The Great Wall Mystery
Ayush Kumar, Group 3: Fiction, West Island School
imes were tough on the Great Wall. People were dying, protecting China from the others. But someone
was killing the guards from the inside. The question was, who? There were twenty people guarding one
side regularly, and more came when needed. But someone in that twenty had started killing, and he had
taken down two people in two nights. Something big was happening and whatever was happening was
just a warm up to the big event still to come. But first this killing had to be stopped. Long wondered, if
the man would kill everyone, and if he did, when would Long’s turn come? Would he be the next to go? He
would probably be last, he thought. No one cared about him, he was the loser of the group, no matter how
ferociously he tried to become the best, and the killer had so far killed the most skillful people. Some part of
Long’s brain was happy that those people who he hated the most were dead. The other part of his mind was
disgusted of thinking that.
Long got up and was greeted by the awful stench, and a look on his strangely dirty clothes. Long was
never dirty. Another person had reportedly been killed hours ago. So that meant another body for him to
examine, to bury, and tell the family about. He didn’t feel too much pity for them, partly because he didn’t like
any of them, partly because he might be ending up like one of them soon. After putting on his uniform, he
looked around the beds to find out which one of them had died. Long was slightly happy to find out it was the
Commander. He hated the commander so much. He made him do sprints up and down the wall just to see him
collapse and fall on the floor when he was new to the unit. He refused to treat Long as another soldier or give
any respect which was due for his hard work. “Goodbye, commander.” Long said within himself.
He called for a recruit to pick him up and drop the body in Long’s office. Time for peace, he thought.
He carefully entered the office; he didn’t want to have anything broken upon his arrival. The body was rested on
the table next to his writing table. Then, Long thought of checking the body out, to check whom might have
killed him. Long examined the body, it was a mess.
He breathed in the air of the mouth of the commander. It smelled of yellow wine. Typical and obvious,
Long thought. If someone was going to take the commander down without a fight, it was needed that he would
be indisposed. He opened the commander’s shirt, and it revealed several stab wounds all going through him, and
near the area of the commander’s heart. Long looked at the wounds and realized that the sword was thrusting
slightly upwards, so the person was shorter than the commander. Long laughed, most people were shorter than
the commander. But he realized not everyone had the strength to get it in him. There were four people who
could have done it, who had the same build as Long, and they were; Lam, the archer and Xiao Ming, the second
commanding officer. He almost laughed again, if there were two people on the force that hated the Commander,
as much as he did, it was those two. The archer, Lam was always shunned by the commander because of his
small size, and squeaky voice. He was nicknamed rat by the commander and quickly, by the rest of the force.
Lam had become the center of many jokes because of the Commander that some people on the force would
laugh more on him rather than Long. Commander took special joy when people made jokes on Lam and Long.
Lam would then always make fun of the commander indirectly, to get something back on him without sounding
spiteful. This was because he wouldn’t be executed. Examples of how he made fun of the Commander were by
talking about how large the commander was so that they could not accuse him of being disrespectful and he still
could have a joke at his expense. As for himself Long could not do that as he was not very good with words.
And also, Xiao Ming; the ambitious, perfect, brave man who should have been the leader of this sector, if it
wasn’t for the commander’s high connections within the palace. And Xiao Ming loathed the commander ever
since. He couldn't do anything about it of course, he would be executed, and his family would be shamed
forever. But he, like Lam, passively insults him, by telling him how he is doing everything wrong, how a bow
normally would be held and so forth. The question that popped into Long’s mind after that was, who’s next?
For the next couple of hours of the day, Long kept a very keen eye on them, wanting to know who, out
of those two who killed the Commander and who would be their next victim. He tried to get every scrap of
information on them, their likes and dislikes. Who would they want to kill the most, and his heart almost sank
like an anchor when he realized that they both hated him the most after the Commander. Hearing that from both
of them was a big blow for Long. So, when everyone went to sleep, Long made sure that he kept his sword, in
its sheath, in his clutches the whole night. When he woke up, his heart jumped with joy as he realized he wasn’t
dead yet, but he was slightly more scruffy, more scruffy indeed. Long checked his clothes and found damp
stains on his stomach region and it was red color or more specifically appeared to be blood. Long realized he
might be stabbed. He got up slowly. He didn’t want to let anyone else see. Ever so cautiously he looked down
on to his stomach. And relief flooded his soul. He wasn’t stabbed; he just had blood on his stomach. Why did he
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