The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis 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 ant was that everything that should be making noise had gone still. Birds were never quiet unless they were scared. Trust on that.

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

Right now, that sothing was .

I didn’t bother to check if the two n 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 sa thing Aunt Hattie did when she t the Sins for the first ti.

Did I seriously have a crush on a man who spoke only a few words to ? 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, seed to be having a great ti.

Zhu Deming walked like soone 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 to disappear and put a knife in his back.

And let tell you, there were a lot easier ways for 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 ntioned a weapon that they’d co here expecting to fight a war. They thought that they could do what they always did, co 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 ans 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 ant to be safe for anyone to cross. Even the animals knew to stay away from it. But, apparently, n 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 soone down. They were just in the right place at the right ti to kill soone. 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 , 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 sothing. Maybe he was testing . 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 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 ant to reset itself once there was no resistance inside, which ant 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 mont 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 tal 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 soone 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 ti my heel slipped as I tried to make my way down, and sohow, I figured that if I fell on my ass at this mont, 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 ant death.

What could I say?

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