I loaded the Mysticism panel.

After that incident in the basement, campus life has been uneventful for the past few days.

Classes, lunch tutoring, library time, evening breathing exercises at home... the schedule is packed full, leaving little room for daydreaming.

There was no tutoring on Tuesday afternoon; Mr. Holland was on a business trip to the capital to attend a regular meeting of the Classical Society.

I also wanted to find out if there were any changes to the participants and format of this year's Cicero Cup. My individual coaching session will be postponed to next week.

Richard used the free time on the third-floor bookshelves.

He marked the fourth candidate book last week.

The cover features a title so long it's almost sleep-inducing:

A comparative study of the administrative systems of city-states in the middle and lower reaches of the Black Earth River, focusing on the priestly council system.

The book was published in 1843 (Gregorian calendar), and the author's name is two abbreviations, PHR and JEW, which are probably combined.

The main text does indeed discuss the administrative system.

Parliamentary structure, election process, financial authority, military command chain... It's so academic it's almost suffocating, with footnotes numbered from 1 to 112, and a list of cited references taking up four whole pages.

However, starting from Chapter 3, there was a problem with the footnote numbering.

The distribution of skipped numbers is uneven; there are none in the first two chapters, four in the third chapter, three in the fourth chapter, and six in the fifth chapter.

He wrote down the positions of all thirteen missing footnotes on a piece of paper, arranging them by chapter.

The thirteen empty numbers correspond to thirteen hidden segments of content.

The encryptor was very efficient; he simply removed the footnotes from the text and filled the gaps by reordering the adjacent numbers.

If you don't check the numbering sequence page by page, you won't be able to find it at all.

But "pulling out" is not the same as "destroying".

Richard turned to the last page of the book, where there was about three centimeters of blank binding margin after the page number.

He opened the book spine to its widest angle and looked at it closely.

A very thin strip of paper is sandwiched between the binding thread and the edge of the paper, and cannot be seen without unbinding.

Richard pulled a wire bookmark from the notebook and carefully picked the paper out from the gap.

The writing on the slip of paper was extremely small, and the density of the writing was even higher than that in Appendix C.

All thirteen deleted footnotes are here.

He laid the note flat on the table and examined it piece by piece with a magnifying glass.

A comparison table and an etymology manual were laid out beside him. He held the paper strips down with his left hand to prevent them from curling, and used his right hand to write down the sentences one by one on the white paper.

With the boost from Knowledge Level 2, word root decomposition becomes almost instantaneous, and once the rules of nested substitution are grasped, subsequent sentences fall like dominoes.

Within two days, all thirteen footnotes were restored.

The content is not about the administrative system, but rather the mysterious organizational structure that Richard is most interested in.

The article first defines a term: Neophytus, which literally translates to "newcomer".

The definition is: "A person who has initially established a complete etheric microcirculation within the body."

Richard put down his pen and stared at the line of text for a long time.

Complete etheric microcirculation.

His current breathing practice has established a rudimentary form of ether retention in his chest, leaving a residual warmth during exhalation.

However, the prototype is still a short distance from a complete microcirculation.

Mr. Hutton also mentioned in the basement that his etheric microcirculation was extremely weak.

In other words, he's not even a newcomer yet.

Newcomers represent the lowest entry threshold and also the basic dividing line between "extraordinary people" and "ordinary people" in the world behind the scenes.

Only by crossing this line can one officially step into the threshold of that world.

If you can't cross that threshold, you'll forever remain an outsider, able to smell the aroma of food inside but unable to taste it.

He turned his attention back to the note.

The text then lists the rank sequence above the newcomers.

The second level is the Practitioner.

"Establishing a stable and self-consistent etheric system within the body enables the active use of ether to complete mystical tasks."

What Mr. Hutton did in the basement:

The entire process of snapping fingers to open the iron gate, activating the chisel with holy water, and completing the seal reinforcement requires actively calling upon ether at each step.

The old gentleman is at least a professional in the field, and judging from his actions, he is far more than a beginner.

The third level is Adeptus Minor.

The description of Xiao Yantong in the text suddenly becomes brief, consisting of only one sentence:

"From practitioners to those with minor expertise, one must choose a specific, extraordinary direction to develop in depth before one can even reach that level."

The fourth level is Adeptus Major.

Level 5, Expert, Virtuoso.

Sixth level, Master, Magister.

And the seventh level—the Hidden Seat, Archon.

Starting with "Mastering the Great," the wording in the text becomes noticeably tighter.

The expert only has a few words to describe him, the master only has half a sentence, and the hidden master didn't even give a definition, leaving only a term hanging there all alone.

The writer certainly knew this, but chose to reveal only to this extent.

Richard copied the seven ranks onto a piece of white paper in order and drew a vertical axis from the newcomer to the hidden seat.

I'm currently at the very bottom of the vertical axis, not even touching the horizontal line for newcomers.

Mr. Hutton is somewhere in the industry, but it's impossible to determine exactly how high he is.

Mrs. McNeil, whom the Warrens hired, is likely a professional psychic or above.

And where do those truly influential and extraordinary figures in the capital city stand: the forces behind the Ashford family, the people who blacked out the conclusions in the government report?

The layers of coded messages in the last few lines of the note suddenly deepened.

He managed to piece together a single root word—"Ordo," meaning order.

And half a sentence: "From the third rank upwards, each rank advancement requires..."

What is required?

The characters following the substitution were locked by the third layer of nested substitution. He could only solve the first two layers using the lookup table, and he was completely unfamiliar with the substitution rules for the third layer.

He tried several possible combinations, but all of them failed.

The correspondence between roots and affixes was completely disrupted in the third layer of encryption, using a recombination method he had never seen before.

Richard put down his pen and rubbed his temples.

The ceiling had been reached; this was the first time I had clearly felt the limits of my abilities while standing on this row of bookshelves.

I could figure out the code words before by using reference tables and etymology manuals, but not this time.

The third layer of encryption requires new tools, and these tools are not found in these twenty-six books.

He stuffed the note back into the spine of the book and put the book back in its place.

………………

He waited a day before starting on the fifth book.

On Thursday afternoon during self-study, Richard informed his homeroom teacher in advance that he was going to the library to look up information.

His homeroom teacher's attitude towards him is completely different now than it was a month ago.

A student whose grades have improved dramatically and who has been personally recommended by Holland to participate in the Cicero Cup needs to look up information?

This is a good thing; you can investigate freely and openly.

I got to enjoy the special privileges that good students get.

While thinking this, Richard had already arrived at his usual spot on the third floor.