A Long Night.

He needed to leave this place and leave as little traceable tracks as possible. This wasn't hard to do, it would just take time. He headed towards the closest main street, once there he walked on the snowless street in full view of everyone there in the opposite direction to his house before walking down an alley. The he jumped onto the roof of a building began moving along the roof tops in a different direction. After wandering around for another hour he arrived home in the opposite direction he left.

Xavier entered his home and stripped off his wet clothes and sat by the fire. Throwing a log onto the fire, he began to think of what was going to happen. 

In an hour or two at the most the shopkeeper would find out about the death of his attendant. He would first consider if the attendant died from someone he could offend, or he would order his other attendants to track him down. The first option would buy him till tomorrow before the shopkeeper would try to find him, and he would be gone before the shopkeeper arrived at his door. The second option would have the attendants trying to track him down for a few hours before giving up. Then the shopkeeper would ask around about him, it wouldn't take long to find a trainee that was out shopping and not training. In that case, he should be expecting company before the sun goes down. 

Either way, tonight was going to be a sleepless night of meditation. If he was stronger, he could just kill the shopkeeper without having to worry about making waves within the cult. But for now, it was better to not to make a scene and focus on his plan. By the time he returned home again he would not have to worry about anything or anyone in the cult. 

Once he had warmed up, be pulled the items he bought earlier out of his storage bag and began to sort everything into piles according to their uses. When he was done, he put them back in the storage bag. Now if he needed something he could pull it from his storage bag without having to sort through a bag or cauldron. 

Now the only thing missing from his storage bag were the clothes that were being cleaned. With nothing else to do, Xavier began cultivating followed by cultivating his Qi. After several cycles of this, the sun had gone down and he noticed the first person sneaking around the outside of his house. They were standing outside the front door trying to listen through the door. Xavier recognized him, it was the attendant with the mop. The shopkeeper didn't waste time finding him.

Extending his divine sense as far as it could, he found another person near the back wall. There might be more but finding these two was his current limit. But this was fine, if they were foolish enough to get this close to him, all the better.

The ghost orb appeared in his hand, and a small hungry ghost hovered above it. Standing up he moved quietly towards the door, whether the attendant heard him or not didn't matter to Xavier, the moment he got close to the door he used his cultivation to crush the attendant to the ground. The attendant head was pressed against the door not knowing what was happening. Xavier held the ghost orb next to the door and urged the little ghost to attack.

The little ghost was the lowest of the low and could barely be considered a ghost soldier, it had trouble moving far or fast and is unable to fight. To grow stronger it needs to feed on souls, it does this by entering the bodies of humans or animals and devouring their souls. After feeding on a couple of souls the ghost becomes the size of a human baby and begin hunting on its own. Normal people cannot see or hear ghosts, only those with spiritual perception and have the ability to become cultivators can see them. But if a ghost gathers enough soul energy, it can go from a non-corporal state to having a semi-physical form that can be seen everyone.

The little ghost flew through the door and entered the body of the attendant and began devouring his soul. a minute of the door rattling and it was over, the attendant was dead, and the little ghost stumbled through the door now three times its previous size. As it stumbled its way towards the back wall, Xavier opened the door and collected the dead body into one of the other storage bags. 

The attendant guarding the back of the house was awaiting orders to attack the person in the house or to retreat back to the shop. But felt a cold sensation in his body then fell to the ground unable to move. The little ghost had jumped into the attendant's body, but without Xavier to crush him to the ground, the little ghost released ghost poison, before it began to feed. When it left the attendant's body it was almost the size of a human baby.

Sitting down Xavier closed his eyes and focused on the ghost orb in his hand and was able to see through the little ghost's eyes. The dark night sky was replaced with a thousand shades of grey, looking around Xavier saw nothing. The little ghost began to move around, it wasn't stumbling as much as it had been but wasn't walking absolutely steady either. After the little ghost moved to the front left of the house, it was a human shaped collection of rainbow-color mist. When the little ghost got closer, Xavier could make out clothes similar to the clothing of the attendants. 

This was the standard tactics of the cult, a three-person team observing a target. Except this third person was out of position, he couldn't see the person at the front door, or the person at the back of the house. He had instead chosen to hide in the shadows in an alleyway watching the road. If he had done it right, he would have seen the first attendant being attacked and ordered an attack or warned the attendant at the back. Instead, he didn't see them die and couldn't see the little ghost standing next to him. The attendant felt a cold sensation and fell over unable to move.

Xaiver walked out the front door, first he went to the back of the house and collected the corpse, the headed to the alley with the third attendant. The little ghost left the attendant's body and entered the ghost orb to conserve energy. The little ghost had followed Xavier's orders and only paralyzed that attendant, but the ghost poison flowing through his body would kill him in a few hours. Mortals had no ability to resist this type of poison. Xavier didn't let the little ghost devour his soul for one reason, he wanted to extract his soul for a new ghost soldier. 

After extracting the attendant's soul and refining it into a soul orb, he collected the body and returned to his house. He was expecting a long night, with more uninvited guests. He began cultivating to replace the spirit energy that he had used, when that was done, he cultivated to grow stronger while using his divine sense to scan for people near his house at regular intervals, he even had the little ghost patrol outside. Just before sunrise the little ghost alerted Xavier the someone had come close to his house. Using the ghost as a scout, he found four people in a box formation, all within visual range of each other. Not that it mattered, none of them saw the little ghost approach them, or knew how they were poisoned. There was no disturbance to alert the others, and no screams for help, just silence. 

After the little ghost paralyzed the first three, Xavier allowed to devour the soul of the fourth person. He walked to the three that had been paralyzed and allowed the new ghost soldier to devour their souls and collected their bodies. He had filled a storage full of dead bodies and had to start using the third bag for the rest. 

Looking at the rising sun, Xavier figured this would be the last batch sent for a while. By the time they got here and wasted their time watching his house until they realized he wasn't there, he would have long left the city.