Cubase Le Ai Elements 10.5 (recording 16 separate inputs?)

I have an audio interface with 8 inputs for recording which I have expanded to 16 via adat. when trying to setup the recording input bus channels I cannot seem to add more than 8 buses as sources for the recordings.
I can add any combination of 16 inputs through my audio interface + adat but I can’t put all 16 in together. no matter what I try it seems to top out at 8 total? it seems that cubase le ai elements 10.5 will allow me to have 16 audio tracks, but I cannot seem to add more than 8 bus channels so I can’t really take advantage of that to record more than 8. is there something I have missed in setup?

8 physical in-/ outputs is the limit for Cubase LE 10.5