Hexing Street was named for its proximity to the Dadu River, which flowed across Sanxiang City.
Every morning and evening, large numbers of fishermen would follow the river to the docks of Hexing Street, setting up stalls to sell their wares in the fish market.
Residents from the west side of the city came here whenever they wanted to buy seafood, and people from other districts would even make a special trip by horse-drawn carriage.
The fish market at the docks was certainly special.
The fish sold at the stalls in the early morning were the freshest, usually still flopping about, and were highly favored by wealthy households and restaurants.
The fish sold in the evening had been kept in wooden tubs all day. Most had already gone belly-up, their price a mere ten or twenty percent of the original.
Common folk would carefully pick through the dead fish; it was still a decent way to get a taste of something fresh.
As dusk fell and the dinner hour passed, the number of stalls began to dwindle.
One by one, the fishermen steered their small boats away from Sanxiang City. They all lived in villages on the outskirts, and traveling the waterways at night was indeed difficult.
Under the setting sun, the fish market grew deserted.
Zhang Dou hurriedly packed up his stall. He had nearly stayed too late, trying to earn enough to buy ink and brushes for his child, who was just starting his studies.
Just then, he noticed another fish stall still set up not far away, showing no signs of packing up.
Zhang Dou glanced at the sun setting over the mountainside and quickened his pace toward it.
He had met the stall owner a few times before and couldn't help but call out a warning, "Wang Bingquan, it's time to go. The river will be hard to navigate soon."
"Hehehehe."
Wang Bingquan let out a strange, inexplicable laugh. His head was a size larger than normal, and his face was covered in bulging blue veins.
Zhang Dou backed away a few steps, though he quickly composed himself.
He looked at the stall. In the wooden tub was a single silver carp, belly-up. Both its eyes were missing, making it too unsightly to sell.
"Wang Bingquan, if you can't sell that fish, just take it home and make soup..."
"Hehehe, how about I sell it to you?"
"Who wants your rotten fish? I guess no good deed goes unpunished."
Zhang Dou couldn't help but curse under his breath. Wang Bingquan, standing before him, didn't get angry. He just kept up his eerie cackling, which was enough to make one's blood run cold.
He suddenly recalled a tragic story he'd heard, one that seemed to be about Wang Bingquan.
There were five fishermen in Wang Bingquan's village. They would fish together and take turns selling their catch, looking out for one another.
But a few days ago, while casting their nets in the Dadu River, all the fishermen except for Wang Bingquan had died.
The bodies recovered by the Government Office were said to have not a single patch of untorn flesh on them. Their eyes were nothing but two empty sockets.
Rumor had it they were killed by Water Ghosts.
Zhang Dou couldn't help but feel a pang of pity. 'Wang Bingquan has probably lost his mind,' he thought. 'No wonder he's just lingering at the fish market, refusing to leave.'
He sighed and said, "Wang Bingquan, I'll buy this fish. You should head home early."
Wang Bingquan lifted his head, his gaze fixed intently on Zhang Dou. The corners of his mouth stretched into a grotesquely exaggerated smile.
"Three cents."
With a grim look, Zhang Dou took out his money pouch. As if trying to get rid of a plague god, he pulled out a few coins without counting them and handed them over.
Wang Bingquan skillfully threaded a straw rope through the fish's mouth and handed the whole silver carp over.
"Remember to pan-fry it. The meat of a silver carp is tender and smooth, but the eyes are the real delicacy."
Just as Zhang Dou was about to take it, someone intercepted the silver carp, snatching the straw rope with perfect timing.
He whipped his head around. A Government Constable had appeared beside him at some point.
"You..."
Ren Qing had no intention of returning the silver carp. Instead, he advised, "You should hurry and get on your boat. Just consider it spending three cents to save your own life."
Wary of the Government Constable, Zhang Dou could only swallow his grievance. At the same time, a deep sense of confusion welled up inside him.
'Why would two people be fighting over a stinking dead fish? And what did he mean, spending three cents to save my life?'
Completely bewildered, Zhang Dou walked to the dock. He glanced back toward Wang Bingquan and saw the two men turn into a small alley, one following the other.
The more he thought about it, the more unsettling it became. No matter how he looked at it, Wang Bingquan seemed like a life-reaping Fierce Ghost. He hastily poled his boat away and left.
Meanwhile, Ren Qing casually swung the silver carp as he walked, his eyes constantly scanning the surroundings of the alleyway.
He had been secretly investigating the headless corpse cases and discovered that some of the victims' residences were near a water source, which had led him to Hexing Street.
The common thread among them was that they had all bought a dead fish before they died. After eating it, their eyes would begin to hurt, and they would eventually become headless corpses.
The circumstances of the other bodies were all different, however, which indicated that the Hundred-eyed Man had never shown their face, always killing unseen through certain methods.
Ren Qing waited at the end of the alley. There wasn't a speck of light nearby; it was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
He stood there for a moment. A pair of bright green eyes gradually approached him, and he could hear some strange, indistinct whispers.
"I didn't want to kill them."
"They deserved to die, deserved it."
"How can they blame me? They can't blame me."
"DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!"
Wang Bingquan walked over, his twisted face filled with venomous hatred.
"I've come to return your fish eyes..."
Ren Qing sensed something was wrong. He looked down at the silver carp in his hand and saw its scales gradually falling off, replaced by a dense cluster of human eyes sprouting from its flesh.
In a daze, the silver carp seemed to become incredibly fresh, as if it had just leaped out of the water, making him involuntarily swallow.
Ren Qing's Double Pupils shifted, and the Illusion vanished in an instant.
He reached out and squeezed the silver carp and could clearly feel a foreign object inside. He tore open the fish's belly, and a human eyeball fell out.
Seeing the eyeball was still twitching, Ren Qing stomped it into a pulp and then moved toward Wang Bingquan.
Wang Bingquan was facing the wall, muttering to himself. As if overcome with extreme terror, he trembled and collapsed to his knees.
"Don't kill me! I've done what you said! I've fed the eyes to the living every day, I didn't even spare my own fellow villagers."
At this, his tone shifted to one of bewilderment. "I didn't kill them! I just hid the eyes in the fishes' bellies! If they bought my fish, they deserved to die!"
Ren Qing drew the short blade from his waist and moved forward.
Wang Bingquan's head turned bright red, his eyeballs bulging so much they were nearly popping out of their sockets, yet his gaze didn't waver in the slightest.
The Hundred-eyed Man's ability was to create Illusions. It wasn't difficult to manipulate people's minds with such power; Wang Bingquan was clearly just their Puppet.
Ren Qing looked toward the wall.
Any other Cultivator, even one with night vision, wouldn't be able to observe with such minute detail. But a Repeater could do so with ease.
He saw a snail crawling on the wall. Between its eyestalks grew a single human eye, which met Ren Qing's gaze with an eerie stare.
Before Ren Qing could react, the snail exploded into a pile of muck.
Immediately, a GURGLING sound came from Wang Bingquan's throat. He clutched his broken neck in agony as his head fell to the ground.
The head rolled with the wind, rushing out of the alley in the blink of an eye.
Ren Qing hurriedly gave chase.
'The Hundred-eyed Man's methods don't seem like those of a newly ascended cultivator,' he thought. 'It feels like they've been hiding in Sanxiang City for a long time. And killing people for their eyes isn't for cultivating the No-Eyes Technique either.'
'Perhaps they're severely injured and need treatment, or perhaps they're old and on the brink of death, seeking Life Extension.'
'If that's the case, the Hundred-eyed Man must have relied on a Mysterious Object to become a Half Corpse.'
'For a Hundred Eyes-type cultivator to advance, they must consume a Mysterious Object from the Hundred-Eyed Demon Monarch. Not only is that a near-certain death sentence, but where could one even find such a thing so easily?'
'Could it be that they're creating this chaos to cover something up?'