Since the area where the boars were culled was farther from his work area than he could control the ghosts, he planted the soul banner at the midway point and used it to extend the range of his control. When the last of the bodies was collected, First grabbed the soul banner and brought it back to Xavier.
After he was done processing the bones from yesterday's kills, instead of having the bodies of today's kills stacked up to burn, he used the stone cutting spell with one finger to carve several arrays into the wall of the half mountain. One was a small spiritual energy gathering array that would draw small amounts of spiritual energy from the surrounding areas. Normally this would make the area around the array dense with spiritual energy to make cultivating easier. The other two arrays he drew were soul collecting arrays that are meant to pull in stary soul energy. But since the spirit gathering array linked to the two soul collecting arrays to power them, the spiritual energy would slowly be contaminated and with the massive amount of ash from all the boars he had cremated acting as a medium, the spiritual energy would become negative energy.
The process was similar to how negative energy gathers at a cemetery over time, but faster. When all the arrays were carved out, he slathered ink inside the carvings. Xavier extended his arm towards the pile of purified bone ingots and with a thought an ingot flew to his hand. Using the bone controlling spell on the ingot to liquify and he willed it to flow into the carvings to seal the ink inside. Flowing his spiritual energy into the liquified bone caused it to solidify and activated the spiritual energy gathering array which activated the soul collecting arrays. Xavier then released a dozen souls of the boars he had just killed and watched as they were pulled into the soul collecting arrays.
With the arrays complete he ordered his ghosts to stack up the bodies of the boars before lighting them on fire. To keep from interfering in the transformation of normal spiritual energy to negative energy, Xavier would avoid coming to this area for a while. After collecting the two hundred something bone ingots he returned to his camp.
Waking up, Xavier spent several minutes stretching. Today he was going to spend some time carving out his cave dwelling before he started practicing alchemy. There were plenty of spirit herbs growing all over this valley, while some spirit herbs needed to make everything he wanted were missing, there was still enough to try something to enhance his strength.
While gnawing on some jerky, Xavier walked to the opening of his cave dwelling. It was full of sand, this made having solid footing difficult and was annoying because it got everywhere. The solution was easy, he would use the Earth Mover spell, it was one of the oldest spells known to cultivators. In the dawn of cultivation, anyone who could use this spell was considered a powerhouse that couldn't be offended. Many thousands of years later, it was a simple spell every cultivator knew how to use and was mostly used for farming spirit herbs. After activating the spell, all the sand flew out of the cave dwelling and was flung in the direction of the stream before falling to the ground.
Now that the dwelling was cleaned, it was time to make it dirty again. He started carving a few steps into the sloping stone before carving upwards. After carving the twentieth step, he was now a dozen feet off the ground and was ready to start carving the main room, but he stopped because his hands were aching. He would have liked to continue, but if he did, he wouldn't be able to use his hands for the rest of the day. After stepping out of the dwelling he used the Earth Mover spell to clean the sand out of the dwelling and remove the sand on his body and in his clothes.
A couple of hours of cultivating and his hands were back to normal, so he got up and started walking around the valley gathers large amounts of spirit herbs. Soon he would be using a spell he was unfamiliar with, while using a technique he was unfamiliar with, all while using an alchemy process he was unfamiliar with, so he wanted to gather more for any accidents he had. Within an hour he had collected enough spirit herbs to make several dozen attempts and headed back to camp.
Sitting near the fire, Xavier pulled out the crude alchemy cauldron and the handwritten manuals from the inheritance of the Green Valley sect. Whenever he had time, he would study these manuals to familiarize himself with this alchemy process. He had long since memorized every word of the cultivation technique, the various spells, and the alchemy recipes and techniques, but felt a sense of comfort reading them again.
Tossing in required spirit herbs in the required amount into the cauldron, he began to flow his spiritual energy according to the fire spell in the manual. Xavier's hand began to glow a reddish orange color and the air around his fingers started to distort from the heat. After a few moments he pressed his hands against the array on the cauldron. The array began to glow in an uneven way, this indicated that the array wasn't drawn with good ink and would after a while breakdown and become useless. His best guess was that the array would fail sometime after its fifteenth and thirtieth use, and the array would need to be redrawn to use again.
With a very careful application of his spiritual energy, the spirit herbs in the cauldron began to have their medicinal properties extracted. After boiling the liquid for several minutes it became thick and syrupy. Taking out a jar and a soup ladle, he began to transfer the mixture into the jar. Away from the heat of the cauldron the mixture turned into a waxy green solid. This was a medicine that was meant to be smeared into wounds to stop bleeding. It was also one of the easiest recipes in the manuals and was meant to an easy way to take the first steps into learning alchemy.
The spell wasn't hard to learn, he had plenty of experience learning low level spells like this. And now that he had used it with this different style of alchemy and got a feel for it, he was ready to start making some pills for cultivation. He was also thinking of plans to replace this cauldron with a stronger one, and with a better drawn array. The diagram for the array was in the manuals, there were three different versions. The one on the cauldron was the simplest version and could be applied to a normal cast iron cauldron but wasn't very efficient and was prone to damage to the array and to the cauldron. The second and third versions of the array required treasure grade cauldrons, with the third requiring several other arrays to strengthen the cauldron further.
As he was cleaning out the cauldron for his next attempt, he was planning how to make a cauldron out of refined bone ingots. Two ingots would provide the right amount of material, and the ink he had would work for drawing the arrays plus several extra he knew, but the stronger array and the several strengthening arrays would increase the amount of spiritual energy needed to operate the cauldron. He could use spirit stones to help make up for his lack of spiritual energy until he reached the 5th layer, and he could rely on the power of his cultivation. But for the next few days he would be using the crude cast iron cauldron.