3635 Bruised Head In the pitch-black night, a guard on night duty went to a weedy area behind the village to relieve himself. He stumbled on something and fell headfirst into a ravine ahead. “Aah!” As he fell, the guard instinctively screamed. His head was broken, and the scream abruptly stopped. “What happened?” “What’s going on?” Hearing the commotion, two other guards on night duty quickly came to investigate. They looked around but saw no one until a voice came from the ravine. “I’m fine, I just accidentally fell into this ravine and bruised my head.” When the two guards heard this, they remarked, “It’s good that you’re fine. Get up and apply some medicine to your head wound,” and then walked away. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞 The two of them failed to notice that despite the sound coming from the ravine, there was no movement there. If they had gone up to look inside the ravine, they would have seen the guard lying unmoving in the ravine, a shard of sharp bone barely visible beneath him… After a while, the motionless guard’s finger twitched. He stood up, stretching his somewhat stiff body, and slowly turned around. His face was as pale as a sheet, stiff, and coated with dried blood across his brow and face. He looked incredibly eerie. He twisted his mouth into a sinister grin and leapt out of the ravine, taking small steps forward. The two guards who had been waiting began talking, “Why is he taking so long? Did he faint or something?” “How could he have fainted? Didn’t he just answer us?” “Shall we go check again?” They looked at each other, nodded, and said, “All right, let’s go check. It’s really late; he should come back.” As they turned around to head back, they found a man with a bloody face quietly standing behind them, giving them quite a fright. “Ah!” Both guards gasped but sighed in relief when they saw it was the guard who had gone to relieve himself. They complained angrily, “You scared us! Clean up your bloody face.” They rubbed their chests. Feeling uneasy with the sight of his expressionless face staring at them, they finally asked, “What are you looking at?” The guard grinned, “Nothing, I’ll go treat my wound.” As he turned to enter a room, the other two guards quickly grabbed him. “Are you muddleheaded after knocking your head? That’s Young Miss’ room!” Hearing this, the guard turned back, “I forgot for a moment.” He then asked, “So where do I go to treat my wound?” “Go over there, everyone else is resting there,” the other two guards gave him a strange look. “Did you hurt yourself in that fall? Why are you acting so strangely?” “I bumped my head pretty hard and the wound hurts a lot,” he said, pointing to his head, and then giving them a stiff smile. He finally turned and walked in the direction they had indicated. The two guards felt uneasy as they watched him walk away, but they didn’t say anything and went back to their posts.