The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 373: The Final - Ends

Bai Yuyan laughed once, too bright and cheery to be honest. "A witch," she snapped. "A woman with fire for blood and knives for prayers. She will—"

"She will eat rice this noon and nap," Yizhen interposed, calm as a ledger. "And you will not exist to complain about it."

Deming checked Yaozu’s line with his palm and stepped back. Longzi retook the exit. Yaozu’s thumb tracked the pulse in his own wrist once—a habit for timing—then he shifted weight.

Yuyan dropped all pretenses over the moment like paint. "Mingyu, listen to me," she implored, her accent and words suddenly modern, her vowels rounded by a different world. "You are not this. You don’t have to pretend. I know you. I know how this story ends. You take me north. You destroy everything for me. You—"

"Wrong book," Yizhen murmured.

Mingyu didn’t blink. "You are a stranger at my table," he answered in the palace tongue. "You never learned the meal."

"Because you married the cook," she spat.

"Because I married the fire," he corrected.

Her breath hitched. For a heartbeat something like awe cracked through the ambition.

Then it died quick.

She turned to Li Xuejian’s body as if it could still lend her a throne and found nothing useful there.

"Last words," Yizhen offered again, a touch kinder this time because completion pleased him.

Yuyan twisted her mouth into an elegant shape and chose contempt. "You throw away fate," she hissed at Mingyu. "You betray the version of you that mattered."

Mingyu lifted two fingers—enough.

Yaozu stepped in.

One stroke. Clean. Efficient. No echo tried to make a poem. The neck learned the distance to the ground without involving extra steps.

Yizhen set heat to the chain ends. Deming cleared the space around the bodies so runners could work. Longzi signaled once toward the gate; two men without expressions slipped through with sacks and lime-burned gloves.

Mingyu turned. "Letters," he prompted.

Yizhen handed over a stack wrapped with a strip of silk. "Coded twice, badly," he assessed. "If she’d spent less time performing and more time learning, we might have had an interesting morning."

"An uninteresting one pleases me," Mingyu returned.

Deming flicked sand where it mattered. "Baiguang?"

"Finished," Mingyu concluded.

Longzi rolled his shoulders once and eased a kink out of his neck. "Lunch," he suggested, not ironic.

"After she’s told," Mingyu replied.

"She," Yizhen echoed, smiling. "You mean the one with fire for blood."

Mingyu’s mouth eased at the corner—the smallest acknowledgment of something that belonged to a room not here. "Yes."

Yaozu wiped steel and sheathed it, movements spare. "Noon notices?"

"Quiet ones," Mingyu instructed. "Ministries informed. No proclamations. The empire wakes to rice, not theater."

"Runners already gone," Yizhen assured, palming three slips to men who appeared from nowhere and vanished the same way.

Shadow stood, shook once, and looked at the emperor for permission to leave the scent of this place behind.

Mingyu gave it with the smallest tilt of his fingers; the hound turned and trotted toward the corridor, claws whispering on stone.

Deming watched the lime men handle the last of it with an eye for corners. "The priest?"

"Waiting," Yizhen replied. "He enjoys tidy books. He will enjoy ours."

"Pilot?" Longzi prompted.

"Found his mother’s name," Yizhen returned. "He folded the moment we spoke it. He’ll deliver harbors and lantern counts while we eat."

"Good," Mingyu approved.

They walked out as lime dust began to take the yard’s breath. A breeze lifted and carried nothing anyone would be able to remember. The sky had not yet chosen a color. The palace listened to their footfalls and decided breakfast would be served on time.

At the first bend, a runner fell into step with Yaozu and murmured two names that didn’t belong to any ledger yet. Yaozu nodded once and those names began to exist on lists that made men nervous.

At the second bend, a junior clerk bowed low to Deming with an armful of scrolls. Deming took the top three without breaking stride and handed them to Yizhen, who flipped seals with a thumbnail and humored the clerk with a wink.

At the third, Longzi stopped just long enough to adjust the hinge on a door that had complained every morning for three years. It fell silent, properly ashamed.

Yuyan’s attendants had gathered themselves in her courtyard, then fled when they recognized Yizhen’s smile.

One lingered by the corner, her face bloodless. Yizhen pressed a coin into her palm and spoke low. "You never saw a Jackal. You never saw a prince. You dream of dumplings, not gallows." She nodded so hard her hairpins clicked and bolted.

Mingyu kept pace, gaze already beyond the next door. "Yuyan’s correspondence to the north," he asked without turning.

"Interception complete," Yizhen replied. "We will respond in her hand. Her allies will confess to us by accident."

"Do it," Mingyu instructed.

Deming flanked. Longzi drifted to a lattice and looked through, counting guards not as men but as moving pieces.

Yaozu’s attention returned briefly to the emperor’s profile, reading fatigue and finding none, reading hunger and finding the kind that belonged to tasks, not kitchens.

They reached the turn to the inner court.

A cook pushed a cart and spotted them, hands white with flour. Longzi flicked two fingers; the cart paused to let the emperor pass. The cook stared at the floor and remembered to breathe only after they were gone.

"Letters to Baiguang villages," Deming prompted.

"Reassignment of taxes," Mingyu returned. "Relief shipments increased for any town that swore early. Inspection units for those that waited. No punitive spectacle. Only outcomes." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"Outcomes travel farther than heads on walls," Yizhen remarked, content.

"Outcomes sleep better," Yaozu added.

Shadow reached the outer screen of the inner apartments and looked back. Mingyu lifted a hand. The dog pushed through and vanished.

At the threshold, Deming slowed. "Report to the Council?" he asked.

"After food," Mingyu replied. "One page. Two lines. Baiguang resolved. Northern Winds deleted."

"Deleted," Yizhen repeated, pleased with the strange new word.

"Anything else?" Longzi prodded, though his grin suggested he already had breakfast on his mind.

"A bath," Yizhen offered helpfully, sniffing at Deming’s sleeve.

"A quieter hinge," Longzi corrected, amused.

"A nap," Yaozu proposed, which in his language meant "watch while she sleeps."

Mingyu placed his palm to the screen and pushed.

The wood moved without complaint.

Warmth pressed out to meet him, the scent of her skin over steam and tea. He stepped into the antechamber as the other three broke away to deliver notices, burn letters, and collect one very tidy priest.

The traditional yuan tiles ticked faintly with the honesty of daylight. Somewhere beyond the screens, water poured, stopped, poured again.

He crossed the mat.

Shadow emerged from behind a panel with a satisfied huff and nosed his wrist.

He touched the hound’s head once and continued toward the inner door.

Behind him, the palace accelerated—runners, slips, seals, ash. Ahead, the quiet he valued waited with the only person in the world who could pull a war out of his lungs with two words.

He reached for the latch.