The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 351: Meeting The Jackal

They ate quickly when the tray arrived—plain congee, slivered ginger, two slices of crisp pear, a side of almonds Deming insisted on salting himself because he didn’t trust the kitchen’s understanding of restraint.

Mingyu passed by the open screen at exactly the moment a minor official entered the courtyard, timing a conversation about irrigation to the second; Longzi’s silhouette ghosted at the far colonnade, and Yaozu’s shadow forgot to exist.

"Now," Xinying decided, wiping her thumb clean with the fold of her sleeve. "The shrine."

They didn’t take the main path. There were too many eyes dressed as lanterns.

Yizhen broke left through an arch that had forgotten its name and followed a white-washed passage that walked you along the back of incense halls where temple boys learn to count bells without counting coin.

The River Shrine rose from the water’s edge like something that had remembered its own reflection for a thousand years and didn’t trust it.

Braziers smoked, measured and expensive. The knife-fish sigil coiled small above the side gate, painted by a careful hand that hoped the old gods liked jokes.

"Quiet," Yizhen breathed.

It wasn’t a command. It was a map.

They crossed the flagstones as if stepping from one unlit word to the next. Inside, prayer sounded like commerce and commerce sounded like prayer.

A woman dropped two coins and a name; a monk swept the step with the indifference of men who know dust returns no matter how devout your arm.

The Jackal wasn’t a man you saw if he didn’t want be seen. But he wanted to be paid, and payment loves rituals: second brazier, left alcove, a cough that isn’t a cough, the tap-tap of a ring against stone—signals the underworld taught itself so it doesn’t have to admit it’s teaching.

Xinying stopped one pace short of the alcove. The wall to her right breathed like a door that wasn’t. She touched a fingertip to the plaster; it gave by the width of a pearl and came back offended.

"There," Yizhen murmured, delighted.

"Deming," she said, knowing he was close even when he hadn’t claimed a shadow. The answer was the quiet arrival of a narrow chisel and a folded strip of leather to catch dust.

"Two taps," he offered, normal voice, monk’s pace. "On the third, the hinge complains."

"Don’t wake the god," Mingyu deadpanned from nowhere and then pretended to examine a prayer board like a man who had just remembered he ought to be pious on Tuesdays.

Xinying tapped once. The wall held its breath. She tapped twice. The hinge shivered like an old man’s knee and gave a long, tiny sigh.

Yizhen slipped a blade in—not to cut; to lift the thought of a latch from where it had grown too used to not being found.

The panel swung an inch.

Enough for a smell to escape: tanned leather, a sharp foreign resin, and the specific arrogance of men who think closed spaces make them safe.

"After you," he breathed.

She went first.

The passage was narrow and curved like a snake that had just eaten. On the third turn, a man waited with a ledger and a short knife he didn’t know how to use against someone who had decided to stop being polite.

He lunged.

She didn’t. She tilted.

The knife took the space where she had been. Her hand took his wrist and reminded it of its hinge. The ledger fell, pages coughing names in three languages.

"Shh," Yizhen comforted the man as he folded him to the floor without ceremony. "You’ll ruin the incense."

Behind them, Mingyu breathed a laugh so small it could have been a cough; Deming caught the ledger with two fingers and interest; Longzi moved past like weather you respect; Yaozu harvested a ring of keys without ever bothering to let his shadow catch up.

The next door didn’t pretend to be anything but a door. Brass studs, a bar across, a carved jackal in profile as if a god could be terrified by its own reflection.

Longzi lifted the bar with two hands and the minimum noise that still counts as quiet. Yaozu turned a key he hadn’t stolen so much as collected. The door conceded.

The room beyond carried the cold of coins that had never seen daylight. On the far table: three maps of Daiyu, one of the western trade arcs, a scrap with their courtyard drawn wrong, and a neat stack of stamped temple tokens with the year misprinted.

Beside it, a cup half-full of tea cooling with the slow determination of men who believe in finishing bad ideas.

And behind the table, a man with a smile like silk cut on the bias.

"The Jackal," Yizhen greeted, bored and pleased. "You picked a pretty kennel."

The man behind the table smiles like silk cut on the bias...pretty until it frays.

Brass studs blink along the jackal-etched door they just opened.

Incense from the main hall slides in thin and false, as if it knows better than to try to bless this air.

Yizhen doesn’t bother to sit. He leans one palm on the edge of the table, the other loose at his side, an attitude that says: these maps belong to me already; you’re just borrowing them to learn names.

A screen to the left shivered.

A thin man in a dove-grey robe steps out, palms pressed, eyes demure.

A translator.

Clearly court-trained given his posture, and his priest-trained, impassive face. Everything about him screamed safe, reliable.

The Jackal replies to Yizhen, a river-quick tumble of syllables born on a coast Daiyu doesn’t even know existed. He never looked at the translator; he only looked at Yizhen the way a cat looks at a bird that forgot it had wings.

The translator bowed, his hands still folded in front of him, and his voice as smooth as polished bead. "The honoured master welcomes the King of Hell to his humble retreat," he renders in Daiyu. "He admires the boldness it takes to walk in uninvited and hopes boldness will be matched by wisdom."