3D TERRAIN CAVES

I've been messing around with blender and libgdx doing 3d stuff, I'm trying to code a basic 3d engine for future projects. The first part I'm tackling is terrain, I've made a few decisions on how I'd like it to work:
Terrain divided into smaller chunks that connect to each other, loaded depending on the player/camera's position - similar to the elder scrolls games.
3d meshes rather than just heightmaps to allow for overhangs and tunnels built into the actual terrain. (heightmap based stuff would probably be a helpful learning experience too though.)
I haven't been able to find much information online about how to do this though. Does anybody know of literature that goes indepth into these topics, source code would be very helpful too.
Also, probably the wrong subreddit for this, but information on blender workflow when dealing with large connected terrain would be helpful too - working on parts seperately and making them connected at the edges seamlessly and/or working on larger parts and automatically splitting them into the chunks I need.
Once I understand the basics I can probably work the rest out for myself but there doesn't seem to be much information online that I can find.