The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis-Chapter 352: The Translator Who Doesn’t Translate

Yizhen’s mouth turned down a millimetre. The Jackal’s tone was shorter—sharp edges and small knives.

It was clear that praise didn’t live in it.

Mingyu stood a pace back, his head inclined as if examining the calligraphy on the wall.

He heard courtesy and filed it under not-an-insult-yet.

Deming glanced once at a hinge, at a beam, at a length of floor that could remember a struggle; his jaw set for patience, not violence. Longzi’s attention locked on exits the way a soldier prays—without show. Yaozu was where shadows guessed he might be, and guessed wrong.

"You picked a pretty kennel," Yizhen remarked, his gaze sliding over the temple tokens with the wrong year stamped into their faces.

The Jackal says something that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle like paper that’s been folded too many times.

"The master thanks you," the translator offers, beat-perfect. "He keeps a careful house."

Beside the brazier, Xinying didn’t move.

She wore quiet like armour, her hands loose at her sides, and her eyes taking in the little wrongs.

Like the ink stain at the edge of the western map. The repeated dot in the second line of characters on the ledger. The way the Jackal’s tea cup sits left-hand reach while his knife-hand rests, bored, on a rolled map as if paper were already a throat.

"What is he the factor of," Yizhen asked, pleasant as a man making after-dinner conversation. "Salt? Rope? Little boys you sell to kings who forgot their gods."

The Jackal replied once again in a different language. One that the translator either didn’t know or didn’t bother to properly translate.

But whether or not you spoke it, it was clear that it was a slap disguised as a sentence. He didn’t look at the translator, again.

He didn’t need to. His eyes stayed on Yizhen like a needle deciding where to enter skin.

The translator inclined his head, his beat perfect, and his breath smooth. "He says he is a factor of friendship, and that there is no need for ugliness. He is willing to aid Daiyu if Daiyu asks properly."

Deming’s mouth tightened.

Properly was a word men liked to hide knives in. But the cadence the translator used fits the court; the tone does not wobble. Habit, culture, trust—the palace had clearly trained itself to hear translation as neutral law.

"Ask properly," Mingyu repeated, amused without humour, and let the phrase sit where it could learn about weight.

The Jackal speaks again, his words unrolling with coastal speed: Who brings a whore to a negotiation and expects to be taken seriously?

The translator bows deeper to the floor, the better to hide the lie. "The master says he is honored by the Empress’s presence. He has never stood in such company and hopes to prove worthy." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Longzi’s lashes didn’t flicker. He didn’t speak the language, but he heard the respect and calibrated posture to caution, not rage.

Yaozu’s head tilted one degree; he heard sound, not sense, and the sound was wrong, but not wrong enough to break a rule before it yields something worth breaking it for.

Yizhen tips his face like a man soaking a little sun. He didn’t blink. Of course he didn’t speak every tongue. That was not the point. The point was to always maintain posture and intent and power.

Still, the Jackal’s eyes keep cutting toward Xinying like a boy trying to find out how hot the brazier was without burning his finger.

"You’ve been paying piety with the wrong year," Yizhen remarked. A finger tapping the pile of tokens. "Either your mint lies, or you do."

The foreign language again poured from the Jackal, silvery, contempt varnished to prettiness: A dog who barks in another man’s house. I could teach him where to sit if I wanted him.

"The master offers apologies for the mistake," the translator cooed. "Foreign mints are careless. He thanks us for noticing, and will correct the error."

Mingyu’s eyes lingered on the translator now.

Not suspicion so much as calculation.

A translator was a tool. Tools could be wrong; tools could be corrupted. But you did not accuse a tool until you knew whether you need it to open the next door cleanly.

Xinying shifts her weight the width of a toe on stone. Her face didn’t change. The last word the Jackal used wrapped itself around her like smoke that picked the wrong throat.

Yizhen didn’t relieve the translator. Instead, he invited more rope, trying to catch them in a lie.

"You know our city, then," he murmured. "You know who to pay, which alleys don’t sell you to your enemies, which shrines throw blessings like bones to dogs if you bring them fat."

The Jackal said something too fast for a casual ear—the harsh words shifting down to knives: You think you own the gutters. I am the tide.

"The master says he admires our efficiency," the translator smooths. "He hopes to learn it."

Deming’s fingers flexed once over his palm like a man testing a chisel’s edge by memory.

Longzi did not take his eyes off the hinges. Yaozu identified four heartbeats outside the door, one at the screen, two above—breath placements in the ceiling. The room was a body. He catalogued organs.

Yizhen lets the tide line curl, not break. "You brought very clean hands for a man whose ledgers smell of men who are buried under sand," he notes. "You brought a god a jackal’s face at his own river and hoped he would be flattered."

Once again, the Jackal opened his mouth to speak. With a bright little smile he was certain none of them can nail down he said: Pets. Nice collars. Who holds the leash? He looked at the men, not at the woman.

"The master says he respects the Emperor’s men," the translator said warmly. "He hopes all our houses will be friends."

Mingyu breathes once, evenly.

The Emperor has walked enough rooms where men lied prettily to know when he was being fed pastry instead of grain. He held his tongue, not because pride demanded it, but because strategy did. If the dog leads you to the kennel, you do not kick it too early.

The Jackal allows himself a little more carelessness.

He liked being misunderstood; it smells like power.

He glanced again at Xinying, measured the way her sleeve didn’t tremble, the way her mouth didn’t ask permission.

He tried a softer knife in his mother tongue: Chickens dressed as hawks.