Cultivating Plants

Evolution, by definition, was chaos. But people failed to understand chaos. There was predictability in probability, order in mayhem, logic in nonsense. One just had to know how to process it.

Aloe had filled him in most of the aspects of Evolution, but Xochipilli had discovered many laws on his lonesome. If one ignored the monsters that wandered the face of Khaffat, only three people had actual knowledge of how to perform Evolution, and one of them was dead.

The Prince of Flowers had massive respect for the figure of Karaim Ayad, a sort of silent master that he had never been able to interact with as they were separated by centuries, for he established many of the foundations of Evolution. Whether out of nostalgia or a real attempt at education, Aloe had rewritten the booklet that started her journey into the vital arts: Karaim's cultivation technique.

The booklet wasn't anything to write home about, and it also had many wrong details and assumptions, but it also contained… curious information. Aloe hadn't seemed to notice, but Karaim described how to externally infuse oneself. Or rather mentioned it, as the man frustratingly left it out as he didn't consider it a worthwhile endeavor. And from what he described… maybe it wasn't.

Unlike Nurture's stances or normal Infusion's external infusions, the vitality needed to activate the self-external infusion worked differently. Stances weakened one's physical capabilities to boost one in specific, and whilst external infusions didn't do that and simply boosted that selected capability, it still shared the same pool of vitality. That was something he had personally checked by shaping his longevous perennity external infusion into a second stance. If he wielded two strength stances, his strength would remain the same instead of duplicating, but if he switched one of those for the sense stance, for example, then his senses would become far more acute, yet his strength would be cut in half. That was to be expected, even logical, one might say, but self-external infusions didn't seem to work like that.

This was just a personal theory as he had failed to apply a self-external infusion to himself, and he didn't exactly have the time to try, but Xochipilli thought that a self-external infusion might half one's maximum vitality instead of the other physical attributes. Anyone with minimal knowledge of vital arts could tell this was atrocious as halving one's maximum – or even current – vitality would half EVERY physical attribute, so it made sense that Karaim considered it not worthwhile, except for very niche cases and vitality amounts.

Surely there was a discrete mathematical equation that would describe the optimal vitality quantities to perform a self-external infusion, but Xochipilli had too much on his plate to find it. Maybe at another time… he thought to himself.

These months were a golden age for the vital arts, even if all of this knowledge was contained in his mind. He could do only so much in a single day, and after recruiting more dryads to his cause and teaching them the forced growth flowing stance technique, he didn't even need to work all day long in the plantation and the hybridization of evolutions. Which was a whole other topic because, for some heaven-forsaken reason, evolutions could hybridize even if they had nothing to do with each other biologically speaking. Modern biology and botany had taught him that only plants – and whatnot – with the same genus could hybridize, and he himself had checked that, but evolution ignored that fact.

To a degree.

Not all evolutions produced hybrids, and not all hybrids were… capable of sustaining prolonged lives. They were like products of several generations of incest, except that the phenomenon might be replicated with a single generation of hybridization or crossbreeding.

Evolution and its derivatives, by definition, were chaos.

The truth was, he was tired. Too many months with little progress and only theories and failed experiments. Whilst not at his wit's end, Xochipilli was… burned out. He needed more, of everything, to accomplish his goal. But what he got from Josephine's lessons and the garden he gifted to the dryads wasn't enough. He felt like he was losing his identity.

The only thing he could call his was the search for the evolution that was the cornerstone of the dryads' existence, and someone could easily point out that such search wasn't his, but Aloe's.

No one pointed that out.

Xochipilli's body was slumped on his stool. By now his passive dexterity was so enhanced that his body could act not that differently from malleable creatures like jellyfish, or malleable substances like jelly. He did lecture Shinobiyorutsurai from time to time when she sprawled herself on the ground as she unraveled her body, but he understood why she did that. There was a relaxing liberation of collapsing one's body and just not caring about anything else, not even your well-being.

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As he remained static and flexed on the stool like a draped cloth, his body subconsciously kept funneling vitality into birch seeds. It was muscle memory by this point, a mechanical gesture he kept performing not dissimilar from breathing.

His reserves couldn't be topped off; that was one truth he lived by.

But his duties weren't over yet. Mujanalmuraqib, one of the first named dryads – the name being in Asayn was clue enough – had come back with more specimens for him to try.

"These are the ones I found in the eastern Qiraji," the big-eyed dryad informed. "Considering that region is still desertic, I hold hopes that one of these seeds might be the one you are looking for."

Mujanalmuraqib was a curiosity amongst all dryads – even more so – as she was the only one that was… airborne. The dryad boasted long arms with feather-like protrusions made of palm tree leaves, and once she took a decent stream of air, she was able to glide with enough speed and potency that it seemed like she was capable of true flight. Beyond having those wing-like arms and being overall skinny enough to support flight, the only other characteristic about the dryad was her eyes which were as big as fists and looked like the composite eyes of insects, even if she was still composed from vegetable matter.

Xochipilli groaned and straightened his body upon listening to her words. His body creaked and crunched with wet sounds that might have induced nausea in other people, but beyond being used to it himself, he felt no pain from the gestures.

"Thanks for your help, Mujana." Most, if not all, dryads absolutely despised not being called by their full name as that was the name that their mother had given them. That was not the case with Mujanalmuraqib as she enjoyed having it shortened because it sounded cuter.

As previously stated, the winged dryad was a curiosity among curiosities.

With her thin, branch-like digits, Mujanalmuraqib deposited the seeds she had talked about on the laboratory's counter. There were many from the perspective of a small pile, yet infinitesimal compared to all the plants that existed out there. Not even a grain of sand in the desert.

The Prince of Flowers sighed because he didn't suppose that this new batch would bear any fruit, but he didn't voice those concerns aloud. It was a horrible way to jinx himself, and one thing he maintained from his Tecolatan education and culture was its superstition.

Even though he was still shoving unheavenly amounts of vitality into the pot of birch seeds, which was almost completely filled with evolved ones by now thanks to yet another technique that he had learned was evolution by proxy that allowed him to evolve nearby beings, he still had more than enough vitality available to try to evolve the seeds.

He performed the several steps Aloe had highlighted to maximize success by giving the seeds the necessary environment for all possible alignments to manifest. These were crude tools he had haphazardly assembled – as he doubted such procedures even worked – such as shining a Myriad light directly to the seed or trying to evolve it inside a dark box. Many alignments still didn't have procedures set in stone, and the one he personally came up with was one for Chaos. It was the incredibly elaborated process of… trying to evolve it again. It had yet to work, but if it was chaos as he understood it, it made sense to try to play with statistics and flip the metaphorical coin several times.

The druid went through all these seeds one by one, even if he could evolve them all at once with ease if he extended his vitality outward with the flowing stance – this technique wasn't his but Aloe's – but he liked the methodical quest for innovation that was checking individual seeds. It was repetitive, but it required a minimal mind stimulus that kept him focused.

Mujanalmuraqib calmly observed him with her colossal eyes deprived of eyelids that would have infused nightmares in many unwary children as she embraced her own body. The gesture made her look as if she was wearing some sort of dress as the leaves from her wings formed a bell outline not that different from a summer dress.

The process was mechanical and silent, Xochipilli could have engaged in conversation with the dryad, but at some point, he became like them, without stimuli he wouldn't mouth any words.

Then, a suction.

One of the seeds he was testing adhered to his skin by the force of Evolution as his vitality rushed out of his body as the seed greedily drank it. Even then, Xochipilli didn't become alerted. He had many successful evolutions by now – though that didn't mean they were worthwhile ones – so he knew not to get his hopes high. The seed had needed a bit of vitality to evolve but not that much, only around one hundred Haya.

Calmly, he cut one of the potted Aloe Veritas he had nearby and inspected the text that was being written on it.

Violently, he jumped out of his stool, launching the poor seat at neck-breaking speeds and transforming it into a myriad of furious splinters that bombarded the laboratory as it collided with the wall.

"Mujana! List! Now!" He shouted bombastically in short words, unable to form sentences.

The winged dryad panicked slightly upon being shouted at, but she quickly recomposed and took out a clipboard that she had been hiding inside her arm-wings.

"T-that seed was… uhm…" Mujanalmuraqib trembled as she read the contents of the clipboard. It was an inventory of the seeds she had brought. "From a lithops, also known as rock plants, a type of succulent."

"It always comes down to succulents, huh?" Xochipilli pulled his mane backward and let out a high-pitched giggle.

"Is this it, Prince of Flowers?" The winged dryad asked with the clipboard still on hand.

"Yes, Mujana," he pushed the veritas leaf to her. "It is the evolution we have been looking for."

The contents of the parchment-like succulent read:

Species: Heartgrowth

Sobriquet: Synergic Symbiont

Description: A member belonging to the Corputumentia family, their species is known for their ability to mimic organs and complement the body of their host.

Alignment: Life, Chaos