The fifth book was disguised even more cleverly:
A Compendium of Temperate Medicinal Flora of the Western Continent
—With an overview of the processing methods for major medicinal materials.
The publication information was printed on the title page: a special edition from the Royal Botanical Society, New Calendar year 1819.
It was older than the previous books, nearly a hundred years old.
The main text was richly illustrated with hand-drawn line art of plants, each annotated with its scientific name, place of origin, and medicinal properties.
Richard flipped through a few pages, and a faint scent of herbs wafted from between them.
This book had genuinely been used as a botanical guide. The creases and fingerprints on its pages indicated it had been consulted far more often than the other candidates.
He almost thought he had made a mistake in his selection, until he turned to Chapter Seven.
The title of Chapter Seven was: "On the Morphological Identification and Safe Collection of Poisonous Ferns."
The first letter of each paragraph in the main text had been deliberately enlarged by half a point size.
Richard copied down the first letters of the first twelve paragraphs: P-N-E-U-M-A-V-I-T-A-E-S.
Pneuma vitaes, Ether life, or the breath of life.
’Another acrostic poem. This has to be one of the most common encryption methods since ancient times.’
He finished copying all the initial letters and began rearranging them into complete sentences on a sheet of white paper.
The workload was immense. The transcription alone took him forty minutes.
Fortunately, the acrostic poem’s encryption wasn’t very complex. The first layer could be deciphered with a substitution table, and the second could be completed with an etymology manual.
By the time he finished for the evening, most of the content had surfaced.
This was the most information-dense book he had dug up from the shelves so far.
The first part he deciphered spoke of the branches of supernatural professions.
The text explained it very clearly: after a Newcomer completes their basic Ether Micro-Cycle, they must choose a specific direction to pursue based on their innate talents and the type of Breathing Technique they practice.
Three major directions were explicitly listed.
First, Occultus, the Secret.
Seal, Exorcism, Divination, Spirit Communication, Curse, Barrier... this path had the most methods and the most varied classifications.
The text used the term "Hundred Arts" to describe the Practitioners of this direction. They could dabble in anything, but mastering any single art required lengthy, specialized training.
The gap between the best and worst of the Secret Direction was enormous.
A top-tier Secretive One could set up an Alchemy Array that covered an entire city, or even a nation, and perform a Curse Killing from thousands of miles away.
The worst Secretive Ones possessed skills no different from the money-grubbing Witches and Shamans at an ordinary market.
The text made special mention that Secretive Ones excelled at ambushes. Setting traps and predicting enemy movements were their strengths.
The price was extreme vulnerability in a direct confrontation.
If forced into a direct fight without preparation, a Secretive One’s survival rate would plummet.
The Spirit Medium hired by the Warren Family likely belonged to this direction.
Second, Venator, the Hunter.
With the core function of directly confronting Evil Beings from behind the Curtain, Practitioners of the Hunter’s Direction mostly cultivated the Path of Burning Blood.
The description highly matched what he had read in Appendix C: Ice Water Breath Holding, Explosive Breathing, and extreme training to force Ether into the blood.
Hunters prioritized immediate combat power and Ether bursts. In a head-on clash, a Hunter would crush a Practitioner of the same Tier from the other two directions.
The cost was also written quite bluntly:
"Cultivators of the Path of Burning Blood often shine dazzlingly bright in their prime, but few live to see a peaceful old age."
He had seen the original line in Appendix C. Both books quoted the same source.
Hunters were the most dangerous and the shortest-lived.
The Demon Hunter tradition in the Northern Forest continued to this day; the very essence of their being hadn’t changed.
Third, Eruditus, the Scholar.
Richard lingered on this section the longest.
Practitioners of the Scholar direction were generally not known for their combat prowess.
Their functions were to interpret, appraise, and translate, and even to create texts and artifacts.
The text used a very clever analogy: the Hunter is the blade before the Curtain, the Secretive One is the net within the Curtain, and the Scholar is the lamp behind the Curtain.
The blade is for slaying, the net is for capturing, and the lamp is for illuminating, letting people know what to slay and what to capture.
Scholars commanded the most extensive knowledge base among the three major directions.
Paleography, supernatural archaeology, artifact appraisal, Inscription grammar, Seal theory, Ether Field studies, Curtain ecology... each was a specialized field of study with an extremely high barrier to entry.
Precisely because of this high knowledge barrier, Scholars also held the highest status within the entire structure of the Mysterious Side.
The text mentioned that Scholars were also the most deeply integrated with the real world’s political and academic systems.
Some tenured professors at universities in the Imperial Capital, who were highly respected academic authorities in the newspapers, were also revered and addressed as "Mister" in the world behind the Curtain.
Mr. Hutton was probably one of them.
An old gentleman teaching history at a local middle school, who also maintained a Seal beneath the school’s foundation, prepared introductory materials on a bookshelf for promising newcomers, and occasionally traveled to the Imperial Capital for small, private gatherings.
The things he taught in class, every topic skirted the edge of the Curtain.
Wrapping the core of Mysticism in an academic shell, passing on knowledge through legal and legitimate means.
This was the Scholar’s style of operation.
Richard wrote the three major directions side by side on the paper, drawing a line from each one to his current position.
His "golden finger" was linked to supernatural artifacts.
Artifact appraisal, Seal structure analysis, Inscription interpretation, code-breaking... everything he had done over the past month, without exception, fell within the scope of a Scholar.
’Scholar. Stable, profound, and far-reaching. It’s a perfect match for the development path I’ve set for myself.’
’If I have to choose a direction to specialize in later, Scholar is practically tailor-made for me.’
The second part he deciphered was more cryptic, using numerous analogies.
"Water extinguishes fire, fire forges metal, metal cuts wood. This is a constant principle of the world, and Practitioners also follow this rule."
Richard copied the sentence down and read it several times.
’An elemental counter system? No, it only mentions three relationships here.’
The text didn’t provide a clear correspondence, but the implication was heavy enough: natural advantages and disadvantages existed in matchups between different Practitioners.
He wasn’t sure, but the phrase "and Practitioners also follow this rule" was enough to put him on high alert.
The world behind the Curtain wasn’t just about the conflict between humans and Evil Beings. Among Practitioners, there was also a relationship of predator and prey.
Then there was this passage:
"Round Tables, salons, private meetings... you won’t find these things in official literature, but they have always existed.
Once Practitioners reach a certain level, they will almost always be found by their respective circles.
The question is whether you are the one being recruited, or the one being purged."
’All sorts of secret societies and private cliques. That fits my image of the world of Mysticism quite well.’
Only a small fragment of the third part remained:
"Ascending from the rank of Practitioner, every leap requires the completion of a corresponding ritual.
The essence of the ritual is an Announcement to the Curtain, a declaration that one is ready to bear a deeper..."
It cut off again.
He tried extracting letters at multiples of seven, tried a displacement based on the golden ratio, and tried reading diagonally. None of it worked.
The rule used by the encrypter didn’t match any of the patterns he currently knew.
Richard put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.
The last sliver of daylight filtered through the third-floor window as the fluorescent lights hummed.
He wrote a line on the paper: Rituals, conditions for advancement, content unknown.
He drew a circle around it and added a question mark.
Just like how the text in the fourth book cut off after the words "all require," this was another wall.
He now had many proper terms in his possession:
Newcomer, Practitioner, Minor Mastery, Grand Mastery, Expert, Master, Hidden Seat.
He had the three major professional directions: Secret, Hunter, and Scholar.
He had the fact that advancement rituals existed between Tiers, and he also knew there were natural advantages and disadvantages in matchups between different Practitioners.
He had gathered quite a few fragments, enough to piece together a rough outline.
But an outline was, in the end, just an outline.
Detailed introductions to higher Levels, more specific ritual content, the details of the counter relationships between different directions—the answers were not on this row of shelves.

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