In recent years, the federation has boasted a multitude of scholars, leading to a flourishing of various fields. Consequently, there should be numerous types of weapons developed for warfare.
Indeed, while the federation's technology has blossomed in many areas, many innovations cannot be applied in combat due to inherent flaws.
However, this is not an absolute rule.
Many technologies may not function under normal conditions but can prove useful in special circumstances.
As the ships of Olive Branch Civilization approached, their advanced systems conducted thorough analyses, revealing that the federation's military capabilities were significantly inferior.
"Perhaps the federation is hiding some military strength," one Olive Branch scholar suggested.
"Controlling star cities indicates that their civilization cannot be that far behind us; we should overestimate our enemy as much as possible."
"Better safe than sorry; let's employ our most perfected tactics."
Olive Branch Civilization did not take any chances against the federation. As a higher civilization, if their systems were not so well-established, they would have long since vanished from history and would not have developed to this level.
In fact, Olive Branch Civilization's systems had certain advantages; they could gather vast amounts of data and synthesize it into coherent answers without bias or error.
This process resembled a student consistently scoring 60%—you might argue they are not performing well academically, yet they consistently achieve that score across all subjects.
The Olive Branch fleet subsequently split into three groups, maintaining close proximity to each other to prevent any unforeseen incidents.
Faced with such an opponent, the federation was in a precarious position.
While Olive Branch Civilization scored 60%, it was akin to a high school student achieving that score; for the federation, even securing a perfect score on middle school material would be challenging at this level.
...
Meanwhile, around Kunpeng, alternative warships were gradually being produced.
These vessels resembled large horns.
"Activate…" Kunpeng commanded these ships to start up; however, they showed no movement and appeared unchanged from their previous state.
These horns were not merely decorative; they would emit vast quantities of fundamental particles. These particles were not any known types but rather waste particles generated during the federation's particle development processes.
These waste particles exhibited extremely unstable characteristics. Some could not form complex structures or even arrange themselves into larger materials. Others were highly active, bouncing around like children—flashing here and there and nearly impossible to capture.
These waste particles constituted 97% of the types in the federation's current particle library, with usable particles making up only 3%.
Each particle had documented production methods within the federation; some waste particles required minimal energy for production—effectively making them free to generate.
Of course, they were considered worthless because they were genuinely useless refuse.
However…
In practical applications such as materials science, if viewed as weapons, any uncertainty could become an advantage rather than a drawback.
Kunpeng had devised a novel tactic.
It would launch countless waste particles; most of these fundamental particles would travel at speeds exceeding 90% of light speed, rapidly filling the surrounding starry void.
What would be the consequence?
A fundamental change in physics.
Currently, all physics is constructed around the universe's original particles. Imagine if a physicist discovered an entirely new particle whose existence defied logic—what would happen?
If it were 21st-century humanity, it might lead to a collapse of established physics—relativity and universal gravitation would be dismissed entirely.
But as a weapon, what could these particles bring?
Changes in physical quantities within the universe.
In simple terms, physical quantities accurately reflect fundamental concepts in physics and can be considered measurements such as temperature, length, time, pressure, electric charge, capacitance… many things denoted by physical quantities have units associated with them.
These physical quantities can influence one another; for instance, resistance varies with temperature changes. When speeds approach extremes, length and time lose their conventional meanings.
The essence of these interactions lies in the motion of fundamental particles.
If new fundamental particles appeared among these basic ones—particles not belonging to this universe—then spacetime itself would become chaotic.
Objects you observe might shift positions; measured distances could yield errors; weapons you fire might jam in their barrels due to unexpected interactions; some entities might penetrate barriers causing intense radiation while others destabilize atomic structures leading to chaos.
"Have you noticed? It seems our distances are increasing," members of the Olive Branch fleet exchanged opinions only to find discrepancies in their observations.
"No way! I'm clearly very close to you."
"What nonsense! I've never deviated from my course."
Countless voices erupted in confusion.
More importantly, Olive Branch Civilization operated as a cohesive system resembling a brain. The issues they encountered felt like one eye being nearsighted while the other was farsighted—how could they adjust for this visual discrepancy?
They were bewildered.
Especially since they were mechanical beings requiring uniform physical quantities for operations. Yet now all individuals found differing results when calculating the same data—this effectively paralyzed their system's coherence.
Kunpeng had not anticipated such significant success from this weapon.
However, before celebrating too soon, after several restarts of their systems, Olive Branch's consciousness reduced its operational capacity while retaining enough awareness to address this chaos.
The remaining conscious entities recognized that the federation had launched an attack against them and thus sought retaliation.
In this state where fundamental physical quantities had lost their constancy, they could not accurately determine enemy positions. Therefore, they opted to fire highly concentrated high-energy beams carrying information back to their star city for long-range support.
Decades later, the star city received this information and unleashed a brilliant light sweeping across the area—clearing all waste particles from existence.
The tactic did not yield substantial victory; however, Kunpeng was exceptionally excited about its findings.
"Analyzing enemy long-range weapons…"
"The proportion of long-range weaponry constituted 33% of their arsenal; the remaining 67% consists of special particles capable of attracting surrounding matter exhibiting strong magnetic properties—this is why so many waste particles were removed."
"This represents an entirely new type of weapon; logging details…"
"Firing logs returned to the federation; war progress recorded at 3%…"
For Kunpeng, gathering intelligence was paramount—it had already achieved its primary objective.