Three Major Directions

The fifth book was disguised more cleverly:

Flora of the Temperate Western Continent

--Including an Overview of Primary Medicinal Herb Processing Techniques.

The publication information was printed on the title page: Royal Botanical Society, supplementary issue, New Era 1819.

It was older than the previous books, nearly a hundred years old.

The main text was illustrated with hand-drawn botanical line art, with the scientific name, origin, and medicinal properties noted beside each plant.

Richard flipped through a few pages, and a scent of herbs seeped out from the paper.

This book had truly been used as a botanical reference; the creases and fingerprints between the pages indicated it had been consulted far more often than the other candidate books.

He almost thought he had made a mistake in his screening, until he reached the seventh chapter.

The title of the seventh chapter was: "On the Morphological Identification and Safe Collection of Toxic Ferns."

The first letter of each paragraph in the main text had been deliberately enlarged by half a size.

Richard copied out the first letters of the first twelve paragraphs: P-N-E-U-M-A-V-I-T-A-E-S

Pneuma vitaes, Aether life, or what is known as the life of Spirit Breath.

An acrostic again; this was arguably the most common form of encryption used since ancient times.

He finished copying all the initial letters and rearranged them on a blank sheet of paper into a complete sentence.

The workload was immense; just the copying took forty minutes.

Fortunately, the encryption level of the acrostic was not high; the first layer could be solved using a reference table, and the second layer could be filled in using an etymological manual.

By the time he finished work in the evening, most of the content had surfaced.

This was the book with the highest information density he had unearthed from the shelves so far.

The first part he deciphered discussed the branching paths of transcendent professions.

The text stated clearly: after completing the basic Aether micro-circulation, a Novice must choose a specific direction to delve into, based on their own aptitude and the type of Breathing Technique they practiced.

Three major directions were explicitly listed.

First, Occultus, the Occultist.

Sealing, exorcism, divination, mediumship, curses, barriers... they possessed the most varied methods and the most complex classifications.

The text used the term "hundred-arts" to describe practitioners of this path; they could dabble in everything, but mastering any single one required long, specialized training.

The gap between the upper and lower limits of the Occultist path was extreme.

Top-tier Occultists could lay out formation arrays covering entire cities or even nations, cursing and killing from ten thousand miles away;

The worst Occultists had skills no different from the charlatans and fortune-tellers scamming people in ordinary markets.

The text specifically mentioned that Occultists were best at ambushing; setting traps and predicting enemy movements were their strengths.

The cost was extreme fragility in direct head-on encounters.

Once forced to confront an enemy directly without preparation, the survival rate of an Occultist plummeted.

The medium hired by the Warren family likely belonged to this path.

Second, Venator, the Hunter.

With the core function of directly confronting the evil entities behind The Veil, practitioners of the Hunter path mostly practiced the Blood-Burning Path.

The description in the text matched perfectly with what he had read in Appendix C: extreme training involving ice-water breath-holding, explosive breathing, and forcing Aether into the blood.

Hunters valued immediate combat power and Aether bursts; in a head-on, face-to-face clash, Hunters crushed practitioners of the same rank from the other two paths.

The cost was also written quite bluntly:

"Practitioners of the Blood-Burning Path often shine brilliantly in their prime, but few reach old age peacefully."

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

Hunters were the most dangerous and the shortest-lived.

The tradition of the Witcher in the northern forests had continued to this day; the things in their bones had truly never changed.

Third, Eruditus, the Scholar.

Richard lingered on this paragraph the longest.

Practitioners of the Scholar path were generally not known for combat.

Their function was to interpret, identify, translate, and even create texts and artifacts.

The text used a very clever analogy: the Hunter was the blade before The Veil, the Occultist was the net between The Veils, and the Scholar was the lamp behind The Veil.

The blade was responsible for killing, the net for capturing and controlling, and the lamp for illuminating: letting people know what to cut and what to net.

Scholars possessed the largest knowledge base of the three major paths.

Paleography, transcendent archaeology, artifact identification, inscription grammar, sealing theory, Aether field theory, Veil ecology... each was a specialized discipline with an extremely high barrier to knowledge.

Precisely because the barrier to knowledge is so high, scholars hold the highest status within the entire structure of the occult side.

As mentioned in the text, scholars are also the most deeply integrated with the political and academic systems of the real world.

In the universities of the Imperial Capital, there are tenured professors who are respected academic authorities in the newspapers, and who are likewise revered as "Sir" in the world behind The Veil.

Hutton is likely one of these people.

An old gentleman who teaches history at a local middle school, he simultaneously maintains the seals beneath the school's foundation, prepares introductory materials on his bookshelves for promising Novices, and occasionally travels to the Imperial Capital to attend gatherings in small circles.

The things he teaches in class all tread right on the edge of The Veil.

Wrapping an occult core in an academic shell, passing on knowledge in a legal and compliant manner.

This is the modus operandi of a scholar.

Richard wrote the three major paths side-by-side on a blank sheet of paper, drawing a line from each to his current position.

His cheat is linked to ancient artifacts.

Artifact appraisal, seal structure analysis, inscription interpretation, code-breaking... everything he has done over the past month falls, without exception, into the category of a scholar.

Scholar: steady, deep, and far-reaching; it aligns perfectly with the development path he has set for himself.

If he chooses a direction to delve into in the future, the scholar path is practically tailor-made for him.

The second part of the content he deciphered next was more obscure, using a large number of analogies.

"Water extinguishes fire, fire forges metal, metal severs wood; this is the constant principle of the world, and practitioners follow this rule as well."

Richard copied this sentence down and read it several times.

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

The text does not provide a clear correspondence, but the implication is heavy enough: there exists a natural advantage and disadvantage matching between different practitioners.

He isn't certain, but the sentence "practitioners follow this rule as well" is enough to make one vigilant.

The world behind The Veil is not just a confrontation between humans and evil entities; there is also a predator-prey relationship between practitioners themselves.

Only a small fragment of the third part remains:

"From practitioner and above, every transition requires the completion of a corresponding ritual.

The essence of the ritual is to declare to The Veil, declaring that one is prepared to endure a deeper..."

It cut off again.

He tried extraction by multiples of seven, tried shifting by the golden ratio, tried reading diagonally; none of them were correct.

The rule used by the encryptor is not in any of the patterns he currently understands.

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

The last sliver of daylight filtered through the third-floor window, and the light tube hummed.

He wrote a line on the blank paper: Ritual, transition conditions, content unknown.

He drew a circle around it and added a question mark.

Just like the content that cut off after "requires" in the fourth book, this is another wall.

He already has many proper nouns in his possession:

Novice, practitioner, Adeptus Minor, Adeptus Major, Virtuoso, Magister, Archon.

He has the three major career paths: Occultist, Hunter, Scholar.

He has the fact that there are transition rituals between ranks, and he also knows there is a natural advantage-disadvantage matching between different practitioners.

There are already quite a few fragments, enough to piece together a rough outline.

But an outline is, after all, just an outline.

Detailed introductions for higher levels, more specific ritual content, the details of the restraining relationships between different paths—the answers are not on this bookshelf.