The journey from the foot to the peak of the mountain wasn't very far, but it took the assistant nearly an hour to make it; by the time he arrived at the front of the shrine, he felt so weak he collapsed on the ground.
He walked slowly, but even so, the pain in his body did not lessen in the slightest.
At first, it was a nosebleed and a faint pain in the liver; now, there wasn't a single spot on his body that was intact. The one hour's journey felt like a whole lifetime to the assistant; he felt as if his body had become like rotten wood, with one foot already in the coffin.
He lay in front of the shrine for a long time, unable to get up.
In that hour, too much had happened. When the assistant reached halfway up the mountain, the sky above changed—day turned to night and then to the eerie scene now - a blood-red moon hung in the sky, turning the whole world red.