Several someones screamed, actually, and the whole deck exploded into chaos as passengers scrambled for cover and the ship's designated defenders, a handful of Core Formation disciples from the sponsoring sects, rushed toward the railing with weapons already drawn.
"Jiao beast," Chen Hao said grimly, pulling Ruan Xue back from the railing by the arm. "A big one too. That is at least peak Core Formation cultivation base, maybe higher."
The captain, an old grizzled cultivator named Han who had apparently made this crossing more times than he could count, was already bellowing orders from the upper deck, telling everyone without combat ability to get below and telling everyone with combat ability to hold the formation line and not engage directly unless the beast actually breached the hull. It was clearly a drill they had run before, the kind of practiced chaos that only came from surviving similar situations more than once already.
