successful by the day.

Everyone said A Li was a lucky child sent by the mountain god.

Until the marquis’s household that had abandoned her years ago came looking for her, offering to take her back to the capital as though granting her a favor.

A Li clung to Madam Pei’s leg. The Pei clan stood behind her, while birds and beasts crowded the rooftops, treetops, and hillsides.

“I’m not unwanted.”

“My family is huge!”