What I mean is that I think you're making this more complicated than it has to be, we can (and should, since it's the more straight-forward interpretation and requires almost no interpretation) simply say this:
Liu removes his cape= lightning comes down.
He's alone for 1 pannel and in the meantime the same lightning is covering distance (it stays in frame the whole time with a fairly consistent angle, there is no reason to assume it's a different lightning in every pannel);
we can assume that in the timespan between the pannel in which Liu removes his cape and the one in which he notices him, Ken has jumped from the ground to the top of the rock (It's a low end assumption, we clearly see from the previous pannels that Ken was nowhere in sight and Liu would have sensed him if he was this close to begin with, but since we have no way of truly knowing how much distance Ken traveled between those pannels, saying that he merely jumped from the ground to the top is reasonable) which is about as tall as the temple; while this is happening, the same lightning from the beginning is still traveling.
After that, the lightning hits the ground.
I don't know how "scientifically sound" this interpretation is, but it seems to me to be by far the most straight forward; alternatively, if you really wanna wank it, we can say that the lightning hit the ground right after Liu removed his cape and Ken actually outran the return stroke, which might make sense, actually.
