Xavier woke up well past sunrise and was greeted with a scene of pure white as he stepped out of his tent. It had snowed during the night, there wasn't a lot of snow, but it was enough to change his priorities a bit. Instead of carving out his cave dwelling once a day, he would do it multiple times a day. By the end of the day, he wanted to at least have the fireplace completed.
But first he needed to check on the three spirit beasts. It wasn't hard to find them, they had barely moved since yesterday. Walking towards them, Xavier heard the cawing of forest ravens. Half a dozen ravens had come to help the spirit beasts clean up the remains of their former comrades. Xavier ordered First and Second to attack the ravens and less than a minute later the half a dozen ravens were paralyzed with soul poison. After wringing their necks, Xavier absorbed their souls into the soul banner and stored their bodies in his storage bag. These ravens were huge, each one would provide at least two meals. With the addition of the raven souls, Xavier was one step closer to being able to make the flying treasure he had designed on the carriage ride here, and he now had better ghosts for scouting.
Moments later one of the ghost boars escorting Xavier was recalled into the soul banner and a raven flew out of the soul banner and landed on a nearby tree branch. Closing his eyes, Xavier connected with the raven and used its eyes to look at himself. He glowed a dark swirling grey color and the ghosts were a dull black color, while the spirit beasts glowed a blood red color, and the spirit herbs all around them glowed green. He could now have the raven look for items with spiritual energy in them along with any other thing he needed to find.
Opening his eyes returned his normal vision. Looking around, the place where the spirit beasts began eating the corpses of the boars were now small pits. The spirit beasts had eaten the flesh and bones of the boars and ate some of the blood-soaked dirt before moving on to new corpses. In a little less than twenty-four hours they had eaten a complete corpse, and in three days they would finish these corpses and begin to hunt for more. But before that would happen, Xavier was going to kill them and allow First and Second to feed on two of the spirit beasts souls. This would allow them to breakthrough from mortal rank ghost soldiers to true ghost soldiers and open up their ability to cultivate negative energy to become stronger. The third soul would be used to complete the soul lantern.
When he first completed the inheritance and created his first ghost soldiers, he mistakenly thought that because mortals couldn't see or harm ghosts that he was invincible. That lasted until he fought his first cultivator, because cultivators can see ghosts and can harm ghosts, and can even destroy them. If it wasn't for his four decades of martial arts training, he would have died in that first fight instead of barely escaping with severe injuries. The inheritance didn't mention the differences in grades of ghosts, or how to make them stronger, that was something he only learned when he entered the Soul Controlling Sect. That knowledge was intentionally left out as a test to weed out the weak and foolish and making sure only the strongest and wisest make it to the sect alive.
This time he knew better. He used pills to create spirit beasts to allow his ghosts to break through. He created an area where negative energy could be created through arrays and the ashes of many dead boars. Soon his ghosts would be transformed and begin cultivating and he would make them armor and weapons making them even more powerful. This time around when he fought, he would be the one injured and trying to run away.
After he was finished checking on the spirit beasts, he returned to the cave dwelling and began carving out more of the interior. When he ran low of spiritual energy, he stopped to cultivate to replenish his spiritual energy and to allow his hands to regain feeling before starting again. After cultivating for the third time, he began to create the cave dwellings fireplace. Even with angling the spell so the sand fell behind him, it was a dirty job that required frequent stops to carve foot holds in the side of the chimney for him to climb. When he reached the right height, the chimney went forward at a slight downward angle instead of continuing upwards to keep the rain out. Using his finger to carve out a groove around the exit, he used part of a bone ingot to create a grate to keep birds out. And using some ink, he drew a small energy gathering array along with several other small arrays to keep bugs out but allow smoke to pass.
When his hands stopped aching from using that spell so much today, he stepped out of the cave and found it was snowing. Unlike the light dusting of snow he woke to this morning, the snowflakes being he could see in range of the luminous stone where huge and seemed unending. He was expecting at least two feet of snow to fall during the night. Xavier packed everything but the tent into his storage bags and brought them inside the cave dwelling, from now on he would be living inside. It felt similar to the inheritance room, not warm but not cold, but even without a door it was warmer inside than outside in the snow.
Xavier ordered a raven to sit on a branch of one of the trees near the entrance of the cave dwelling as a look out, he ordered First to stand at the entrance of the cave, while Second stood at the top of the stairs. He didn't want any animals to have the same idea as him about getting out of the snow and into the cave dwelling. He knew from the many times he was here before that this valley had large predators, bears, wolves, large cats, and several kinds of snakes large and small. Because it was winter he didn't have to worry about snakes and was safe from most bears, but wolves and large cats were still very much a concern and the reason he always had his ghost guard him while he was paying attention to other things.
Once his bed roll was set up, he decided to light a fire in the fireplace. But before that he used finger to carve out a groove on both sides of the fire box of the fireplace. Then taking a bone ingot, he created a grate that could slide in the groove to act as a grill for cooking. When the fire was lit, the cave dwelling started to feel warm and comfortable, and with a chunk of pork roasting over the fire the cave dwelling felt a bit like a home to Xavier. And for the first time since he came here, Xavier had a peaceful night's sleep.
The large amount of snow he expected had fallen during the night but was being melted but the rain the was now falling. Walking in slush was not something Xavier liked doing, but luckily the only thing he needed to do outside was check on the spirit beasts. When that was done, he retreated inside and started carving out his cave dwelling.