The Rose Mountain

Land of Monsters. In a foggy forest. At the foot of a giant ancient tree.

Rose, who was wearing a white t-shirt and black jacket-pants, sat there cross-legged, her eyes closed.

She had been like this for almost two days straight. Actually, if the person doing this were not her but some other First Level Basic Awaken cultivator instead, that cultivator would have already died hundreds of times under the savage assaults of the monsters.

The known cultivation stages in this world were ten: Body Evolution, Basic Awaken, Intermediate Awaken, Advanced Awaken, Full Awaken, Energy Core Evolution, Basic Build, Intermediate Build, Advanced Build, and Full Build. Each stage contained nine levels. And a cultivator an entire stage higher than other was 10 times stronger.

The monsters that roamed around this place were mostly at the Advanced Awaken stage, two stages higher than the First Level Basic Awaken Rose. So, in other words, she was surrounded by monsters that were 100 times stronger than her!

However, Rose was safe because she had a Special Awakened Skill named Sensor Cloak. By using it, she could hide her smell, her body heat, and the sounds she produced. This let others with only two ways to detect her. The first one was of course by sight, however, the dense mist and the countless trees of this forest turned this way to detect her almost useless; the second one was by activating the Aura Perception ability to feel Rose's First Level Basic Awaken Aura, but the monsters could not feel her Aura in this way because they used another type of Energy to cultivate. The monsters used an Energy called Mystical Energy, whereas the civilized races cultivated Complex Energy.

Besides, Rose was very sensitive to sounds. This allowed her to immediately discover any monster that might get too close to her, making it easy to avoid them.

In short, unless something out of the ordinary happened, the monsters in this place could not detect Rose, and it was precisely because of this that she had had the guts to make her way into the Land of Monsters, where there was no Complex Energy but only Mystical Energy.

"*Sigh*..." She let out a long and deep sigh as she slowly opened her eyes, her expression full of disappointment.

(... It won't work...) She reluctantly concluded.

Even though Rose had known very well that her chances of success in breaking through the First Level Basic Awaken stage to reach the Second Level Basic Awaken stage were almost nil, she had kept in her heart the hope of achieving it. Now that this method has failed, she was left with no ideas on how she could break through. It had been twenty years since the last time she had a breakthrough, so it was understandable why a woman as strong as Rose, whose expression would not change even if she was stabbed in the stomach, had such a sad and dejected look right now.

But in the end, Rose was still exceptionally strong; which was why, after only a few minutes, her eyes showed serene determination once again.

(Let's head out of here before my Complex Energy runs out.) Thinking this, she leaped to her feet, picked up her backpack, glanced at the shapes and details of the surrounding trees, and set off following the same path she had used to reach this place.

She had not entered too deep into the Land of Monsters, as a result, she did not take long to reach the zone where the Mystical Energy coexisted with the Complex Energy. At that point, Rose drastically increased her speed, and after a few hours, she managed to leave the fogy forest.

At that moment, a vast green meadow appeared before Rose's eyes; from the east, it could be heard the flowing water of a river so enormous it could be mistaken by an ocean; and in the distance, it could be seen the silhouettes of the pitch black walls of Lurep Village.

Lurep Village was part of the territory of Stormy Cloud City, a city that belonged to the Broken Earth Kingdom, and the latter was one of the five kingdoms which made up the Continent of Civilized Races.

When Rose arrived at the entrance of Lurep Village, the sky was already dark, but her thoughts were already clear: (Since I need to find a new approach to break through my bottleneck, I'll go to the library to search for clues tomorrow morning. Let's just eat and rest for tonight.)

Having decided this, Rose stepped into the village and headed to her inn.

The inn in which Rose had rented a room was neither luxurious nor humble, it was something in between. Nevertheless, it had everything she needed.

Upon arrival, she went directly to the dining hall and ordered something from the menu. After devouring her entire meal in a single gulp, which impressed the few onlookers, she climbed the stairs and shut the door to her temporary room behind her.

Immediately after, Rose began to undress, showing little by little her smooth and soft white skin akin to a newborn's. It must be mentioned that the perfection of her skin had been maintained until now just because she had always had at her disposal the best medicines back in the Cloud Cutter Castle; if not for this, her skin would have been able to scare even the bravest of the Mercenary's Guild. This was not an exaggeration at all. Due to the extreme training Rose had imposed herself, every square inch of her skin had been torn apart at least a thousand times.

Completely naked, Rose entered into the bathroom and turned on the shower. After finishing bathing, she washed her clothes and hanged them to dry. Having done all she had to do, she dived into the bed and passed out.

Early in the next morning.

Rose quietly stood beholding the Lurep Village Library building.

To Complex Energy cultivators, knowledge was essential to further their cultivation base. As a result, the civilized races treated their libraries as their most important treasures. This became evident when one looked at the library of a village as small as Lurep Village. It was thirty stories high with an area of 1 km x 3 km, it was the most eye-catching building in town.

Rose did not have much hope in finding a realistic way that could help her to break through; after all, even though she was only thirty years old, she had already read more than one hundred and fifty thousand books, the one hundred and fifty thousand best books her kingdom had to offer, however, she had yet to find what she needed the most: A method to break through that could help her.

(If in this place I don't find the information I'm looking for, I'll simply search for it somewhere else! I can't give up on this. Without enough strength, to accomplish my dream will be absolutely impossible!) Rose's clear green eyes sparkled with unyieldingness as she strode into the library.

After entering, an elderly gargoyle dressed in a white librarian uniform sitting at a counter welcomed her with a kind smile. It surprised her that although his status was obviously at the bottom of the hierarchy pyramid of The Word Guards, he released a Sixth Level Intermediate Awaken Aura.

Putting aside her sense of inferiority, Rose handed a blue coin to him and said: "I'm looking for books on how to make a breakthrough when you come across a bottleneck. But not the conventional ones. I have tried them all and their methods hadn't worked on me."

The gargoyle librarian looked with curiosity at this peculiar customer whose face he had not seen before, and who had a demeanor of someone of extraordinary background but the cultivation base of a commoner. After seizing her up for a while; he said calmly with his hoarse, old voice: "Well, we do have a whole section on exotic methods to break through bottlenecks. However, I must warn you, young lady, that such books are just well-written bullshit. Trust this old servant, the fact that they are well-written is the only reason we keep them."

"There's no problem, sir. I understand that. I'm just going to try my luck." Rose showed a charming smile. She then asked tilting her head: "Where is that section?"

"Follow me." The elderly gargoyle said as he rose to his feet and lead the way to a deep part of the library.

Rose did what she was told.

At that point, just for an instant, Rose's beautiful eyes flickered with a trace of envy as they reflected the gargoyle librarian's wings. She could only imagine how wonderful it would be to have a pair of wings and with them be able to ride the skies.

Moments later, his old voice rang again in Rose's ears saying: "It's there, all the books in that room are the kind of books you're looking for."

She looked at the room the gargoyle librarian was pointing at, nodded and sauntered into it.

Seeing this, he informed her: "If you need any help you can find me where we met." Then he went back to his assigned post.

Although the absolute silence in the room made it clear that it usually did not receive visitors; the floor, the walls, and the roof were so clean that not even a speck of dust could be found, and the books were neatly arranged on well-organized bookshelves.

After glancing at several titles she had already studied at some point, she casually picked up a book among those she had not heard about before and began to read it without stopping for more than two seconds on the same page, and without missing any word. This ability to read so quickly and so thoroughly could only have been developed by a genius with monstrous talents, such as Rose.

Time passed by, and the sky outside turned dark.

Rose was already finishing reading the hundred and thirteenth book when suddenly she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a book that had written on its spine: - The Rose Mountain -, by Lin the Lonely Adventurer.

This left her breathless for five entire seconds.

It had nothing to do with the name 'Rose'. It was all because despite being a big fan of Lin the Lonely Adventurer, she did not know that such a book existed!

It was with euphoric impatience that she reached out to grab it, and started to read.

The book described a mountain located on the Land of Monsters, in a place not too far away from Lurep Village. The author admitted that she had never seen such a strange thing before. It happened that the ground around this mountain was strangely reddish, with the closest soil to the mountain being of a deeper reddish color. And if it were possible to see this region from the sky, which was not due to the dense fog, then one's eyes would encounter a red land with boundaries akin to a rose monster's flower outline. It was precisely because of this that she had named it: The Rose Mountain.

The author analyzed this strange earth and discovered, to her surprise, that it had healing properties similar to the healing properties of low-level medicine. All that land with a radius of about five kilometers had healing properties!

Of course, such a situation deserved further investigation.

Unfortunately, in the end, the author did not find the source of this phenomenon. That being said, she did come up with an interesting hypothesis: Something with so much power may very well be one of those legendary plant monsters that are capable of increasing the cultivation base of anyone without restrictions.