The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 371: Time To Collect

The Jackal drew in a breath to spit one more line. Mingyu lifted one finger. The breath stayed where it had landed.

Yaozu drew steel, point angled down. "Clean," he murmured.

"Clean," Deming echoed.

"Clean," Longzi confirmed, adjusting the light for the angle.

Yizhen fed the torch with a twist of dry grass. Flame woke bright and eager.

Mingyu lowered his hand.

The stroke cut sound. The body folded, quick as punctuation, and blood met cold stone and learned not to spread far.

Yizhen leaned, touched heat along chain ends to erase rumor.

Deming dragged the weight of the dead body to the edge with efficient hands that turned sacks and men the same way.

Yaozu wiped the blade once on a cloth that remembered harder nights and slid the steel back home.

Longzi held the door while two yard men with blank faces and lime-burned boots came in, lifted what remained, and carried it toward pits that did not keep stories.

"Contacts?" Mingyu asked without turning.

Yizhen ticked items off on air. "Spice quay clerk retired. Cobalt scribe pliant. Bathhouse matron on our payroll. Tea guild pruned. Noodle shop knives dulled. Silversmith stunned and latched. Frost Gate emptied. The priest is next."

"Have him delivered," Mingyu grunted. "Tongue intact."

"Tongue intact," Yizhen agreed, pleased.

When dealing with the Emperor it was always two steps forward and about nine back. But Yizhen also knew that it was worth dealing with him if it meant that he would wake up next to Xinying every day for the rest of his life.

Another runner slipped through the gap with a bound packet of papers looted from a cabinet that had thought itself private.

Yaozu scanned the top sheet and handed it over. "Maps," he reported. "Routes north of the river. Alternate paths through the scrub, coded with colors instead of numbers."

"Burn the maps," Mingyu directed. "Memorize first if they’re better than ours."

"Not better," Yizhen judged, already uninterested in the ink. "Derivative. No imagination."

Longzi looked at the blood on the ground where the Jackal had taken his last breath and let out a soft breath. "The Jackal seems to believe that Yuyan will—"

"No," Mingyu cut in not even bothering to listen to the end of the sentence. "She will not."

That was all the obituary he granted.

Yaozu touched two fingers to the stone ring—habit, nothing holy—then stood. "It’s finished."

"Not yet," Mingyu corrected. "There is still her rooms."

Deming motioned the yard men to scrub the last scuff and turned toward the gate.

Longzi sheathed steel and rolled his neck once, ready for the next door that thought it could resist him.

Yizhen tucked slips and tokens back into their homes and smiled like a man already reading a ledger with new lines.

They left the yard in a file that wasted no steps. The torch guttered and went out behind them; cold air slid into the space where heat had been. A gull cried somewhere beyond the wall, impatient for light.

The corridor lifted them toward the palace proper.

Runners ghosted in and out of side passages, trading signs, shoving doors, vanishing again. Yizhen doled orders like coins. "Pilot first," he murmured to one. "Friend with the lazy eyes second," to another. "Burn the false ledgers last so they think they have a future until noon."

Deming adjusted pace so messages could cascade outward without collision.

Longzi kept a hand on the wall, counting hairline cracks only he ever noticed.

Yaozu slid past a side door and palmed the latch; a sleepy steward stepped out and found himself facing Shadow’s gaze and decided the floor needed attention somewhere else.

"Ministries?" Deming prompted.

"Quiet notices," Mingyu returned. "No proclamations. Breakfast arrives as scheduled."

"Breakfast," Yizhen repeated, faint grin. "Meat for Longzi, salt for Deming, tea for Yaozu, gossip for me."

"Open the kitchens for the midday meal," Longzi added, practical as ever. "They get anxious when we delay the rice."

"They get nosy when we delay anything," Yizhen countered. "People are either won or lost based on the amount of food on the table."

They crossed a narrow court where water clinked in a chain and flew off the last ring in soft beads.

No one stopped them.

No one asked.

Servants looked at floor, at buckets, at hands. Guards recognized the geometry and removed themselves from the equation.

"Pilot’s mother’s name," Yizhen called down a hall, voice low, not bothering to turn. A voice from the shadows supplied it. "Good," he approved. "Start with that one. Men fold faster when their childhoods stare back at them."

"Yuyan," Deming reminded, pulling the thread tight.

"Her rooms," Mingyu confirmed.

Yaozu angled left at the last junction. "Messenger left her door an hour ago," he noted. "Walked wrong. He belongs to nobody now."

"Check his pockets," Yizhen instructed a boy loitering with a broom. The boy vanished; a broom leaned against nothing and stayed upright.

They reached the northern wing where Xinying’s conquest had once parked Baiguang’s broken pride. Carved lintels watched with dead eyes.

The air held the quiet of cloth that had not learned it belonged to someone new. Longzi lifted two fingers—hold.

He listened with his throat. "Three inside," he whispered. "One pacing. Two whispering. None expecting us yet."

"Do we knock," Yizhen asked softly, humor blooming, "or collect?"

"Collect," Deming recommended.

"Collect," Mingyu agreed.

Yaozu placed his palm against the panel and felt grain, nail, hinge.

He leaned into a seam with the smallest pressure and found the spot that begged to be quiet.

Longzi slid to the second door that joined by an interior screen and rested the tip of his blade where wood liked to complain. Yizhen glanced to a narrow servant hatch and lifted his chin; a boy’s fingers appeared from below, waiting for a cue.

Mingyu turned once toward the inner court where he had left the only person in the world who could untie his spine with one sentence. The sun in the sky was still burning brightly, and birds were calling to each other in the courtyard.

This all felt... off. Like they should have waited for the night to come or something along those lines.

But what needed to happen would happen, and Mingyu wouldn’t let any threat have even a few more moments plotting against his wife.

"Open," Mingyu directed.