The quick answer
Defeat Lucky Seventeen in Palace of Annals to learn Vital Leech. The base passive heals through Exhaustion Executions; ordinary attacks gain a broader exhausted-target interaction only at later progression.
On this page
Earn the Palace of Annals reward
Finish the Palace of Annals campaign and defeat Lucky Seventeen. Collect the Vital Leech tome, Comprehend it in Inner Ways and place it in an active slot.
This is different from Mountain’s Might, whose pages are spread among five chests in the same complex. Clearing the boss supplies one reward route; thoroughly looting the building supplies the other.
The base trigger is an execution
Vital Leech restores HP when you perform an Exhaustion Execution. Simply dealing damage while the enemy still has Qi does not activate that base effect. Breaking Qi but then ignoring the execution opportunity is also not the same action.
The restored amount is tied to the relevant damage dealt, so do not treat the passive as a fixed potion that always restores the same fraction of your health. Different targets and situations can produce different visible recovery.
Plan around the timing limitation
Execution healing arrives when an enemy is vulnerable. It may not be available when you are low on health early in a sequence. Keep ordinary medicine or another dependable recovery option ready rather than assuming the next Qi break will happen in time.
An editorial decision rule is to heal when the next unavoidable mistake could end the run, even if an execution is approaching. Preserving a potion is less valuable than surviving to use the passive’s later recovery.
What later tiers change
Progression improves execution-related recovery and adds other benefits. At the later tier that broadens healing to non-execution attacks against Exhausted targets, the passive behaves differently from its base unlock.
| Question | What to compare |
|---|---|
| Why did normal attacks not heal? | Base trigger versus later exhausted-target feature |
| Why was the recovery smaller? | Damage of the qualifying action and actual missing HP |
| Why did a build recover more often? | Tier and frequency of useful exhausted windows |
| Why did it not save an early mistake? | No execution opportunity existed yet |
Decide whether your fights supply enough windows
A passive built around executions depends on the encounters you play and how consistently you reach those openings. Judge it over a complete fight rather than the single moment where it looks strongest.
For a proposed check, note when the heal occurs and whether you actually needed HP then. If it repeatedly triggers while you are already healthy but cannot help during the dangerous part, another option may fit your current learning goal better.