I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The fifth book was disguised even more cleverly:

Flora of Temperate Medicinal Plants in Western Continent

— An overview of the main medicinal materials processing techniques is attached.

Publication information is printed on the title page: Royal Botanical Society, 1819 (Gregorian calendar).

It's older than the previous books, almost a hundred years old.

The text is richly illustrated, with hand-drawn plant line drawings and each plant labeled with its scientific name, origin, and medicinal properties.

Richard flipped through a few pages, and a herbal scent seeped out from the pages.

This book was actually used as a botanical record; the creases and fingerprints on its pages indicate that it was read far more often than the other candidate books.

He almost thought he had made a mistake in his selection until he turned to Chapter Seven.

The title of Chapter Seven is: "On the Morphological Identification and Safe Collection of Poisonous Ferns".

The first letter of each paragraph was deliberately enlarged by half a size.

Richard copied down the first letter of the first twelve paragraphs: PNEUMAVITAES

Pneuma vitaes, etheric life, or breath of life.

It's another acrostic poem, which is one of the most commonly used encryption methods since ancient times.

He copied down the first letter of each paragraph and rearranged them into complete sentences on a blank sheet of paper.

The workload was enormous; just copying it took forty minutes.

Fortunately, the encryption level of acrostic poems is not high. The first layer can be deciphered using a reference table, and the second layer can be completed using an etymology manual.

By the time we finished work in the evening, most of the details had come to light.

This is the book with the highest information density that he has ever dug out of the bookshelf.

The first part that was deciphered describes the branching paths of extraordinary professions.

The text clearly states that after completing the basic etheric microcirculation, newcomers need to choose a specific direction to delve into based on their own aptitude and the type of breathing technique they are practicing.

Three main directions were clearly outlined.

First, Occultus, meaning secret or hidden.

Sealing, exorcism, divination, spirit communication, curses, barriers... the methods are numerous and the categories are the most diverse.

The article uses the term "all trades" to describe practitioners in this field. They can dabble in a little bit of everything, but mastering any one of them requires a long period of specialized training.

The difference between the upper and lower limits of the concealed direction is extremely large.

Top-tier secret practitioners can set up transmutation arrays covering entire cities or even entire territories, and kill people remotely from thousands of miles away.

The worst hermits are no different in skill from the charlatans and sorcerers who swindle money in ordinary markets.

The article specifically mentions that the stealth fighters are best at ambushes, and their advantages lie in setting traps and anticipating enemy movements.

The trade-off is extreme vulnerability in direct combat.

Once forced into direct confrontation without preparation, the survival rate of the stealth fighters plummets.

The psychic the Warrens hired probably falls into this category.

Second, Venator, hunter.

With their core function being to directly confront the evil forces behind the veil, hunters often cultivate the path of burning blood.

The description in the text closely matches what he read in Appendix C: extreme training involving holding one's breath in ice water, explosive breathing, and injecting ether into the bloodstream.

Hunters prioritize immediate combat power and etheric bursts; in head-on confrontations, hunters crush their counterparts in the other two directions.

The cost was also stated very clearly:

"Practitioners of the Blood Burning Path often shine brightly in their prime, but few of them peacefully enter old age."

He had seen the original text of this sentence in Appendix C; both books cited the same source.

Hunters are the most dangerous and have the shortest lifespans.

The traditions of witchers in the northern forests have continued to this day, and their core values ​​have truly remained unchanged.

Third, Eruditus, scholar.

Richard stayed the longest in this section.

Scholars are generally not known for their combat skills.

Their function is to interpret, authenticate, translate, and even create texts and artifacts.

The text uses a very clever analogy: the hunter is the knife in front of the curtain, the hermit is the net between the curtains, and the scholar is the lamp behind the curtain.

The knife is for cutting and killing, the net is for capturing and controlling, and the lamp is for illuminating: letting people know what to cut and what to net.

Scholars possess the largest knowledge base among the three major areas.

Paleography, extraordinary archaeology, artifact identification, inscription grammar, sealing theory, etheric field science, veil ecology... each of these is a specialized field with extremely high knowledge barriers.

Because of the high knowledge barriers, scholars hold the highest position in the entire structure of the mystical side.

The article mentions that scholars are also most deeply integrated with the political and academic systems of the real world.

In the universities of the capital, there are some tenured professors who are highly respected academic authorities in the newspapers, and are also respectfully addressed as "Mr." in the world behind the scenes.

Mr. Hutton is probably one of those types.

An old gentleman who teaches history at a local middle school also maintains the seal beneath the school's foundation, prepares introductory materials for promising newcomers on his bookshelves, and occasionally goes to the capital to attend gatherings within his small circle.

The things he talked about in class, every topic, always teetered on the edge of the curtain.

Wrap the core of mysticism in an academic shell and transmit knowledge in a legal and compliant manner.

This is the way scholars operate.

Richard wrote the three directions side by side on a piece of white paper and drew a line connecting each direction to his current location.

His golden touch is linked to extraordinary antiquities.

Antique authentication, seal structure analysis, inscription interpretation, code deciphering... everything he did in the past month fell within the scope of a scholar.

The scholar is steady, insightful, and far-sighted, perfectly aligning with his chosen development path.

If one chooses to delve deeper into a specific area in the future, the path to becoming a scholar is almost tailor-made.

………………

The second part, which was deciphered next, was even more obscure, using a lot of analogies.

"Water extinguishes fire, fire forges metal, and metal cuts wood; this is an eternal principle of the world, and practitioners also follow this rule."

Richard copied down this sentence and read it several times.

Elemental incompatibility? No, only three sets of relationships are mentioned here.

The article does not provide an explicit correspondence, but the implication is significant enough: there is a natural match of strengths and weaknesses among different practitioners.

He wasn't sure, but the statement "this rule also applies among practitioners" was enough to raise alarm.

The world behind the veil is not only a battle between humans and evil creatures, but also a relationship between prey and hunter among practitioners.

Only a small section of the third part remains:

"From the perspective of industry leaders, each leap forward requires the completion of a corresponding ritual."

The essence of the ritual is to declare to the veil that one is ready to bear something deeper…

It broke again.

He tried extracting multiples of seven, tried shifting using the golden ratio, and tried reading diagonally, but none of them worked.

The rules used by the encryptor are not among any of the patterns he currently knows.

Richard put down his pen and leaned back in his chair.

The last rays of sunlight streamed through the third-floor window, and the light bulbs hummed.

He wrote a line on the blank paper: Ceremony, conditions for leap, content unknown.

I drew a circle and put a question mark on it.

Just like the section that ended after "all are required" in the fourth book, here is another wall.

He already had a lot of technical terms in his hand:

Newcomer, Practitioner, Minor Expert, Major Expert, Expert, Master, Hidden Talent.

There are three main career paths: stealth, hunter, and scholar.

Given the fact that there are leapfrog ceremonies between ranks, we also know that there are natural advantages and disadvantages matching between different practitioners.

There are already quite a few fragments, which have pieced together a rough outline.

But a outline drawing is ultimately just an outline drawing.

More detailed explanations of higher levels, more specific ritual content, and details of the restraint relationship between different directions—the answers are not on this bookshelf.