At three spirit roots, his spirit roots were seemingly much less burdened by the regular Qi than they had been when he cultivated using it for his single-root or dual-root setup. As such, when he cultivated using it, they weren’t as bad at all.

The score he received for the three was just a tad worse than the total combined score of what he gained when he cultivated the three individually. So people with this particular setup weren’t as unlucky as he suspected they were.

Alex performed a few more tests with those spirit roots by weakening one root or improving another. By doing so, he came to realize that in this scenario, where two roots were in complete opposition to the third root, it was always better to make the third root weaker. That made the first two expend less energy keeping it in check. At the same time, slightly improving the root doing the Empowering was also better. The Empowered root, however, had to be the strongest of the three to gain the most out of this combination.

Once those tests were completed, Alex compared it by doing another test where one spirit root Empowered another, both of which were in opposition to the third one.

Since Metal was not an option, he took Water, Fire, and Earth.

In this instance, with Water being the weakest and the spirit root that needed to be weakened, it was already in a better state than what he had started with last time.

The only issue in this combination was that the Fire root was slightly stronger than the Earth root, which Alex fixed afterward and got the desired result.

Testing those two particular combinations of spirit roots taught Alex enough. There were three more possible combinations in that same family, all of which required Metal, so Alex got to skip them for now.

He got to the next test, this time with two sets of roots that Empowered and Weakened each other, and one set that Controlled and Ruined.

For the first test, Alex took Water, Wood, and Fire.

Water and Wood roots Empowered and Weakened.

Wood and Fire roots Empowered and Weakened.

And Water and Fire roots Controlled and Ruined.

After doing a bunch of tests, Alex found this combination to be better than the other one.

For this, the best option one had was to make the root that was Empowered by the root that was itself Empowered the strongest. For this particular combination, Fire was Empowered by Wood, which was Empowered by Water.

The Empowering somewhat compounded, making the final root much stronger than in general. It also wasn’t Ruined by any root, which made it much better. By the end of the test, there was no doubt that this combination was always better when compared to the last one.

Once Alex was done with that, he moved on to test his Metal root, which, at the Supreme grade, should be incorrigible, but he still needed to make sure that he was correct.

He tested various combinations of 3 roots with the Metal root in various spots. Sometimes it was the Empowering root, sometimes it was the Empowered root. Sometimes it was the Ruining root and sometimes it was the Ruined root.

Throughout all those tests, however, it never dropped in the slightest at all. It always performed exactly the same. Which was annoying when it was used alongside the Earth root and was supposed to be Empowered. But it never was.

Its presence actively hindered many of the roots in fact, as it overpowered them all, especially if it Weakened, Controlled, or Ruined them. The only positive effect was when it Empowered Water, but that only improved the overall cultivation speed by just a bit.

Once Alex was done with those tests, he moved on to the other Supreme roots. As soon as Yin and Yang roots were involved, there was another dimension added to the way elements interacted with each other.

Alex tested Yang and Yin separately at first, starting with Yin, Water, and Earth.

Earth and Water were in direct opposition to each other, but Yin Empowered them both. It Empowered Water way more than Earth, however, so Water ended up stronger as a result, and since Water actively Ruined Earth, any combination where it was stronger than Earth to begin with made their cultivation sessions much more fruitful.

The Yin root of course wasn’t touched by either of the roots, so it acted just as well, but for the sake of testing, Alex replaced it with a neutral-turned-Yin root, which still performed similarly.

The improvements weren’t so great anymore, but the essence of the improvement was there.

Between Yin, Water, and Wood roots: Yin Heavily Empowered Water. Yin didn’t affect Wood. Water Empowered Wood.

So the overall result was a great improvement in general when the three were used together.

Between Yin, Water, and Metal roots: Yin Heavily Empowered Water. Yin slightly Suppressed Metal. And Metal Empowered Water.

The result of this combination was also a great improvement, more so specifically if one was cultivating using water treasures or a cultivation technique.

Between Yin, Water, and Fire roots: Yin Heavily Empowered Water. Yin Heavily Suppressed Fire. Fire Ruined Water.

This was perhaps the worst combination Alex could’ve asked for if he had to get 3 in total.

Based on these few experiments, Alex could tell how the other combinations would be if a Yin root were to be involved in any way. He tested just one combination to see if it followed his logic, and once he was satisfied, he moved on to the Yang root.

By doing the test with the Yin root, Alex pretty much already understood what the result had to be. Considering a Yang root did exactly the opposite of a Yin root, the effects also had to be reversed.

And as he thought, he was right. The results were almost entirely flipped. What was good was bad, and what was bad was good.

By the time Alex arrived at the combination of Yang, Metal, and Wood, he already understood how things were going to go. But because this was the combination of Pearl’s roots, he had to take this one of all seriously.