Rivers had soul beasts too. It was hardly possible for them to exist on land and in the sea but not in rivers.
As the Heaven Dou Empire's golden waterway, the Heaven Dou Yangtze River was regularly cleared of soul beasts by the Imperial Navy. Of course, clearing every soul beast from that vast, surging river was impossible. The navy could only deal with large, high-level soul beasts.
They could do nothing about the smaller ones. Together with soul beasts that were less aggressive, harmless, or friendly toward humans, these made up the bulk of the Yangtze soul beasts.
The river's soul beasts came in all manner of strange forms: fish, shrimp, crabs, water snakes, and aquatic plants, as well as merfolk-like creatures, kappa, and water ghosts.
For this reason, merchants and travelers taking the waterways generally hired soul masters with water-related abilities to accompany them and ensure their safety.
This time, their group was using a small boat from the Great Soul Arena. Apart from a boatman familiar with the waterways, there was no one else aboard.
"Old Peng, do you usually encounter fifty-thousand-year soul beasts like that?" Zhu Yanfeng asked the boatman accompanying them.
"Master Zhu, I haven't seen one in years. High-level soul beasts only occasionally enter this river, once every ten or twenty years," Old Peng replied respectfully.
Old Peng was a boatman of the first rank, a seasoned hand who looked to be in his forties. He belonged to Soul Fighting City's directly administered fleet and, unusually, was also a soul master. His aptitude was poor, however, and even now he was only a Soul Elder.
All Old Peng knew was that these were distinguished people from Soul Fighting City. His superiors had instructed him not to neglect them at any point along the way.