The heavenly lightning unleashed at the First Extremity had limited power. At most, it could kill stray ghosts and minor monsters by the roadside.
Once one cultivated to the pinnacle of the Eight Extremes, the heavenly lightning one could summon would be powerful enough to slay peerless horrors on the Drought Ghost's level!
At present, Cui Jiuyang had only just reached the Third Extremity. To unleash heavenly lightning, he needed time to gather thunderclouds and accumulate power.
But Cui Jiuyang had never been one to follow conventions and cast spells by the book.
Although the thunderclouds he had summoned were scattered and disordered, with patches here and there that amounted to little, his exquisite mudras guided them into linking and interweaving, faintly outlining an enormous Demon-Exorcising and Monster-Refining Formation in the sky!
Purple lightning and azure light flashed and churned endlessly within this hastily assembled lightning formation, crackling as terrifying thunderous power slowly accumulated. The atmosphere between heaven and earth grew increasingly oppressive.
The remaining Directorate of Astronomy Daoist, who had been sitting cross-legged at the formation's eye without yet taking action, looked utterly grim when he saw Cui Jiuyang divide his attention between attacking the giant cypress at the core and summoning heavenly lightning. He knew he could no longer stand by.
Left with no choice, he forcibly gathered his spiritual power, diverting thirty percent of his attention from overseeing the Grand Formation to barely activate the small Mountain-Suppressing Seal floating above his head.
Infused with spiritual power, the little seal immediately released an ocher halo that rapidly expanded into a square barrier of light, ancient and substantial. It enclosed the giant cypress on the clifftop completely, keeping both Cui Jiuyang's incessantly attacking Apotropaic Coins and the heavenly lightning about to strike from the sky outside, firmly protecting the