The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis
Chapter 22: The Animals She Hunted

Chapter 22: The Animals She Hunted

They entered the mountain with torches high and confidence higher. The sun hadn’t even risen over the trees when Sun Longzi, Zhu Deming, and fifty of their handpicked men from the Red Demon Army’s elite entered the mountain. They didn’t bother with armor; each one only carried a sword and a knife, and that was all. If the villagers didn’t need reinforced shields or hardened steel armor, then neither did they.

Their arrogance didn’t last long. They didn’t make it even five steps into the trees before the first scream came.

A young soldier dropped to the ground, his legs sheared clean off at the knee. Blood spurted like a fountain as he writhed on the earth, the severed razor wire glittering beside him like a snake basking in the sun.

No birds stirred. No wind blew.

The forest was quiet.

Sun Longzi didn’t flinch. "Trap line. Stay sharp," he instructed, his eyes constantly scanning the area around them for the next trap. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t see any.

Zhu Deming cursed under his breath, already yanking two soldiers back by the collar as another set of wires twanged in the underbrush. "Move in staggered pairs. Eyes everywhere. The traps are almost impossible to see unless you’re on them."

The rest of the soldiers pushed forward, leaving the man who had just lost his leg behind. Their mission was to find the missing Prince... besides, their comrade was going to die soon enough.

The men held their breath, hoping that the further into the mountain, the easier it would be.

It wasn’t.

In fact, it got worse.

The second soldier fell into a pit—one moment he was there, the next he was impaled through the stomach, sliding down a shaft of blackened metal so sharp it didn’t even tear his robes. He was dead before he realized he’d been falling.

"Don’t move!" shouted one of the veterans only a second too late.

Before the order could be obeyed, there was another misstep, and a log swung down from the trees, snapping three men’s necks with the dull crunch of shattered bone.

It took less than fifteen minutes to lose nearly a quarter of the team.

Still, they pushed deeper into the trees, breath catching with every step. The shadows felt thicker here. The air didn’t move. Nothing moved.

"General," one soldier said, voice trembling. "Why haven’t any wolves or tigers attacked us yet?"

That’s when they saw it.

The remains of the Third Prince’s personal guard—twelve bodies sprawled across a clearing, some partially buried in moss, others split open like offerings. The wolves that the soldier had just asked about surrounded the bodies, dozens of them.

"I’ve never seen such a large, healthy pack," murmured Zhu Deming under his breath. "There has to be a lot of prey if that’s the case."

"Yeah," grunted Sun Longzi, his voice so soft even the man he was speaking to could barely hear it. "That’s what I’m afraid of."

The soldiers stared at the bloody feast in front of them, bracing for one of the wolves to attack them, but none of the animals made a sound. None attacked. They simply feasted on the dead.

One wolf, the alpha, lifted his head, his red snout wet with gore, and locked eyes with the approaching army. He did not growl, and he did not run.

He simply watched... and waited.

A second joined it. Then a third. And then they returned to their meal as if the soldiers were beneath notice.

"What in the—"

"Don’t speak," Sun Longzi warned as he cautiously signaled for the soldiers to move.

The men moved around the feast slowly. No one dared draw a sword. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath.

It was Zhu Deming who heard it first—a high, reedy scream from somewhere above. Repeated. Desperate.

"Up there."

They followed the sound until the trees opened into a strange, half-lit hollow where a single black iron cage hung suspended by chains. It swayed slightly in the breeze, creaking.

Zhu Lianhua was inside. Or rather—what was left of him.

He was naked from the waist up, his once-perfect skin covered in bruises and blood, his hair matted. He clutched the bars with both hands, shrieking as two birds of prey perched just beyond his reach.

One—a Lammergeier with a wingspan longer than a man was tall—watched him with morbid curiosity. The second, an Upland Buzzard, pecked at his exposed back, ripping small bits of flesh away every time he flinched.

He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t whole either.

Zhu Deming swallowed hard.

"The cage..." one of the soldiers whispered. "It’s reversed."

"What?"

"It’s... built to hold a bird. That’s the design. You’d put the bird in the cage to watch it. But someone flipped it. Now it’s the man trapped, and the birds are the ones free."

Sun Longzi said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the ground—on the path they had taken to get here.

There were no footprints.

No broken branches.

No sign anyone had set this trap recently.

This wasn’t done for them.

This wasn’t new.

This was old.

"These are legacy traps," he muttered. "They’ve been here for years."

Zhu Deming looked up. "Then who reset them?"

"No one," Sun replied. "They never needed to be reset. It’s clear that these traps weren’t made by beasts or by chance. They were made by a mind that enjoys the art of killing. The only thing that surprises me is that we haven’t come across anyone else yet. You would think that if they set these, then they would want to be around to see them sprung."

"Should we wait around to see if anyone comes?" asked Zhu Deming, his eyes narrowing on the appearance of the Third Prince.

The Lammergeier finally flapped once, sending a cloud of feathers swirling. It stared directly at Sun Longzi, unblinking... the man stared back.

"I don’t think we’re prepared to meet the maker of these traps. Let’s get the Prince down and hope to all the Gods that we make it back to the camp before we trigger anything else. We’ll have to revisit how we are going about finding the weapon."

"Do you think these traps are set to protect the weapon?" mused Zhu Deming as two soldiers scrambled up the rock face, slicing the chain holding up the cage with shaking hands.

The cage fell hard, slamming into the dirt with a metallic thud. But even with that abuse, the cage itself didn’t so much as dent, let alone all Zhu Lianhua to escape. They would have to bring the whole thing back to the village and see if Zhou Cunzhang could find a way to open it.

The prince sobbed inside, covering his head, screaming about claws and wings and the sound of laughing. Zhu Deming crouched beside him, his eyes narrowing through the mask. "This is what happens when you go off half-cocked. Our Imperial Father isn’t here to get you out of whatever trouble you get yourself into. If you last through the day, I suggest you keep your head down and your mouth shut."

Usually, at that level of provocation, the Third Prince would snap out of whatever was going on in his head and launch himself at the speaker. But at this moment, Zhu Lianhua so much as blink—his eyes wide and unfocused. He kept whispering something over and over.

"They watched me. They played with me. Like I was nothing."

Sun Longzi didn’t look at the prince again. His attention was on the bird of prey, the Lammergeier. It still hadn’t moved, its entire attention still on the Third Prince.

"The village doesn’t need a weapon," he announced quietly, looking around at the carnage. "The mountain is the weapon."

Zhu Deming wiped blood from his gloves, helping to haul the cage upright. They no longer had the soldiers they needed to carry Zhu Lianhua down the mountain. "And now we know why the villagers aren’t scared."

Sun Longzi scoffed. "They don’t need to be."

As they began to carry the Third Prince out, the wolves disappeared, leaving the gnawed-on bones as a testament of what could have happened to them if they so much as made one misstep.

And above, in the thinning mist, the birds circled once, slow and deliberate, before disappearing back into the trees.

None of the remaining soldiers said a word. Not even when the path behind them closed again, as if the forest had never been touched. Not even when they saw the village at the base of the mountain.

And somewhere deeper in the woods, a young woman turned over a row of drying herbs and hummed to herself.

She hadn’t even known anyone had gone into her woods, and she certainly hadn’t cared enough to check any of the traps that weren’t designed for the animals she normally hunted.