In that moment, Wang Lin shed his guise of concealment. His right hand, a blur of motion, tore through the very fabric of reality before him. The warding spells, once his sanctuary, shattered like glass, revealing him in all his glory to the heavens and earth!

His right eye blazed with the untamed essence of lightning, a veritable storm of power. Around him, nine arcs of crackling energy danced, coalescing into a nascent thunder sigil. He threw back his head and unleashed a primal roar that echoed across the land.

“By the power of my Lightning Path, I shall rend this gateway asunder! Thunder Sigil, ARISE!”

As his words thundered forth, the pupil of his right eye erupted in a blinding torrent of light, thrusting outwards to manifest before him a colossal sigil of pure lightning, a thousand fathoms across!

The Thunder Sigil crackled with a ferocious energy, drawing upon every stray current in the cosmos. It *was* the master of storms, the culmination of Wang Lin’s own mastery, a self-forged emblem of lightning’s fury.

“OPEN, YOU DAMNABLE GATE!” roared Wang Lin, his hands rising to brace the monstrous sigil. He ascended, a defiant figure against the infinite sky, aiming his wrath at the colossal ethereal gate looming above.

From afar, Wang Lin became a living thunderbolt, his body, his soul, his very will, fused into a single, incandescent arc. A lightning strike against the natural order!

The electric arc hurtled towards the gate with increasing velocity, the air screaming in protest.

Below, tens of thousands of cultivators stood frozen, their eyes wide with a terror that hardened into glaze, their minds reeling at the spectacle.

To breach this gate was to ascend to the ranks of the Third Step, the realm of deities. Wang Lin, now a thunderbolt incarnate, reached the gate in the blink of an eye, and slammed against its face with the force of a celestial hammer.

The resulting cataclysmic boom echoed through the dimensions, threatening to tear the very heavens asunder, to sunder the earth, to shake the stars themselves. The shockwave rippled outwards, a tangible force of annihilation. “I claim dominion over the storms! Every spark, every flash within this starfield… CONVERGE!” At Wang Lin’s command, every latent current within the cultivation star surged forth, joined by a cosmic tide of lightning drawn from light-years away.

From a hundred leagues, a thousand, a million… ten million! A hundred million leagues of starfield became a churning sea of electricity, a living thunder-lake. The surging energy lunged for the cultivation star and the figure at its heart.

In that instant, Wang Lin was the vortex, the epicenter, drawing all lightning into himself. The cosmos buckled under the strain, creating a gargantuan Thunder Sigil, tens of thousands of fathoms across.

The sigil roared with untamed energy, pregnant with Wang Lin’s own desperate will. With another earth-shattering bellow, he surged forth a THIRD time!

The roar of thunder defied description as the titanic sigil slammed into the fading Gate of Emptiness. In that cataclysmic instant, Wang Lin’s body convulsed, the Thunder Sigil bursting apart into a maelstrom of raw power.

An indescribable wave of force erupted, lashing out in all directions. Wang Lin coughed up blood, his flesh tearing and burning as the shockwave hurled him back. Yet the gate, the implacable guardian, *trembled*. In response to the totality of Wang Lin’s lightning and his relentless faith, it groaned, shuddered, and finally… *cracked* open a sliver of space!

A meager fissure, to be sure, yet a breach nonetheless! Though far from completely open, the fissure ignited a spark of hope within Wang Lin’s breast.

The spectral Gate of Emptiness began to dissipate. Wang Lin, still battered by the unleashed energy, crashed to earth in a deafening explosion. A moment of stunned silence hung heavy in the air, then a roar erupted from the tens of thousands of cultivators. Those too slow were caught in the wake of the falling lightning-infused sigil, their bodies dissolving into bloody mist, their spirits utterly erased.

Yet this alone could not measure the extent of Wang Lin’s power. Though wounded, he had been wounded by the Gate of Emptiness itself, a gateway guarded by the very fabric of the Third Step. His lightning arts had reached the zenith of Shattering Nirvana, his understanding had echoed the very Gate itself. He held contempt for ordinary mortals.

“Ten Thousand Thunder Mountains, imbued with my own essence, shall become ten thousand seals of lightning, mountains of suppression! Though I cannot bind you for eternity, they will provide sufficient time for my departure!” With a cold smile, Wang Lin waved his hands, drawing in vast quantities of scattered lightning to imbue the surrounding mountains.

With a thunderous rumble, the Ten Thousand Thunder Mountains began to descend upon the heads of the tens of thousands below. Interlinked, they formed an ominous, all-encompassing shield above.

Panic seized the cultivators below, their minds scrambling to escape. Yet lightning crackled around them, a web of pure energy that disrupted the flow of elemental power, preventing any true flight.

A cataclysmic crash reverberated across the land as the Ten Thousand Mountains slammed into the earth, crushing the unfortunate cultivators beneath them. Though those ensnared possessed varying degrees of power, none could stand against Wang Lin alone. Using the mountains to augment his lightning, Wang Lin had temporarily suppressed them. But their resistance still thrummed in the earth, a cacophony of frustrated roars as they tried to break free.

The mountains trembled, shedding debris, threatening to crumble and release their prisoners.

Wang Lin smirked, his right eye flashing with renewed power. Once more, the Thunder Sigil coalesced, summoning the heavens themselves to witness its fury. He thrust his right hand downwards! The sigil broke apart, dividing into ten thousand identical marks of lightning and power, and slammed down into each mountain face.

Like runes of absolute authority, the lightning Sigils set in place a true and undeniable suppression.

By using the Ten Thousand Thunder Mountains to suppress tens of thousands of cultivators, Wang Lin had taken a step towards enduring renown. With the sigils now in place, the mountains settled, their foundations solidifying.

Dimly, muffled roars could still be heard from beneath the stone prison, yet none could hope to break free in the near future.

Wang Lin’s face was pale, his power nearly spent. He was wounded both by his attempt to breach the Gate and by the act of imprisoning so many foes.

“The chase by the Ancient Starry Sky has only just begun. I cannot linger here…” With a wave of his hand, he stepped into the void, the space around him warping as he traversed unfathomable distances.

“Even mastery of the Lightning Path was not enough to sunder the divide of the Third Step, to open the Gate of Emptiness…”

He emerged into a desolate starfield and immediately took another step into the void.

“But… if one path is not enough, I will master two and shatter the barrier! If two fail, then I refuse to believe that five perfected paths will not be sufficient to open the Gate of Emptiness! Then, in a single, decisive blow, I will break through to the Third Step, becoming a powerhouse amongst the deities!” Wang Lin’s eyes glittered with determination as he vanished into the vast expanse of the cosmos.