The two spirit roots, working together with their very own elemental energy to cultivate with, were surprisingly not as good as Alex might’ve expected them to be.

It wasn’t as simple as adding the scores from the two spirit roots separately to get a score for their combined usage. The interaction of the spirit roots with each other was already pulling down the result, but from what Alex noticed, the spirit roots themselves worked less well when they had to deal with other types of energy compared to their own.

That led him back to the first time he tested the Water root with no water treasure and just how bad the result had been. ’A spirit root doesn’t only deal with its own type of energy, but also with other energy in an attempt to stop it.’

That was no wonder why the result of the two spirit roots working together was much worse than a single Supreme root working alone.

Of course, just in case it was this very combination of spirit roots that was the issue, Alex moved on to another set of tests.

This time, he tested his Water root along with his Earth root. Compared to the previous combination where they had an Empower and Weaken relationship, the Water and Earth root had a Control and Ruin relationship.

Meaning, Earth tried to actively control and overwhelm anything Water tried to do, and Water tried to actively ruin the element Earth itself.

Alex could already hypothesize the outcomes based on his understanding of the elements, but he didn’t want to believe his understanding entirely until he had a reason to. So, he did the next series of tests as he went along.

As expected, considering the relationship of the two elements, the spirit roots only dragged each other down. At its best, the Water root did about as good as what it had done when it was given the most unfavorable situation with the Wood root. That was just not good enough for Alex.

The results with the Earth root weren’t even worth talking about. Since the Water root tried to actively ruin his Earth root, any presence of it, even at its weakest version, caused his Earth root to be half as good as it was on its own.

If Alex had to give it a percentage improvement based on the combination.

So far, Empowering had given the roots between 10 to 20 percent improvement.

Weakening had made the roots worse by about 10 to 30 percent at its extremes.

Control had made the roots further worse by about 20 to 50 percent at its extremes.

And Ruin actively worsened the effects of the cultivation speed by 40 to 80 percent at the extremes. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

From just testing 3 roots in 2 different sets, Alex was able to gain such a profound level of understanding that he could immediately visualize the results of every other test he did henceforth.

He still had trouble understanding the exact amount of difference it made, but as he tested more and more, he was sure to get more accurate with time.

Water and Fire had a similar relationship as Water and Earth, but in the opposite direction. So, while the Fire root became a little worse because of the Water root, the Water root became actively unusable thanks to the Fire root.

Alex wondered if any of these would improve at all should he use a specific type of cultivation technique. They probably would, but he was bound to not find out during these tests as he would have to practice using the neutral cultivation technique for the sake of maintaining the variables.

After Fire, Alex moved on to the Supreme roots. He started with the Supreme Metal root and cultivated using just the Water root.

This was the first time Alex saw a difference he hadn’t been expecting at all.

The Water and Metal root had the Weaken and Empower relationship. The Water root tried to slightly weaken the Metal root, and the Metal root tried to actively empower the Water root.

This was the same combination as the Water and Wood root, but in the opposite direction, so Alex sort of understood what the results were going to be. However, the very first test he did blew his mind as the results completely went beyond his expectations.

He tested the Metal root first since he understood what its base score was and wanted to see how much worse it would get because of the Water root. Then he saw the score.

The lowest score he received was 915.

The highest score he received was 2305.

And the average score he received was 1422.

Alex was left scratching his head as there was barely any difference between the numbers and what he had received from the Metal root all on its own. Just to be certain, he redid the test to check if the numbers would remain the same or not.

The results came almost the same once again.

The lowest score this time around was 918.

The highest score was 2298.

And the average score was 1426.

Compared to the original score when he tested the Metal root alone, Alex could be absolutely certain now that the numbers hadn’t changed in the slightest. Whatever changes he may have noticed were accidental, as proven by him repeating the same test twice.

"The Water root is failing to have any effect on the Supreme Metal root at all. Is it because of the grade?" Alex wondered. Were Supreme roots just so good that a regular root could do nothing to it?

’Is that the property of a Supreme root? Or is a root with that property considered a Supreme root?’

Alex was just beginning to realize that he actually didn’t know a lot about Supreme roots to begin with. He would have to search for some records in here to see what they said about it.

Finally, Alex ignored the results of the Metal root and focused on the Water root. Just how would the situation change when it was now being empowered by a Supreme root?