The difficulty with alchemy lay not only in the acquisition of ingredients and process of refining them, but also in the development of recipes. This is considered to be the hardest portion of the Alchemic Way, or Dao. Most recipes have been around for many hundreds or even thousands of years, with most 'new' ones being mere improvements or modifications to pre-existing formulas. It still remains a fact that those who make those improvements on these recipes are extremely talented or lucky, and are often touted as geniuses.
In reality, the true geniuses are those who make a recipe that is so far removed from those already existing that it warrants being called a completely different product. The founder of Merri's ruined sect was one such genius. His claim to fame being the Healing Gel. Healing products, while not really rare, are definitely hard to use, often requiring hours or even days to take effect and may not be effective depending on the wound. This gel was different in that it was almost 100% effective and started acting on contact with the wound.
Unknown to everyone, including herself, Merri was also talented to the point of being that level of genius.
The condition for joining that sect and learning the recipe of the Healing Gel was that she would be unable to divulge that recipe. Doing so would result in death. This was, unfortunately, the primary cause of all of her comrades' death. They cracked under torture and tried to give up the recipe. She and those who had previously attempted to procure that recipe understood this, and so all attempts at communication of the recipe had long since ceased, the best they could do was look at the purchased ingredients and the final product and try to work out the recipe from there.
Merri had altered the recipe to such a point that it was considered something a completely different product by the Alchemic Dao, so this restriction no longer applied. She had no way of knowing this.
In all fairness, Merri's Healing Gel is not hard or expensive to make, and she could make a killing manufacturing it en masse, it just takes so long it would interrupt her other commitments. It was this extreme length of time that also meant others could not make the gel themselves.
The original idea behind the recipe was to 'attach' the healing effects of the various ingredients to the final gel, which has the consistency of butter on the verge of melting. This is difficult to achieve in large part because the components that make up the 'heal' portion and the components that make up the 'gel' portion actually repel each other.
It helps little that most of the common ingredients used to retain the medical efficacy do not bind to the ingredients in the gel.
The secret to fusing the two components together was that orange, sheet-like herb that Breda was so confounded by. She knew not the reason, but when boiled alone in water, it was then possible to coax the ingredients into a gel form. By boiling off the excess water you would be left with a thick blob around the size a head of cabbage densely packed with medical essence.
This, by itself, was largely useless. It was concentrated to the point of toxicity and so thick and unmanageable it was not feasible to section off and ration it with consistency. It also bears mentioning that this blob, if left unattended, will rapidly lose efficacy.
The next step in this process was to not use water, but instead an oil. It did not matter which plant it came from but an abundant amount of testing demonstrated that plant oils were far more effective than animal or mineral oils. The exact reasons for this remained unknown, but Merri strongly suspected it had to do with the fact that healing elements tended to be associated with vegetation.
That previously thick and wholly unwieldy blob would start to dissolve into the oil, dispersing this blob to over 20 times its previous volume, making it far more manageable as a result. At this point, the solution took on the color of a light tangerine, while also being completely opaque, though this was often subject to change depending on the oil and freshness of ingredients.
It was at this point that blue stone would be added to the mix and the heat would once again be turned up. Slowly stirring the mix with a wooden instrument (VERY important), the oil would once again evaporate at a slow pace. This process took close to an hour and a half and would often result in Merri feeling extremely tired afterwards. The upside was that at this point there would be no noticeable reduction in its effect for quite some time, allowing her to take a half hour break to eat something or take a small nap.
If Breda was there to frequently swap while they stirred, she would be able to skip this break and get to the next step, a tactic frequently employed by her sect.
After this, the volume of the product being around 4 heads of cabbage and almost a powder, water would once again be added to increase the volume by a factor of 10, making the cauldron almost as full as it was when the whole process was started.
The next part was not as difficult as it was time consuming.
The liquid would be moved from the metal cauldron to a few smaller wooden barrels without lids. The barrels would then be moved into a small metal cabinet, where she would use her Xan to cool the barrels to the point just above freezing.
Over the course of a few hours, the liquid would begin to congeal into a gel, with the highest concentration of healing essence being on the bottom. This was also the most valuable and it was also what Merri planned to use on Arc.
Once fully condensed, the lime green at the top indicated the low to medium intensity gel, slowly turning bright blue and finally a deep indigo, teetering on purple, hue indicating the most effective gel.
After scraping them out of the barrels into series of flat jars holding about as much a an adult man's fist, the insides of these small wooden barrels would be set alight to prevent the leftover gel from rotting or becoming contaminated with disease. After this, there would be some medical essence sealed within the walls of the barrel, and she would sell these to her sect's old trading partner, a wine making sect, where they would use them to make a wine that is very effective at aiding Xan cultivation.
The only things that would be wasted in this procedure would be the dregs of the grasses as they were noticeably more toxic after having their essence extracted, not even safe to be burned.