"Mommy, why does that person smell so bad, and he's so filthy? He smells a hundred times worse than our pigpen. Let's leave quickly..." a toddler of three or four covered her nose with her hand and said to the adult beside her in a childish tone.
"He probably dislikes taking baths just like you. Keep it up, and you'll end up smelling just like him," the adult chimed in, adopting a childlike tone.
Indeed, when adults go about educating children, they never miss a single available excuse.
"No, I don't want to smell like that! Mommy, let's hurry home, I want to take a bath."
"Alright, alright, let's hurry along home for a nice bath..." The adult went along with the child, saying happily—no doubt secretly thrilled that another trick had worked.
As the adult picked up the little girl and carried her away, she couldn't resist casting a curious glance back toward Li Chunfeng, only to meet his fierce, hardened eyes that had long forgotten how to be gentle. With a startled wail, she burst into tears of fright.
After they left, Li Chunfeng took a hard sniff of his own scent and calmly muttered, "Smell bad? I think I smell fine. What a nose."
"Still, it's about time I cleaned myself up properly..." He was well aware of just how filthy, grimy, and intolerably foul he looked.
He needed to head into town to inquire about the Lone Star Pavilion, but looking the way he did now, ten out of ten people would run a mile, let alone stop to speak with him.
His cultivation had only just recovered, but it was still far from enough to exact his revenge. He had to raise his cultivation, find the mastermind with absolute certainty, and strike a fatal blow.
Since he had promised the masked senior that he would check out the Lone Star Pavilion for him, raising his cultivation while gathering information on the pavilion was the best plan he could devise.
He found a pond to thoroughly wash himself, but the dazzling sunlight felt so wonderfully comforting that he drifted off to sleep right there in the water.
Perhaps the water was so gentle and the temperature so perfectly warm that he dreamed of his mother, her tenderness like flowing water as she stroked his cheek.
"Oh dear, this is terrible! How come all the fish in the Fenghua Sect's pond have floated to the surface and died?"
"Really, what on earth is going on?"
"Such a strange omen among living things—could a disaster be about to befall us?" superstitious gossips chimed in, fearing nothing more than peace.
In an instant, people were buzzing with discussion. Word spread from ten to a hundred, a hundred to a thousand, until it was eventually exaggerated into a rumor that a demon beast was about to manifest in the Fenghua Sect's fishpond.
In the end, everyone fled in terror, terrified of becoming the demon beast's first mortal appetizer.
I do not know how much time passed before Li Chunfeng's dream ended. He broke the surface from the depths of the water, his hair now silky and smooth, his complexion fair, his face strikingly handsome—every bit the picture of extraordinary elegance.
He wiped the water from his face with both hands and opened his eyes. A pair of handsome eyes, bright as stars reflecting the moon, yet his whole body gave an involuntary shudder—the scene before him was simply too cruel.
An entire pond of dead fish lay scattered in all directions, their bulging eyes staring as if accusing Li Chunfeng, "We died so unjustly, you shameless wretch..."
Li Chunfeng imagined the inner monologue and dying words of these fish.
"Have I really gotten so foul..." Li Chunfeng found it hard to believe.
Having washed and changed his clothes, Li Chunfeng was completely transformed, changing from a smelly vagrant into a dashing, graceful young gentleman.
And no sooner had he left than members of the Fenghua Sect arrived to inspect the fishpond, eager to find out what sort of demon beast was supposedly about to manifest in a perfectly ordinary pond.