The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis
Chapter 28: Simple Was The Way To Go

Chapter 28: Simple Was The Way To Go

The forest was always quiet like this.

Most people thought it was peaceful. Calming. But that was the biggest lie ever told.

What the silence meant was that everything that should be making noise had gone still. Birds were never quiet unless they were scared. Trust me on that.

So, when those noisy little peeps were quiet, it usually meant something bigger was nearby—something the rest of the forest didn’t want to piss off.

Right now, that something was me.

I didn’t bother to check if the two men were keeping up. If either of them got themselves killed, that wasn’t my problem. Well, I didn’t want to make it my problem.

My issue was that the very idea of one of them getting caught in my trap sent my stomach rolling. Fuck, I think I caught the same thing Aunt Hattie did when she met the Sins for the first time.

Did I seriously have a crush on a man who spoke only a few words to me? I wasn’t that much of a blonde, right?!? *Waiting online for answers*

But while I was having an existential crisis, Zhu Deming, the man I was currently stressing out about, wondering if he was going to roll an ankle or a head, seemed to be having a great time.

Zhu Deming walked like someone who paid attention. Silent, careful, calm. A man used to listening more than he spoke. I liked him for that.

The other one? Not so much.

I could feel his glare between my shoulder blades with every step that I took, like he was waiting for me to disappear and put a knife in his back.

And let me tell you, there were a lot easier ways for me to kill him than that.

The General, the man Zhu Deming had introduced as Sun Longzi, walked like a blade—precise, polished, and ten seconds from a kill. It was clear that he was the kind of man who thought traps were made by cowards.

I could almost hear him cursing them out, saying that war should be fought face-to-face. The kind of man who probably mourned every Red Demon that had been torn apart for entering the mountain without permission. The kind that only saw in black and white.

It was too bad; the world was a lot more interesting in color.

I knew without a doubt when Zhu Deming mentioned a weapon that they’d come here expecting to fight a war. They thought that they could do what they always did, come in, get the mission done, and then leave.

The only problem was that I had given them a graveyard.

I wasn’t capable of taking on an entire army by myself; it just wasn’t feasible. So, I did what I had been trained all my life to do: protect what was mine by any means necessary.

The fact that they couldn’t appreciate that was on them.

The path I took wasn’t marked. It never was. This side of the mountain wasn’t meant to be safe for anyone to cross. Even the animals knew to stay away from it. But, apparently, men weren’t nearly as intelligent as the animals were. However, since I was the one who set the traps, I could walk through this side blindfolded and not touch a single one.

Contrary to popular belief, my traps were simple traps. They weren’t sentient; they didn’t hunt someone down. They were just in the right place at the right time to kill someone. But that tinge of fear that everyone had because of them? Well, I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed it more than I should.

My feet avoided the press points automatically. My shoulders shifted before low branches ever brushed them. This mountain had a rhythm, and I’d learned to match it beat for beat.

Behind me, Zhu Deming and Sun Longzi didn’t so much as talk, which was smart. Talking made people forget to listen.

Sun Longzi’s steps shifted left... just slightly.

It wasn’t enough to draw attention to the untrained eye. Maybe he thought he saw something. Maybe he was testing me. Maybe he just didn’t like being led. But it didn’t matter.

My hand shot back, grabbing the collar of his linen tunic, and I yanked him toward me just as the ground to his left opened with a hiss like breath escaping a corpse. My nose wrinkled at the stench coming from the trap. This one was meant to reset itself once there was no resistance inside, which meant that there were a lot of dead bodies inside of it before they completely decomposed.

I liked to call this particular one the ’fly trap’. You know, to get rid of all the annoying bugs buzzing around.

Steel jaws unfolded from the moss-covered earth like a flower blooming in reverse—rusted, jagged petals snapping closed with enough force to crack bone in half a dozen places. Think of it like a lotus or a tulip when it was closed... and a Venus fly trap when it was open.

Seriously, it was one of my traps that I was the proudest of.

The moment that the trap didn’t feel any resistance, it pulled itself back into the dirt, opening up again until the next person so much as breathed on it.

Seriously, the five-foot-tall metal flower was gone, just like that.

I let go of his shirt and turned back toward the trail. "You really might want to watch your step," I said with a sigh, brushing a pine needle from my sleeve.

No one replied.

Good.

Because there’s nothing more dangerous than a man who won’t admit he’s wrong—and nothing more honest than the sound of someone realizing they’re not in control.

I kept walking down the semi-steep path, watching where I was going. It wouldn’t be the first time my heel slipped as I tried to make my way down, and somehow, I figured that if I fell on my ass at this moment, I’d never live it down.

Sun Longzi followed now, but slower, much more carefully.

Zhu Deming, on the other hand, didn’t even blink. He understood. Maybe not everything, but enough. The path was the path, whether you could make it out or not. And to go off meant death.

What could I say?

I’ve learned that simple was the way to go with people.