Zhang Jixin had hit the nail on the head.
Over the next few days, the campus buzzed with discussion: the North District Wizards' increasingly vocal "Give Me a Frog" campaign; Beta Town Daily's endless editorials from the Under the Moon Council on admitting the Rat People into their ranks; Starry Sky Academy's arena matches and Atlas's Winter Festival; as well as someone's reappearance at the university and a certain not-famous burnt wizard's new Straw Man products hitting the market.
Only no one cared about the fishmen in Linzhong Lake.
It was as though the wizards who had worked tirelessly and run everywhere for the lake's fishmen last semester had all died within a single year. The fishmen, too, had become unusually well-behaved. Throughout that turbulent early winter, they rarely surfaced to cause trouble, leaving first-year students with no sense at all of the supposedly brutal race that dragged children into the water and snatched freshmen's bookbags.
In their minds, fishmen mostly stared with dead fish eyes, half their heads floating above the water to bask in the sun. Or they blew bubbles in the shallows, knocked out frogs crouching by the shore with stone clubs, then dragged them underwater.
"I think the bigger reason they've quieted down is that winter's here."
Zheng Qing stood beside the black artificial rockery by the lake, textbooks in his arms, solemnly analyzing the matter with Doctor. "...Fishmen are cold-blooded creatures. They're naturally poor at resisting cold, so it isn't strange for them to hibernate through the winter."
Several unfamiliar witches passed behind the young wizard in a group, pointing at him and giggling softly, apparently encouraging one another to go say hello to Zheng Qing.
This is already pretty good. At least they aren't charging at me with torches. Zheng Qing comforted himself. Without