Now that I had successfully created 4 Pots of Inner Energy Blood, I was ready to move on to the next phase of my plan.

I could attempt to create Inner Energy Weapons, but I had neither the patience nor the blood quantity I needed to make a decent amount of them.

I decided to try to craft smaller, more valuable Items with what I had.

First I went for the creation of another healing potion, this time instead of Mana Blossoms, I would use the Inner Energy Blood.

This time I started out by mixing large amounts of Clay Powder, Charcoal, Bright Plant, Experts Yew, and Clerical Root.

I set the powder mixture to the side and partly filled a clay pot with water.

I got one of the pots full of Inner Energy Blood and poured half of it into the pot full of water.

Almost immediately I dumped in the powder mixture and started to stir away.

After some time the liquid mixture remained at a steady brown color with a bit of a glow.

It wasn’t the most appealing or appetizing color, but all that mattered was its effect.

As long as it had a good effect it didn’t matter how it looked.

I made a small cut to my thumb with my Inner Energy Axe.

I made sure not to Inject Inner Energy into it, as I didn’t want to cause an unwanted accident on myself, and ruin all the progress I had made thus far.

I proceeded to pour the new Liquid over my thumb, immediately I felt a soothing sensation, as well as an almost hot sensation enveloping my hand.

Soon the wound started to close up, confirming to me that combining the Clerical Root with the right mixture of Ingredients and special energy, had a good chance of making effective healing substances.

Another wonderful effect I noticed about this particular Liquid, was that it seemed to replenish the amount of Inner Energy I had within me in a safe manner.

So this Liquid mixture served not only as a healing substance, but also as an energy replenishing substance.

The amount of invaluable substances I was creating, despite my lacking knowledge, was just getting ridiculous.

I felt like if an Alchemist, Chemist, or Apothecary found out what kind of success I was having, they might want to strangle me to death.

After my successful Experiment I took note of the process and results and moved on to my next project.

Although the Healing Substance experiment worked out, after weeks of familiarizing myself with Inner Energy, and listening to Yupow’s wisdom about it, I realized Inner Energy was much too different from Mana.

For that reason I was worried my streak of success would end with my next crafting attempt.

I wanted to make a Buffing Item that was similar to my previous creation, “Purple Magic Senses Seal”, except with Inner Energy.

An Apothecary Clan in the City already sold and exported another similar item, which I had gotten my hands on through a duel victory, Martial Eye Sensitivity Salve, but after trying some of it out I wasn’t too impressed.

It was definitely a great Item but all it did was make your sight, hearing, and feeling of touch, a few levels more sensitive, by directly causing a physical biological reaction to your body, and its length of duration couldn’t exactly be said to be too long.

My Buffing Item was superior in that it lasted longer, had essentially the same buffs, except better, and also allowed you to sense and see your surrounding Magical Energy.

Every day when I went out to the Market people would ask me about my “Purple Magic Papers”, as they called it, but seeing as the magical materials they required weren’t so readily available, I actually hadn’t had the chance to make more.

I only had a few left that I was planning to use for myself just in case I needed such an item in my future travels.

But Inner Energy was much more readily available to me, especially now that I had created Inner Energy Blood.

If I could somehow replicate a similar buffing effect as the purple papers, but with Inner Energy, I could create an Item that could become the staple of the City even more so than Eye Sensitivity Salve.

The big problem was that big “IF” word.

Mana in a way had a mind of its own; causing phenomena in the physical world and inside a person's body was almost a given, the question was whether one could create a beneficial phenomena.

The effect of the Purple Senses Seal was something I came upon through pure chance alone, as I had no Idea why such, effect causing, magical energy gravitated towards the person that ripped the paper, or why the magical energy within the paper caused such an effect.

My only hypothesis was that it had something to do with the innate traits of Mana, interacting with the bone powder within the powder mixture I had created.

Whether I could recreate the same effect with Inner Energy, was doubtful to me.

As I had noticed that Inner Energy was almost the complete opposite of Mana, hardly ever reacting too much, stealthily existing throughout nature, never really physically manifesting in a natural way as far as I knew, and hard to sense and control even when it was inside the body.

It's only advantage over Mana was that its passive nature made it a more natural energy for humans to interact with compared to Mana, which was very damaging and even deadly to the human body, if special training, methods, and techniques weren’t used.

But even then that could only be said about it in small quantities, as Inner Energy became a lot more volatile the higher the concentrations there was, apparently even more so than Mana, hence the dilemma Practitioners faced, that their counterparts the Magons had already overcome.

I started by gathering the bones of common animals I had, and grinding them into dust with a stone mortar.

The process was quite arduous but eventually I got the amount of bone powder that I wanted.

Immediately I got a portion of one of the pots with Experts Yew, Grounds Will Tree, and Bright Plant Powder mix, and combined both powders together in a clay pot.

Thereafter I slowly grabbed one of the pots full of Inner Energy Blood and slowly started to pour some in the powder pot, so I could maintain its powder form and not create a liquid.

I would pour a good amount of it in and wait for some time before continuing.

I noticed the powder started to change color in a profound way as I waited for the blood to dry out and take on a powder-like state.

After repeating the same process multiple times It eventually got to a state where I felt like if I added anymore blood I would just make a liquid, and although trying a substance like that piqued my interest, I felt like a powder substance was more convenient at the moment.

The powder gained a yellow brown color that, similar to the blood and healing potion, projected a faint glow.

I knew the true color of raw inner energy was Silver, after witnessing Yupow and Limen condense large amounts of it to where it became visible to the human eye.

I figured the color change was due to the blood and clay interacting with the energy, as well as each crafted item's material make up.

I had bought an exaggerated amount of letter writing paper from the City’s General Goods Store that actually only cost me 1 gold coin.

Paper wasn't expensive, about a bronze coin for a pack of 100 sheets, so in total I had gotten about one hundred thousand sheets of paper.

Luckily paper didn’t take up that much space or else i'm sure Yupow would’ve certainly said something.

The organic composition of the paper Volunterra made, made it the most cost effective material I could use for my plan.

I grabbed a sheet of paper and started to carefully pour powder right at its center.

After I had poured a good amount of the powder I stopped pouring and waited.

Unfortunately after a long time of waiting there was no result.

Finally I failed in one of my attempts. I couldn’t really complain, up to this point I really had been too lucky in my projects.

I removed the powder from the paper, and noticed that the color of the paper had changed in the area in which the powder had been placed.

There was energy in the paper, but the energy that the paper had absorbed was so faint I could barely feel any Inner Energy.

But that observation had given me an Idea.

I filled up one of the compartments of the wood and clay bath fully with one of the pots of Inner Energy Blood, and once I did so, I submerged within it a tied up stack of 500 papers.

I left it there for an Hour and after some time took the papers out of the bath.

Paper was good at absorbing liquid so all the papers had already taken a blood red color from being inside the bath.

Because the blood was already mixed with Bright Plant I could already sense that there was Inner Energy within the papers, so in a way I had already achieved success.

I grabbed one of the papers and ripped it in half, and other than my sensing of escaping Inner Energy, nothing happened.

Even though it was cool that the papers could hold Inner Energy, the amount of energy they could hold inside them was almost not worth mentioning, as the paper was cheap material to begin with; that there was no effect after the paper was ripped in half was very disappointing to me.

I had now experienced my second failure in my experimenting plans.

Working with Inner Energy was harder than working with Mana, it was as if I had to find a way to instruct the Inner Energy what to do, or else it wouldn’t do anything, whereas with Mana as long as I tinkered with its effects I was bound to find something useful.

Somewhat expecting the lackluster result, I grabbed onto one of the dunked papers and poured the Inner Energy Bone powder on it.

After a while I noticed a reaction.

Slowly but surely the powder started to disappear and embed itself into the paper.

Soon the powder was mostly gone and the paper took on the yellow brown color of the powder.

I was excited, I had determined that just like how the blood needed help with auxiliary ingredients in order to be able to hold and retain Inner Energy, so too, the paper needed help in being able to guide and absorb the Inner Energy Properties of the powder.

With the Magical Powder that wasn’t an issue, since Magic in a physical state was just so reactive.

But that wasn’t the case with Inner Energy, when working with it I had already noticed a pattern, that I had to have large condensed amounts of Inner Energy, and a clear medium to serve as path of travel for the Inner Energy, or else there would be no reaction or effect. I grabbed the new paper and ripped it in half, a cloud-like puff of energy came out, then it turned into some peculiar shapes that looked like those of animals, and after heading off into a random direction the energy dispersed.

I had gotten closer but it still wasn’t the result that I wanted.

I made another one of the Yellow Papers, except this time when I poured the powder I spread it out more evenly throughout its surface.

As I had intended, the powder got absorbed by the blood soaked paper quicker than it had done so before.

After it absorbed the powder and turned yellow, I grabbed onto the paper again and ripped it in half, this time I immediately put my face right in front of the released energy and performed a basic Inner Energy breathing exercise, to relieve some of the discomfort I immediately felt.

Soon the effects of the paper were evident to me.

Suddenly I could see that the world was full of Inner Energy all around me.

Jumping in and out of reality, flowing out of my breath, up in the skies, and down in the ground, streaks of silver, bronze, and gold could be seen all around.

My senses were more acute as well, I felt like I was so in tune and focused with the inside and outside of my body, that I felt like I had become one with the world.

It was a wonderful feeling.

I started to do some of the Inner Energy training I had learned from Yupow, and suddenly many of the questions that had lingered on my head about Inner Energy instantly vanished.

Feeling Inner Energy was one thing, but seeing it at this level was another reality altogether.

The world of Inner Energy had opened up to me, every time I took a breath I would take the Inner Energy of my surroundings, but simultaneously new Inner Energy would be created at the seams of my nose, and all throughout my body.

When I closed my Eyes I could visualize the raging lake of Inner Energy within my abdomen as it revolved, accumulated, and spread throughout my body.

I could also see the Inner Energy that was being released and absorbed into my body, from the food I had eaten in the morning.

All kinds of mechanisms, routes, and phenomena that I had yet to fully understand were present before my eyes.

With each breath I took, the world only got brighter and brighter.

Now this was a buffing item!

I had achieved success in creating my intended effect, but I didn’t like that it was difficult to direct that effect to the intended user.

Again it was like I had to hold the hands of the Inner Energy and guide it to its destination.

I had thought about how I had created the healing liquid with Inner Energy and hardly even struggled.

I pondered on why that was the case?

Eventually the Clerical Root and its effects came to my mind.

The root was the main ingredient I focused on when creating a healing liquid, as it was well known for its healing properties.

Those properties themselves became the guiding path that the Inner Energy took, henceforth easily becoming a powerful healing substance.

In this case I needed something that would instruct the Inner Energy to buff the intended user, without so much hassle.

After some time an idea popped into my head.

I made another yellow paper, and this time before I ripped it, I spit into my hand and slathered it all over the paper.

Thereafter I ripped it in half, and sure enough after the energy cloud appeared, I saw the energy take form and head directly to me.

The effects of the previous paper were still in place, and although I felt a slight increase in sensitivity, there wasn’t much of a change to my state.

I now knew the effects of the papers didn’t stack.

But after such great results I had no right to complain, I had achieved success, and only after a couple failures, and best of all I now had gained a new understanding on how to properly “Inner Energy Craft”.

I decided to call the Item “Yellow Inner Force Seal”.