The moment First was done and had retracted his arm from the boar, Second plunged his arm in and began to devour. When second was done, he too looked solid and just like the attendant he came from. The boar was now only up to Xaviers knees and had a frail look to it. But soon it was sent back to devouring souls and grew back to its previous size. After it was purified, it was placed inside the soul banner and another boar's soul was extracted and refined before sent to devour souls. When the last of the paralyzed boars died, Xavier had two fully saturated boars in the soul banner and the third boar was half finished.
Xavier saw this as a good start. These boars would be used to strengthen other ghosts, or he would use them during body cultivation, and when he made certain things that required pure soul energy. He planned to have several dozen boars sitting in the soul banner so he could use them at any time. While this wasn't the best solution, it was the best option until he could get a hold of a cultivator's soul.
Handing storage bags to First and Second, Xavier ordered them to bring the dead bodies to the work area. The face of the cliff was charred black, with a large pile of pure white bones at its bottom. While body after body was piled near the cliff, Xavier pulled out the cauldron and wedged a spirit stone against its array. Almost ten minutes later the solidified material inside returned to liquid and was ready to be used again. The first thing he made out of the bone goo was a stool to sit on while he worked. This place had a lot of positives for what he wanted to use it for, but it didn't have any rocks or stumps to sit on.
Now it was time for something Xavier was looking forward to, crafting his bident. It was his person weapon for over four hundred and fifty years, and he learned to use it well. The moment the bone goo landed in his hand, the shape of the bident flowed out. The shaft was seven feet long and ended in a spike, while the head formed a perfect U shape. The inside of the U was narrowed down to a razor-sharp edge just wider than a human neck, while the outside also narrowed down to a razor-sharp edge that meet the inside to form two pointed tines. With the basic shape formed several finer details were added, like micro serrations to the outer tines and reenforcing the connection of the shaft and head. After flowing his spiritual energy through it the bident became solid and as hard as steel. He still needed to add arrays to it to increase its strength, and sharpness, and to change its size and weight. But that could be done later.
While waiting for the last of the bodies to be piled up, Xavier made a club. Soon he would be processing the large pile of boar bones, but some of them were too big to fit through the mouth of the cauldron and would need to be broken. He had many things he wanted to make before leaving the hunting ground, but his cultivation needed to improve first. So for the time being he was going to process the bones and use some tin bread pans and make ingots. Some of these ingots would be used to make armor and weapons for his ghosts and the flying treasure he wanted to make, those he didn't use would be taken with him to be used later.
When First and Second brought the last body, Xavier had them bring him bones from the pile. Every time the cauldron got close to full, he made ingots and tossed them to the side. The ingots made a metallic clang every time the new ingots fell onto the pile. He saved smashing the skulls for last, and tried not to hit them too hard so he could avoid any flying bone shrapnel. When he was done twenty-three ingots sat beside him.
For the next three days, he woke up and ate some pork for breakfast, killed boars, processed bones, burned boars, practiced with his bident, ate pork for dinner, and cultivated before going to bed. But on the third night while he was cultivating, he broke through to the third layer. He felt a surge of strength in his body and his spiritual energy had doubled.
Waking up the next morning, everything felt different, his eyesight and hearing had been enhanced, and his body felt lighter. After eating, he walked to the cliff face behind his camp. Taking a breath, his hands began to faintly glow brown. As he pressed his hands against the stone of the cliff face, the stone began to turn to sand and fall to the ground. After adjusting the flow of his spiritual energy, a tall door shaped hole was carved into the stone a foot off the ground of the valley. When door shaped hole was arm deep, he cancelled the spell and started clearing some of the sand out of the way. Now standing in the doorway, he began using the spell again slowly carving away at the stone as he moved forward. After ten minutes, had carved a six-foot-long hallway, and then started angling upward.
This time, when he got to an arm's length, he stopped and exited the cliff. After dusting himself off he began to cultivate to replenish his spiritual energy. He was doing what countless generations of cultivators had done before him, using the stone cutting spell to carve out a cave dwelling. In his past, he came to back to this valley often. Sometimes to feed souls to his new ghosts, but mostly to hide from his enemies and heal his wounds. Having a more secure place to hide out if he got in trouble would be more than worth the effort.
When he had replenished his spiritual energy, he decided not to continue carving out the cave dwelling today. The spell uses a lot of his spiritual energy to use and causes his hands to go numb, he was still experiencing an annoying tingling feeling in his fingers. Tomorrow he would carve out some steps and begin carving out the main room, it would be a long process to get the cave dwelling to where he wanted it to be, but he had the time.
When the tingling in his fingers finally went away, he started looking for boars to hunt. The first group he came across numbered over three hundred, but more than half of them were piglets. Xavier chose not to kill them; they were the replacements for the ones he was killing. The next group had about a hundred, and all of them were mature. Ordering his ghosts to stand behind him, Xavier took a deep breath and released a silent scream aimed at attacking the soul.
The moment the scream was released, all of the boars jerked their heads upward and started trembling. After a few seconds they began to fall down. With a thought, the soul banner appeared in his hand, and after flowing his spiritual energy into it began to draw in the souls of the boars. Now that he had broken through to the third layer, his spiritual energy and divine sense had grown stronger and allowed him more control of the soul banner's abilities.
With the exception of a dozen or so boars at the back of the group, all of the other boars had died when their souls were shocked. For the survivors, they got to have their souls devoured by a ghost boar.