A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 347 Progress Isn't Just for Blue Star

An alarm suddenly sounded in the Tiangong command center.

In an instant, a piercing, unprecedented highest-level alarm blared in every corner.

On the holographic star map, the region representing the solar system is surrounded by a dense, chillingly dark crimson threatening trajectory surging in from all directions.

Like dark clouds looming before a storm, each cloud contains the power to destroy stars.

"A massive superluminal particle stream attack has been detected! The number... cannot be accurately counted! The coverage area... is 95.7 percent of the solid angle!" The monitor's voice trembled uncontrollably.

Following the previous surprise attack, China immediately dispatched countless detectors after completing the barrier system to probe the direction from which the faster-than-light particle stream had come.

So this time the discovery of these faster-than-light particle streams was brought forward by a significant amount, but only by seven days.

"Notify Professor Chen."

Upon receiving the news, Elder Qian made a decision immediately. Although there were precedents of the barrier successfully blocking the purification threads, he still couldn't help but feel a sense of fear when he saw the densely packed purification threads enveloping him.

No one can remain calm in the face of an attack powerful enough to destroy an entire galaxy.

Having just returned to Chengdu and barely had a few days to rest, Chen Hui was quickly summoned back to the Heavenly Palace Command Center. The next wave of attacks from the Webweaver civilization was much faster and more intense than he had anticipated.

This also made him realize the ferocity of wars between civilizations, and that offensive weapons belonging to Earth must be developed immediately!

However, before that, we must first get through this crisis.

Although reason told him that the barrier system was fully capable of withstanding the attack, he couldn't help but feel a little worried when he saw the terrifying, overwhelming onslaught on the sensors.

“Build a second layer of barriers 300 kilometers behind the existing barrier system!”

Soon, Chen Hui's proposal was unanimously passed by vote at the resolution meeting, and the entire Blue Star began to get busy again. Then, on the third day, a light shield rose up again behind the original barrier system.

Under Chen Hui's design, the first barrier's command node is to enhance the fine structure constant α, while the second barrier is to weaken the fine structure constant α. Even if the opponent's attack can cross the first barrier, it cannot pass through the second barrier.

Even if some law nodes fail, there are law nodes in the second barrier to take over. The probability of two nodes failing at the same time in the same direction is very small.

Only then did everyone feel a little relieved.

Soon, the overwhelming stream of faster-than-light particles arrived in front of the barrier system.

In the command center, everyone watched the images on the quantum sensor with tension, while some looked at the figure on the main control panel.

"Check the status of all nodes."

Chen Hui had already regained his composure. In the depths of his pupils, it seemed as if countless rules of the birth and death of the universe were flowing. He didn't even look at the despairing star map, but instead stared at the real-time status data stream of the law node network.

"All nodes, maintain synchronization rate at 99.998%." He murmured to himself, as if confirming the perfect state of a work of art. "Activate global resonance protocol to maintain the established physical constant barrier."

There was no rousing mobilization, no tense instructions, only an extremely concise command, which was instantly transmitted to every law node surrounding the solar system via the faster-than-light quantum network.

When the first and most concentrated torrent of purifying threads, like billions of poisonous thorns, simultaneously pierced the boundary of the solar system, the silent annihilation was staged once again.

Above that invisible barrier, there was no explosion of fire, no ripples of energy, only absolute nothingness. Thousands upon thousands of destructive particle streams, upon touching the boundary, were as if they had collided with an absolutely smooth and absolutely hard reality eraser.

Their front ends disappear, the middle section follows closely behind, and the ends vanish in the next second.

The entire process was perfectly synchronized and incredibly efficient.

From afar, the magnificent yet deadly crimson web of death that surrounded the solar system, upon touching the sphere's invisible barrier, was like a spiderweb thrown into flames, instantly shrinking, charring, and turning to ashes.

Not one, not ten, but tens of thousands, all were simultaneously, synchronously, and homomorphically erased from this universe in the same instant.

Clearly, Chen Hui's worries were unnecessary; no superluminal particle stream could cross the first barrier.

After a brief celebration, Chen Hui threw himself into the research of offensive weapons.

The success of the barrier system was like opening a door to ultimate power for Chen Hui.

His gaze turned deeper, exploring how to transform this understanding of the laws of physics into a more precise and proactive force.

Law nodes, on a macro scale, create a continuously stable area for rule modification through resonance and guidance.

It's like a giant field magic, covering everything and indiscriminately altering the constants within its range.

But Chen Hui was thinking about whether this power could be focused, directed, and made instantaneous.

Is it possible to precisely remove, like a scalpel, a fundamental force upon which a target depends, rather than creating a permanently altered field?

In the laboratory, Chen Hui stared at the slow-motion data of the superluminal particle stream being disintegrated.

Thanks to the second wave of attacks from the Webweaver civilization, Chen Hui had enough data to observe.

He observed that at the moment the particle stream annihilated, the α constant did not spike synchronously across the entire barrier region.

In reality, the change originates at the point of contact between the particle stream and the barrier, and is transmitted instantaneously in a faster-than-light wave form, covering the entire invading object.

“It’s not that the entire field changes uniformly in an instant,” Chen Hui said thoughtfully, “but rather that the event itself is changed, in the form of some kind of information disturbance, which propagates at the speed of light within the target material and takes effect.”

This discovery was a key turning point.

He realized that there was no need to maintain a huge, energy-consuming field. All he needed to do was inject a specific rule-disrupting command into the target at the moment of impact. This command would then spread within the target on its own, like a virus, rewriting the physical laws wherever it went.

A law node creates a rule-based room that prevents enemies from entering.

What he wants now is a Law Gun that can fire bullets of rules.

The principle of the barrier is to enhance the electromagnetic force to increase α.

But deconstruction requires stripping away, that is, temporarily shutting down a certain fundamental force.

This presents a more fundamental challenge.

The universe's restorative inertia reacts violently to enhancement, and the backlash from completely shutting down a fundamental force would likely destroy the transmitter itself instantly.

This is like trying to stop the Earth's rotation altogether, instead of gently pushing a swing.

Chen Hui once again immersed himself in his unified field equations. He needed to find a mathematical switch for the fundamental force, not a brute-force confrontation, but an inducement of a subtle phase shift or symmetry breaking.

After several sleepless nights, a breakthrough emerged in an extremely complex topological mathematical model.

"It's not shutting it down, it's guiding it to an invalid phase." A thought flashed through his mind.

According to his theory, the transmission of fundamental forces is essentially the exchange of certain gauge bosons at a specific phase.

If he could get these messenger particles to collectively enter a silent phase that is not coupled with other forces in a very short time, then for the target matter, this force would disappear in effect.

It's like an orchestra: if all the violinists simultaneously hold their bows up and don't pull them, then for the audience, the sound of the violin disappears at that moment, even though the instrument and the musicians are still there.

Everything went more smoothly than Chen Hui had imagined. It took less than three months to solve the key problems of the entire system, perhaps due to the success of the law nodes and the improvement of two basic attributes.

He quickly verified the correctness of this approach in the laboratory.

When he saw the meteorite in the experimental container dissolve and vanish like a sandcastle, returning to nothingness, Chen Hui felt a chill run down his spine. For the first time, he felt a sense of lingering fear.

If anything goes wrong during the experiment, the entire solar system could be destroyed as a result.

Fortunately, he had already made thorough preparations and used the Law Node to generate a protective shield around the experimental container, which prevented the deconstruction ray from breaking through.

The experiment proceeded without incident, and the ultimate weapon belonging to the Blue Star civilization has been born.

Chen Hui named it the deconstruction ray.

However, he soon found himself in trouble again.

The energy of radiation itself is extremely low; it does not kill through kinetic or thermal energy.

The moment it hits the target, it releases the rule perturbation command.

This command will propagate through the target substance itself at the speed of light, silencing the specific fundamental forces within its reach for an extremely brief instant.

But in that instant, the fundamental structure of the material world completely collapsed.

The deconstruction ray has indeed been successfully launched, but he needs to figure out how to send this structural ray out, hit the Webweaver civilization's galaxy, and then detonate it.

Furthermore, how can he prevent this deconstruction ray from stopping after destroying the Webweaver civilization, thus preventing a chain reaction that could destroy the entire universe?

He can't possibly deploy a barrier system around the Web Weavers' civilization, can he?

He needs to design a safety mechanism for the deconstruction ray to ensure that once activated, its silencing phase decays rapidly due to the universe's self-correcting tendency, ensuring that the effect is limited to the target object and does not spread indefinitely, triggering a chain reaction or cosmic catastrophe.

"Alert! Barrier System, Cancer sector under high-intensity directional attack!"

"The physical constants are fluctuating wildly, and the fine structure constant α maintenance field is being... neutralized!"

At the most critical moment in the investigation of the X-ray problem, Chen Hui, the person in charge of the barrier system, received a system alarm.

The Webweaver civilization has not given up its attacks these days, not only with superluminal particle streams, but also with various other types of attacks, but without exception, none of them have been able to cross the barrier system, just like a butterfly cannot fly across the ocean.

But this time, it's clearly different.

On the holographic star map of the control center, the golden sphere representing the stability of the barrier appeared as a dazzling, constantly flashing red area in the direction of Cancer.

Data shows that the alpha value in this region fluctuated violently like a sail in a storm, plummeting from a modified high level to near the normal cosmic value!

An attack, completely different from the previous faster-than-light particle stream, is now focusing its firepower on that area.

It is no longer a pure torrent of energy, but a composite field attack that constantly adjusts itself, as if it is analyzing the rules of the barrier itself in real time.

Chen Hui's gaze froze instantly.

He accessed the real-time sensor data stream, and his brain began to analyze it at a speed surpassing that of a quantum computer.

“It’s not brute force…they’re learning.” He said in a low voice, his voice devoid of panic, only displaying the extreme calm that comes with facing a real challenge.

It's not just the Earth civilization that's making progress!

……

In the Hall of Resonance of the Web-Weavers' Civilization, a long-lost emotion, a mixture of vengeful pleasure and mad, resolute determination, is stirring within the network.

Chief Navigation Officer Zeraka's mind was burning brightly.

After countless failed probes and the sacrifice of numerous stealth detectors, they finally detected a faint pattern in the barrier's operation.

Their top scientists put forward a crazy hypothesis: the barrier is not impenetrable; it relies on the resonant amplification of background quantum fluctuations, which must have a limiting frequency and a feedback delay.

Based on this, they devoted all their civilizational resources to creating a new generation of offensive weapons: the Rule Probe.

Instead of attempting to force its way through with destructive energy, it has embedded billions of microscopic rule sensors and phase cancellers into its attacks.

When the regular probe touches the barrier, it samples the α constant fluctuation pattern of the barrier region in real time and instantly calculates the offset field that is opposite in phase with it.

It forms a very thin, temporary zone of normalcy around itself, like a small bubble forcibly expanded in the eye of a storm.

This bubble in the normal zone protects the core of the probe, allowing it to penetrate the originally deadly alpha enhancement field and advance laboriously into the interior of the barrier!
Faced with a life-or-death crisis, the Web-Weaver civilization also unleashed terrifying creativity.

Blue Star, Command Center.

The atmosphere was so heavy it could be squeezed out of you.

Everyone saw that the strange, irregularly glowing probe was penetrating dozens of meters into the barrier at an unprecedented speed!
That area was already at the edge of the first line of defense.

Although its bubble in the normal zone kept flashing and shrinking under the powerful recovery force of the barrier, and its speed also dropped sharply, it did break through the theoretical absolute defense line!
"The target is still moving and is predicted to breach the second line of defense in three seconds!" The monitor's voice was filled with despair.

Three hundred kilometers is insignificant on an interstellar scale, but its symbolic meaning is that a devastating barrier has been torn open.

At this critical moment, a glint flashed in Chen Hui's eyes as he caught the subtle and unstable operating mode of the rule probe.

"Just as I thought... a shortcut, but the foundation is unstable." Chen Hui breathed a sigh of relief, his fingers flying across the control panel, summoning all the law nodes of the second line of defense around the Cancer sector.

(End of this chapter)