I am the Arcane Archer, and all my skills are self-created.

Chapter 483 Using the Law to Deceive the Law

The image on the stone pillar became clearer and clearer.

The black, worm-like material on the lunar surface was moving faster, and several tentacle-like extensions reached out towards them, as if searching for something.

Everyone's attention was drawn to it, and the previously excited atmosphere instantly cooled down.

"What's going on?" Zhui Feng stood up from the ground, staring nervously at the image.

"The energy fluctuations of the resonant fragments." Gu Yuan strode to the stone pillar, his face grim. "When we activated the fragments, it generated a large-scale fluctuation of the laws."

"The Starbreaker has the third fragment, which possesses the ability to vaguely foresee and sense threats. It has sensed the commotion here."

"It can locate us?" Hua Zitong pressed her still slightly aching chest, her voice urgent.

"Not yet. But if it continues scanning, given the Starbreaker's analysis speed, it should be able to pinpoint the coordinates in half an hour at most." Gu Yuan turned to Li Wu. "We must immediately stop training and enter a state of silence. All law-based activities must cease until its scan is over..."

"no."

Li Wu interrupted him.

Gu Yuan frowned: "What did you say?"

"I said no." Li Wu walked to the stone pillar and stared at the image on it. "Stop training? And then what? Wait for it to finish scanning and continue? Do you think the Starbreaker will give up just because it didn't find anything on its first scan?"

"Now that it has developed a sense of awareness, it will continue to focus on this direction. If you stop today, you'll have to stop again tomorrow. How long will this training last?"

Gu Yuan pursed his lips.

"So what do you plan to do?"

"You said the Starbreaker can sense fluctuations in the laws of nature," Li Wu said, staring at the writhing black tentacles. "What if I show it something fake?"

Gu Yuan was taken aback.

"What do you mean?"

"It can sense the laws, so I'll use the laws to deceive it." Li Wu turned to face Gu Yuan. "Do you know the specific principles behind its sensing mechanism?"

"...a vague trend perception," Gu Yuan said. "It can't pinpoint the exact location; it can only sense that a threat is emerging in a certain direction."

"After the power of Fragment No. 3 was distorted, it became a passive early warning system."

"Passive." Li Wu grasped the key word. "That is to say, it cannot actively search; it can only passively receive information."

"right."

"That makes things easier."

Li Wu walked to the front of the shimmering stone pillar and raised his right hand.

"What are you going to do?" Gu Yuan followed, "Didn't you want to...?"

"I need to proactively send it a signal."

"Are you crazy?!" This wasn't Gu Yuan shouting; it was Zhui Feng.

He rushed up from behind and grabbed Li Wu's arm.

"Boss, the Starbreaker is looking for us. You're going to send it a signal? Isn't that just sticking your head out there for it to chop off?"

"I didn't send a real signal," Li Wu said calmly, shaking off Zhui Feng's hand.

He looked at everyone.

"Listen carefully. The Star Shatterer's perception is passive; it only receives signals from fluctuations in the laws of nature."

"What I need to do now is to fabricate a false law fluctuation, a signal that appears to have enormous energy and that it deems valuable. But the signal is full of paradoxes and traps."

"After its detection system receives this signal, it will concentrate its computing power on parsing it. However, because the signal is internally contradictory and full of logical loops, the more it parses it, the more chaotic it becomes, and in the end, it will only paralyze its own detection system."

Gu Yuan's expression changed from questioning to contemplation.

"...Are you sure you can do it? Do you know the logic behind the Starbreaker? If the trap isn't designed precisely enough, it will only give it more information."

"I don't need to know its logical structure," Li Wu said. "I only need to know one thing: it uses laws to perceive."

"Then I just need to create a paradox at the level of a law. No matter what the logical framework is, encountering the paradox will result in an infinite loop. This is something at the mathematical level, and it has nothing to do with the specific system."

Gu Yuan opened his mouth, wanting to refute, but found that there didn't seem to be anything worth refuting.

"...Okay." He took a step back. "But what if we fail..."

"It will not fail."

Li Wu turned around to face the stone pillar.

He drew back the arcane bow.

To be precise, he made a bow-drawing gesture.

The bow is gone, and with the disappearance of the interface, the equipment is gone too.

But the power of the law remains.

Between his fingers, threads of law began to gather and weave, automatically forming the shape of a bow made of pure law power.

It is not a physical bow.

It is a conceptual bow.

He did not gather an arrow on the bowstring.

What he embodies is a string of symbols from a higher-level language.

【Illusion】—false.

[Incorrect] — This is wrong.

【Emptiness】—nothingness.

【Domain】—Scope.

【律】—rules.

He quickly arranged and nested the five higher-level language definitions.

Hua Zitong watched from the side, feeling that the flowing golden symbols were so complicated that they made her dizzy. Each symbol was not only related to the symbols before and after it, but also formed a circular reference with itself.

"This is..." Hua Zitong murmured.

"A signal that seems to contain powerful laws," Li Wu said as he operated the system, his voice steady.

"But when it is parsed, with each layer unraveled, the definition of the next layer contradicts that of the previous one. It's an infinite loop, and it can never be solved."

Ten seconds later, a signal body shimmering with golden light took shape in his hand.

It looked dazzling, and its laws fluctuated intensely.

Anyone who can perceive the existence of laws will feel that this is a huge and valuable source of law energy.

But it's full of poison inside.

Li Wu raised his bow and aimed it at the direction of the moon in the image on the stone pillar.

Then let go.

The golden signal beam shot out silently, passed through the stone pillar, and disappeared into the void.

Everyone held their breath.

The images on the stone pillars still show pictures of the lunar surface.

The black tentacles that were exploring their direction... stopped.

About five seconds passed.

The direction of the tentacles changed.

They stopped exploring in the direction of the platform and turned to another location, the location where Li Wu had transmitted the signal.

"It's taken the bait." Gu Yuan stared at the image.

The tentacles began to extend rapidly in that direction, growing longer and longer.

More dark matter on the lunar surface was mobilized and concentrated in that direction.

Then... the tentacles stopped.

It's not about stopping the exploration.

All actions have stopped.

It's like a computer crashed.

Ten seconds passed, twenty seconds passed, a minute passed.

The black tentacles that were originally active on the lunar surface have all come to a standstill.

Not only those lines exploring in the direction of the signal, but even the matter that was normally moving in other directions slowed down, as if most of the computing power of the entire system had been drained away.

The flashing frequency on the stone pillar is also decreasing.

It's getting slower and slower. It's getting darker and darker.

Finally, the stone pillar regained its steady glow.

Alert lifted.

"..." Gu Yuan took a deep breath.

He turned his head and looked at Li Wu.

Li Wu withdrew his hand, and the conceptual bow formed by the laws dissipated into the air.

"It's done," he said.

The platform remained quiet.

But this time it wasn't a silence of fear, it was a silence of awe.

Gu Yuan stood there for several seconds, his expression changing repeatedly, from shock to contemplation, and from contemplation to a bittersweet self-mockery.

"I've been here for a year and a half," he said, "studying the Starbreakers, analyzing their behavior patterns, and devising countermeasures. And then, in less than a minute, you cripple their detection system with a paradoxical law."

He gently shook his head.

"You've already surpassed me in the creative application of the rules. You've come a long, long way."

Li Wu was not modest.

"Then the training continues," he said. "It won't recover anytime soon. Let's use this time to intensify our efforts."

Gu Yuan nodded.

Then he did something he had never done before.

He lowered his head slightly.

"team leader."

Li Wu glanced at him.

Without saying anything, he turned and left.

But Hua Zitong noticed that Li Wu's lips twitched slightly.

She was about to follow.