By the end of the day the main room of the cave dwelling was mostly done, all that needed to be done was to even out the walls and ceiling. He had also made a front door for the cave dwelling out of bone ingots. He still planned to carve out three rooms and a cultivation chamber before he would call the cave dwelling complete.
The next morning was cold, and almost all the snow was gone. But when he checked in on the spirit beasts, he found that they were already eating the last of the boar corpses. He was expecting another full day before this happened. Xavier didn't know if the spirit beats just got hungrier overnight, or if they ate more because of the cold weather. But it didn't really matter, in a few hours these spirit beats would be finished eating here and begin to hunt for more food and Xavier wanted to put them down before that happened.
Xavier headed back to his cave dwelling; he needed to empty his storage bags. Soon he would have the bodies of three spirit beast, he could make better ink from their blood, he could make slightly stronger bone ingots from their bones, and their meat was more beneficial for cultivators to eat. Buring them or letting them rot would be far too much of a waste.
A few days ago, he transformed these three wild boars into spirit beasts, they were the same brown and black color as all the other wild boars now they were a dark blood red color. They had also grown wider, and a head higher than they were.
When Xavier returned, he used the soul shocking scream on the three spirit beasts. The three spirit beasts fell to the ground, but unlike normal wild boars, they were still alive but stunned, and they immediately started trying to get up. Upon command, First and Second each ran towards a spirit beast and dove inside them and began devouring its soul. As for the third spirit beast, Xavier placed his hand on the side of the beast and channeled his spiritual energy into the beast, after a few moments of deep concentration Xavier pulled his hand away from the beast holding its soul in his hand. The spirit beast's soul looked like a ball of silver liquid with hints of rainbow light shimmering on its surface.
The soul banner appeared beside Xavier and the soul lantern was ejected from within it. The soul lantern was huge compared to Xavier and its pale metallic white surface was covered with hundreds of small black array drawings. It was time to make the soul lantern into a functional treasure. For that he would need a powerful soul, a large amount of spiritual energy, and his blood to form the connection between him and the soul lantern. Opening the door to inside of the soul lantern Xavier placed the spirit beat's soul inside along with a dozen spirit stones. Closing the door, Xavier took out his knife and sliced his palm just deep enough to bleed. Placing his hand on the soul lantern, he channeled his spiritual energy into the soul lantern's many arrays. Within a few seconds all the arrays began to light up, and the spirit stones inside were completely drained and shattered into dust. Xavier began to feel a sense of weakness as his blood and spiritual energy was being drained at an alarming rate. He began to think about using more spirit stones to help him finish refining the treasure, but soon the draining feeling had stopped, and he could feel a connection with soul lantern.
There was only one step left; he used his connection to have the soul lantern absorb the beast soul. The spirit beast's soul was absorbed into the soul flame spell arrays, and within moments a small fist sized pale green flame began burning inside the soul lantern. Next, the barrier arrays drawn on the inside walls began to operate, and made the soul lantern look like it had frosted panes of glass. The soul lantern was now truly complete and fully functional treasure, capable of gathering souls and refining them into pure soul energy. It would also help to purify any contamination his ghost gained from eating the souls of his enemies.
With a thought the soul lantern shrunk down greatly in size and flew into Xavier's hand. Holding it by the ring handle Xavier looked at his new pale white soul lantern and felt pleased. But in a few days the soul flame burning with the soul lantern would draw the many array drawings on the outside of the soul lantern into itself and the pale white color would transform very dark red color. After he was done inspecting the soul lantern, he tossed it towards the soul banner and was absorbed inside the soul banner. With a thought the hundred or so wild boar souls within the soul banner were moved within range of the soul lantern and were slowly being absorbed and purified.
Storing the body of the spirit beast within a storage bag, Xavier sat down and began cultivating to replenish the large amount of spiritual energy he had just used while he waited for First and Second to finish devouring the souls of the spirit beasts. After a half an hour Second had finished devouring the soul, and five minutes later First had also finished. They were now silver colored with rainbow mist around them. But now they no longer looked as solid as they did before, they were transparent and frail looking. Storing the bodies of the spirit beasts, Xavier began walking towards his processing area.
This was the first time he had been here in several days; the area now had a dull and muted in color and an unnatural feeling to it. The moment First and Second entered this area they began to look energized instead of the frail look they just had. They had begun to feed on the negative energy produced by the arrays Xavier had created.
Xavier had First and Second kneel before him, and after taking a deep breath he then plunged his hand into First's head. After a few minutes of deep concentration, the soul energy within First began to circulate towards Xaviers hand. Soon a small transparent orb was formed inside First, and Xavier began to imprint a cultivation method for ghosts inside along with other information, before he did the same thing for Second. When he was done Xavier looked and felt weak, he had already used a lot of his spiritual energy to active the soul lantern, and now he used a large amount of his mental energy to create a core his ghosts and transmit a lot of information to them. Xavier ordered First and Second to cultivate here; after watching them sit down and begin to cultivate according to the cultivation method he gave them, he headed back to his cave dwelling. He had to leave the soul banner halfway in between and left a raven to guard the soul banner.
Even though it was still not yet noon, to Xavier the day was done. He was drained and the only thing he wanted to do was go to sleep. Tomorrow he would start the process over again; he would find a small group of wild boars and transform them into spirit beasts to harvest their souls. But instead of making a soul lantern, he would make weapons and armor for First and Second to use. The list of things he wanted to do here had a few things checked off, but the list was still long and had many things left undone. But right now, that wasn't what he wanted to think about, because he didn't want to think of anything, he just wanted to sleep.