But Zuo Xiaoduo was not worried that Li Chenglong would end up in a Star Beast's belly. With that fellow's encyclopedic knowledge, his means of keeping himself alive and whole might well be no worse than Zuo Xiaoduo's own.
A while later, Zuo Xiaoduo finally found Li Chenglong on a hillside, hiding like a groundhog in a deep hole.
"Boss Zuo!"
Li Chenglong called out excitedly, "Come over here! There's something good!"
Zuo Xiaoduo squatted at the entrance. "What's the good stuff?"
"Don't know yet."
Li Chenglong climbed out of the hole, caught his breath, and said, "Those Star Beasts followed me as I ran like mad. I was afraid they'd run back if I stopped too close, so I simply took the Star Soul Jade you gave me and ran another hundred-plus li before putting it away. With that spiritual aura suddenly gone, most of the Star Beasts immediately scattered. After I ran a little farther, there weren't any Star Beasts following me at all."
"To be absolutely safe, I spotted a hole nearby that had been gouged out by an impact and hid inside. And guess what happened?"
Li Chenglong's face brimmed with excitement.
Zuo Xiaoduo sighed, rolled his eyes, and put on a particularly fake look of shock, saying listlessly, "There was actually dirt in the hole?!"
"Your ass!"
Li Chenglong cursed with a laugh. "There's a Star Soul Stone in the hole, a huge one. That's nothing in itself, of course. But when I examined it closely, I found another hole right beside it, a very, very deep one."
"In other words, there was originally just one hole here, but the Star Soul Stone fell from the sky and happened to smash into it. Otherwise, it wouldn't have gone so deep... I was just exploring and