As a young man, Zhou Chu was violent, and his home district suffered from him. A flood dragon in the river and a tiger in the hills also harmed the people. They called the three “the three scourges,” and Zhou Chu was the worst. Someone urged him to kill the tiger and the dragon. He fought the dragon in the water for three days and nights, and the villagers, thinking him dead, celebrated.
When he came back and heard them celebrating, he understood for the first time how much he was hated. He went to the Lu brothers, two scholars of Wu, and told one of them everything. He wanted to reform, he said, but feared it was too late. The story is in A New Account of Tales of the World (世说新语).