Learning from this mistake, Xavier made his third attempt on pill at a time and succeeded in making another spirit beast. This beast as well began feasting on the remains of the dead boar. Xavier's plan was to make three spirit beasts, but when his second attempt resulted in the boar dying the control plate for it shattered. Ten minutes later he had made a new control plate, and ten minutes after that a third boar was feasting on the corpse of the dead boar. Stepping away from the three spirit beasts, Xavier used the soul shocking scream to kill the remaining eleven boars. The souls were pulled into the soul banner, and bodies were moved by Second to be nearer to the three spirit beasts. This should keep them there while their bodies complete the transformation into spirit beasts.
Most spirit beasts are like body cultivators, it is their bodies that transform as they grow stronger. Only a few types of spirit beasts can cultivate spirit energy and use spells. If left alone, these boars would continue to grow strong enough that the boar hunter's spears and arrows would be useless against them in only a few months. But Xavier would never let them grow that strong or live that long.
Leaving the spirit beasts to feed, Xavier returned to camp. Now that he had completed another step of his plan, he was planning to build something as a treat to himself. Taking 3 bone ingots and a bit of work, he made a bathtub. When it was complete, he gave First and Second buckets and ordered them to fill it with water from the stream. When the tub was filled, Xavier took off his clothes and sat on the ground and called one of the ghost boars to him. After taking a deep breath, Xavier plunged his hand into the side of the boar and activated his body cultivation method. A few moments later every muscle in Xavier's body began twitching and his arms, legs, and head jerked around in small motions. When the boar greatly shrank in size and became very see through, he called over the second boar and began to use its soul energy.
He only completed his body cultivation when the second boar was almost in the same state as the first. Recalling both boars into the soul banner, he summoned two more to act as guards with First and Second. He was covered in so much sweat it looked like he had just gotten out of the bath instead of heading towards it. After using his soul flame to heat the water to a nice steamy temperature, he sat in the tub and greatly enjoyed soaking in the warm water. Washing himself in this tub felt far better than cleaning himself with a wet towel. It was still winter, and the while it wasn't snowing, it was still cold during the day and freezing during the night.
It was about midday when he finished his bath and got dressed. The jerky he had eaten earlier had worn out and after completing this stage of body cultivation he was far hungrier than normal. He didn't feel like eating anymore jerky or pork at the moment, he wanted something different. Standing by the partially frozen stream, he scanned the stream with his divine sense to search for fish. When he found one, he ordered Second to toss it on the bank. When he got eight fish he returned to camp after gutting them and roasted two fish on stakes before storing the rest for later. They weren't the biggest fish he ever ate, but they were very tasty and more importantly, they weren't pork.
After lunch, Xavier spent a few minutes figuring out what to do next. He wanted to make a soul lantern for his soul banner, but he also thought about excavating some more of his cave dwelling. The temperature was getting colder, the thick grey clouds were getting darker, and the wind had a stronger bite to it, this meant that in the next few days it would start to snow. He had plenty of experience sleeping in a tent, and sleeping in a cave dwelling when it snowed, and he preferred a cave dwelling, simply because he never had a cave dwelling collapse on him due to the weight of the snow on it.
While the cave dwelling was far from being complete, if he needed, there was enough space carved out that he could move inside anytime. So he decided on creating the soul lantern for now. To make the soul lantern, it would require about three dozen bone ingots and around half of his remaining blood ink and would stand six-feet tall and weigh several hundred pounds. It would have arrays to control its size and weight and would have space to store souls and have arrays to refine souls into pure soul energy just like the inheritance grounds. And if he could absorb enough negative energy into his soul banner, it would become the perfect place to nurture and strengthen his ghosts.
Tossing three dozen bone ingots into a pile and sat beside it. The design he was going to use for this soul lantern was simple, it had a circular base and six walls with circular stained glass like pattern, the top would be a plain lantern top with a large ring to hold it when it was shrunk down in size.
After a few moments the bone ingots were melted into a ball of white goo. Then closing his eyes, Xavier placed his hand on the goo and used his will to form the lantern. Ten minutes later a semi solid lantern with five walls was created with some leftover bone goo. Standing up, Xavier created holes for pegs in the missing section of wall. Then using some of the remaining bone goo formed wall with pegs to fit in the holes to act as a door into the interior. With the door complete, he began flowing his spiritual energy into the lantern to completely harden it. A few minutes later the soul lantern was fully hardened pale metallic white color. The only thing left to do before he got started on drawing the arrays was to form the ring handle at the top of the lantern. Placing the remaining bone goo in his storage bag, Xavier crouched down and jumped on top of the lantern and almost slipped off. The simple unadorned design for the top of the lantern had made it a smooth surface with little to no grip for him to land on, if he hadn't been able to grab the top of the lantern he would have fallen off. Creating the ring handle of the lantern was easy, it took more time to making sure the twisted metal pattern of the ring looked right before he hardened it.
Since he was already on top of the lantern, he pulled his ink and brushes began to draw the various arrays needed. Since the lantern was so big and weighted so much and the ink he was using wasn't the greatest, he needed to draw multiple arrays. On the handle, he had to draw four weight adjustment arrays and four size adjustment arrays, and dozens of each around the top of the lantern. The arrays weren't hard to draw, there were just a lot of them that needed to be draw all over the lantern. When he was done, he had drawn almost four hundred of each array before he started drawing the other necessary arrays. There were barrier arrays on the walls to keep souls inside the lantern, soul gathering arrays, soul purifying arrays, and several soul fire spell arrays. Each required from several dozen to well over a hundred, when he finished drawing all the arrays the last of the bit of day light was fading away and he was more exhausted than he had felt in a long time.
While the soul lantern was complete, it wasn't functional yet. He still needed to bath the lantern in his soul fire to get the arrays to sink inside the lantern, he also needed to use his blood to form a connection with the lantern and feed it a powerful soul to active all the arrays. But all that would have to wait for later. Xavier placed the soul lantern inside the soul banner and ate a ration pill before crawling in his bedroll for some much needed sleep.