playground for 16 elements:
4 fire
4 water
4 air
4 earth
2 of each will combine into quints
third of each will be repurposed for salts, in which 2 of them(specifically the salt from earth and the salt from air) are purposed for vitae and mors
what remains shall be used for the solution as follows:
                       air/water
quint-fire/earth-salt<
                       vitae/mors
i still don't guarantee this is the cyclest one yet. i estimate the cycles min to be somewhere in the 200s, not sure if less than that would be possible