After explaining the cultivation system, Solar Clone waved them off.
He had only wanted to show them that this world held many different cultivation paths, each designed for different beings, and to nudge their horizons a little wider. The details could come later.
As the others began to drift away, Sacral Clone suddenly spoke. "So now you're also a beast tamer in addition to being a Vyuha architect. And I'm just a Vyuha puppet‑crafter. I feel like I should branch out too, create other professions like…"
Solar Clone finished for him, lips quirking. "Like alchemist, weapon refiner, and all those roles you see in cultivation novels."
Sacral Clone nodded. "For now I'll focus on alchemy. You should focus on weapon refinement. Okay?"
"Good," Solar Clone said, then raised a finger. "But my profession name isn't 'beast tamer'. It's Sacred Beast Tamer. 'Sacred' hints at a divine or spiritual connection, not just ownership. Okay?"
"Yes, yes," Sacral Clone replied, rolling his eyes good‑naturedly.
Solar clone then turned away, already mentally returning to his unfinished work. "Okay, I'm going back to my projects."
Sacral Clone watched him go, mind buzzing with formulas, herbs, and distant forests, as the paths of Sacred Beast Tamer**, VyuhaArchitect, Puppet‑Crafter, and future Alchemist quietly began to separate and grow wider.
He had already planned to send his puppets out to gather materials—for weapon refinement, for alchemy, and for whatever other paths might appear in the future.
"First, the basics," Sacral Clone murmured. "I need to understand what each herb actually does."
He rose and extended his will. Ordinary herbs from the fields and garden trembled, then drifted toward him, roots and leaves gently wrapped in invisible force. Above his palm, clear water gathered, and with a thought he infused it with sacral essence, turning it faintly luminous.
He dropped a single herb into the floating sphere of water and kindled a small flame beneath it. The liquid began to simmer in mid‑air.
Sacral Clone focused completely, eyes half‑closed, senses spread through the mixture. He felt how the herb's internal pattern loosened under heat, how threads of some subtle quality bled into the sacral essence.
He repeated the process again and again, swapping herbs, adjusting flame, tasting a careful sip each time and observing how his body responded.
One leaf gently sped up digestion.
Another thinned and quickened the blood.
A third cooled the mind, smoothing restless thoughts into calm.
He catalogued them all—texture, scent, reaction, bodily effect—each detail neatly filed away in his supernatural memory.
Once he had a rough map of individual properties, he moved to combinations.
"Let's see what happens when similar traits overlap," he said softly.
He drew in only herbs that shared the same main effect—several that aided digestion, for example—and simmered them together in sacral essence. At first, the result was encouraging; the effect clearly strengthened. But as he kept adding "similar" herbs, he noticed something.
Some combinations pushed the effect higher, sharpening and clarifying it.
Others crowded the mixture, adding bulk without real power.
A few even blunted the result, as if their internal patterns were fighting for space.
He began to quantify it in his mind: this pair increased effectiveness by roughly twenty percent, that trio barely moved the result at all. Slowly, he identified sets of herbs that resonated with one another and those that only looked compatible on the surface.
In the end, he chose three digestion‑type herbs whose patterns reinforced rather than clashed and brewed them together. The resulting herbal soup was cleaner, stronger, and smoother than any single herb alone.
Encouraged, Sacral Clone widened his experiments—mixing different properties, layering cooling herbs with blood‑enhancing ones, pairing mind‑calming leaves with stamina‑supporting roots. He discovered not just individual functions, but how certain traits braided together to create new, more refined effects.
His mind filled to the brim with relationships, ratios, and reaction curves, yet he could recall each one with perfect clarity.
After five hours, he had mapped every ordinary herb in the fields and gardens to his satisfaction. But the work had only whetted his appetite.
"Now for the real test," he said, turning to the plants touched by Essence Flow.
The essence herbs, strengthened and warped by the Essencewell Vyuha, shimmered faintly even at a distance. He had deliberately saved them for later; without first understanding their ordinary counterparts, he wouldn't be able to see what Essence Flow had changed.
Using the same method, he isolated each essence herb, simmered it in sacral essence, and watched.
Some behaved like their mundane versions, but with effects magnified several times over—stronger circulation, deeper calm, faster recovery. Others had drifted into entirely new territory, their internal patterns mutated into unfamiliar shapes that produced strange, potent results when activated.
He noted every shift: which herbs kept their role, which ones twisted into new forms, and how Essence exposure had altered their "voices."
At the same time, he sent orders to Four puppets and told them to come. Sacral Clone etched additional arrays into their chests and heads—patterns tuned to detect faint fluctuations in Essence‑rich plant life and ordinary plants.
"You will search the mountain range first," he instructed, voice calm. "Then beyond. Catalog everything."
The puppets bowed as one and departed toward the surface.
While Sacral Clone immersed himself in herbs and elixirs, far away, Solar Clone prepared to walk his own path.