Abilities of Concept

Based on the above conclusions, he still had many questions.

The most important one was himself.

Why didn't he fly up when he walked?

If he jumped, wouldn't he launch himself toward his imagined target?

Could he only shoot other things, but not himself?

Directly shooting himself was obviously impossible. Otherwise, if he bent his knees and sprang up, he could fly straight back to his hometown.

What about shooting himself indirectly?

The dormitory rooftop was a magical place. There were wooden boards, bricks, and even wire-frame beds. Who knew what had happened up here?

He found a wire-frame bed on the rooftop, removed the bed board, and jumped directly onto it.

However, the bed screeched as it slid out from under his feet. When it reached the target, it bounced up and struck the bullseye.

In the end, he fell to the ground. The bed flipped over, and the target fell too.

"This won't work. It means I shot the bed and kicked it into the bullseye. It wasn't me jumping up and hitting the bullseye myself."

On careful thought, it was obvious. Only things that left his body could be regarded as having been launched by him.

How could he separate from himself?

When he jumped on the bed, the reactive force was also applied to him, and he bounced up, leaving the bed's surface.

At that moment, the bed was treated as something he had kicked away, triggering Absolute Hit.

"I am a reference object, the basis for judgment."

"That's also why, when I kicked the ball to Han Dang, my shoe didn't fly over with it. The shoe hadn't left contact with me under the force I exerted."

"If I want to fly, perhaps I can only..."

Mo Qiong looked toward the roof above the rooftop entrance. There was an antenna there.

He shot an arrow at the antenna, then quickly grabbed the arrow again.

Sure enough, he could sense that the arrow retained the propulsive force he had previously given it and flew toward the antenna high above.

As the arrow rose higher and higher, he felt as though he were holding onto a flying machine. His hand kept lifting upward until even his feet left the ground.

"The force behind the arrow's initial motion is constant. Not even gravity can pull it down, let alone me."

"It ignores my weight just as it ignores air resistance."

"If I'm not mistaken..."

Mo Qiong suddenly let go in midair. He fell freely, while the arrow changed targets and flew slowly toward the target. Of course, its slow speed was imperceptible to the naked eye.

He could change the Landing Point as long as he could touch the projectile again.

The key was whether it separated from him. Only after separating from him did it count as having been fired. Grabbing it and letting go reset the applied force.

Because the force he gave the arrow when he released it was too weak, it now seemed to be hovering in the air. It would probably take several hours to hit the target.

"Looks like this is the only way. Separation from me is the key to triggering it, so I can never simply shoot myself unless I have some kind of vehicle."

"Come to think of it, if indirect launching counted, then if I touched the air and it passed from one particle to ten, then ten to a hundred, wouldn't the entire atmosphere gradually be shaken by me? But based on the previous experiments, only the parts that collided with my body's surface struck the target."

He did not have a crossbow on hand, but a bow was enough for an experiment.

He placed an arrow on the bed, drew the bowstring himself, then used it to strike the arrow.

The arrow was hit by the string and slowly flew toward the target. After hitting it, the arrow fell freely and stopped moving.

Throughout the entire process, Mo Qiong never touched the arrow. He merely made the bowstring strike it.

This still triggered the passive ability. The arrow hit the bullseye.

This experiment showed that even if he used a crossbow or even a firearm, he only needed to pull the trigger. He did not need to touch the projectile directly for the passive ability to activate.

Matter that left equipment he was holding also counted as matter fired by him.

This meant that any equipment connected to him without separating from him was treated as a "bow," just as his arm was treated as a "bow."

In theory, if he inserted his hand into the ground, the Earth would become his bow. If he had enough force to shake or fling someone off the ground and separate them from the surface, he could throw that person to the Moon...

But that was pure fantasy. He could never have that much strength.

Rather than accomplish that, he might as well build some kind of machine, a complex and powerful "crossbow," as an extension of his arm to amplify his interfering force.

"Whew... Then what if I make an arrow hit an arrow?"

He tried again, choosing a point on the arrow itself as the Landing Point.

The result was a pleasant surprise. The arrow flew out normally and landed on the ground.

"Ha, so I can still make launched matter follow its natural trajectory."

Mo Qiong smiled. He had found a way to shoot arrows without triggering the passive ability: set the Landing Point on the projectile itself.

Because the Landing Point was closely connected to the projectile itself, the instant it was fired counted as having already reached the target. At that point, it followed the laws of nature.

"The world itself isn't continuous, so breaks at the microscopic level should not count."

"When I let go, the closely connected parts are treated as one whole. Even if they are later separated by someone else or by nature, becoming two or even multiple objects, they should still continue toward their destination."

"So the arrow I shot at the sun earlier would continue relentlessly toward the sun even if it turned into individual molecules."

"I understand now. Light... Why doesn't it trigger the passive ability? The reason may be very simple."

After completely confirming the most crucial condition underlying his ability's judgment, Mo Qiong suddenly understood why reflected light did not trigger Absolute Hit.

As an ordinary human, there was only one way he could make an object actively move away from himself: exert force on it.

That was, the transmission of electromagnetic force between matter.

And light's movement was the foundation of electromagnetic force.

"I can exert force and make objects separate from me entirely through the transmission of electromagnetic force. If even light had to obey my ordinary human thoughts and passively rush toward the target point in my mind, then electromagnetic force transmission would be disrupted. The instant all objects touched me, their basic particles would be emitted first. Electromagnetic force couldn't pass from my hand to the tail of the arrow, then from the tail to the whole arrow. The arrow wouldn't leave me at all. At the very least, the electromagnetic force I transmit could not remain in a normal state of propagation."

"If photons, electrons, or even gravitons, assuming they exist, were all subjectively shot by me toward some place, then electromagnetic force couldn't propagate normally at all. Then I couldn't make matter leave me. If I can't make matter leave me, how could I possibly shoot an arrow?"

"Would shooting all basic particles, because they are the basis of my launching, cause them to be treated as bows?"

"Just as making an arrow shoot itself doesn't trigger it, perhaps a bow cannot shoot itself either?"

"Since my ability is passive, it was already destined that I would use microscopic things to drive macroscopic things."

Simply put, his ability required a "bow" and an "arrow."

When he threw a coin, the human body was the bow and the coin was the arrow. The microscopic was the bow, and the macroscopic was the arrow.

He could launch an arrow only because basic particles worked in an orderly manner.

It was equivalent to using the bow of fundamental forces to shoot macroscopic objects.

He could not reverse that and use the macroscopic to shoot the microscopic, because macroscopic force was the collection of countless microscopic forces.

It was not that he could not shoot Microscopic Particles. Rather, as an ordinary human, he could not use microscopic force to shoot microscopic matter because he could not directly command fundamental forces.

Thus, in his everyday actions, the passive ability would at the smallest only trigger on tiny things such as dust or clumps of air.

Unless he could launch matter without using fundamental forces as a bow, then he could shoot basic particles. But was that possible? Did this world possess an interfering force beyond fundamental forces?

Mo Qiong felt that he already understood his ability. Just as he was considering how to make money, he suddenly heard someone climbing the stairs, seemingly heading for the rooftop.

"Uh..."

He hurriedly jumped up and first retrieved the arrow still floating in the air. With a pat, it dropped into his other hand.

Soon, he discovered that Han Dang had come up.

"Whoa, this place is a real mess." Han Dang looked at the wreckage.

Mo Qiong smiled. "My archery has already reached perfection. I'm number one under heaven. It's about time. We can set off now."

Han Dang said, "No, it's still too early. The beach definitely hasn't been set up yet. Did you forget? If we go too early, we'll definitely have to work! We got burned by that before. Leave the hauling to the honest freshmen."

"Wait another half hour. You do your shooting, and I'll come up to take a look."

Mo Qiong cleaned up the scene. "Forget it. Let's play some games."

"Oh? You play by yourself. I'm going to shower." Han Dang shook his head.

One look at his expression and Mo Qiong knew Han Dang had been stomped in a game.

"Did you get stomped, or did you run into a cheat?" Mo Qiong asked with a smile.

"A cheat! It was fucking outrageous. By the second circle, it had become a death zone. An Absolute Domain-type cheat. You were fine standing at the edge of the circle, but the moment you entered it, you died directly to vehicles. How the hell were we supposed to play?" Han Dang said irritably. "The worst part was that we didn't even know who killed us! We couldn't find anyone to report!"

"Haha..."

Mo Qiong laughed and returned to the dormitory with him. He turned on the computer and wanted to see what legal ways of making money suited him.

To keep the keyboard from flying away when he typed, the base of his palm remained pressed against it at all times.

"Sure enough, the internet signal won't mysteriously disconnect."

Using the computer also let Mo Qiong incidentally test whether his passive ability would inconvenience his daily life.

If he tapped the keyboard and the signal fired off toward some target, then what the hell would be the point of going online?

The fact that basic matter did not automatically trigger the passive ability meant he could live normally. He would not be unable to undergo medical examinations because Brainwaves could not be received or X-rays shot off wildly. He would not randomly interfere with things like radio waves and radiation either.

He now had a rough idea of what his ability could do.

What did Absolute Hit mean? As long as he knew what someone looked like, he could hit them from thousands or tens of thousands of miles away.

Of course, he would not kill people. But for finding people, this ability would be dead accurate. Finding Wanted criminals and the like, it was even more effective than a police dog.

Besides, if he had some starting capital, he could buy a boat and go fishing at sea.

With this ability, he would not even need fuel to sail!

Forget running out of fuel. Even if the ship's entire bottom were removed, it could still sail back to land like a ghost ship.

Better still, he would not even need to properly load goods for transport. He could rent a warehouse by the shore, find something, and casually toss it. "Get yourself into the bowl."

Then the object would dive into the warehouse on its own.

"Seems like I have plenty of options, but I need some starting capital. Just in time, Luo Qing is tonight's sucker."

Once he had a rough plan in mind, Mo Qiong casually copied all the materials he found to his cloud drive. If he got bored at the gathering that evening, he could take out his phone and slowly read and ponder them.

Yet as the upload began, he watched the progress bar race forward and suddenly felt that something was wrong.

The upload quickly finished. He looked at the cloud drive, but could not find the folder he had just uploaded.

"This..." He had clearly seen it uploading to the cloud drive just now. Why was it gone?

Mo Qiong's mouth twitched. "No way... I was thinking about the beach gathering just now. Don't tell me you uploaded it into the sea?"

"Why can files work? Sure enough, I can actually shoot things like data and signals. It's just that these things can't be shot with an ordinary human body. Or rather, what I'm shooting is a 'file.'"

Mo Qiong searched for a long time without finding where the file had gone, so he simply tried again.

This time, he thought of his phone's home screen.

"Holy shit..." Mo Qiong was completely dumbfounded as he stared at the folder that had appeared on his phone's home screen.

If he had simply uploaded something directly from his computer to his phone, Mo Qiong would not have been so stunned. But the problem was...

On the home screen of his phone's Android system was a folder with a Windows 7 theme... It was just too ridiculous.

"Huh? Eh? Hmm?"

"Is this really a superpower?"

Mo Qiong had always thought he had acquired a superpower, perhaps one related to electromagnetic force or fundamental forces in the broader sense.

Earlier, when he thought the ability ignored natural laws, he had mostly meant it as an exaggerated metaphor.

After all, even ignoring Earth's Gravity could still be explained as the superpower giving the projectile a greater force that offset gravity's effects.

But how could this be explained?

Shooting a file could be said to rely on a stronger "bow." The force of his body could not trigger the passive ability on things like signals, but a computer could. His hands touched the keyboard and mouse, which were connected by wires to all the computer's components. It was as though he held an extremely complex crossbow.

It did fit what he had previously thought: using complex equipment that strengthened his interfering force could expand the trigger conditions for a hit.

It was not that he could not shoot Microscopic Particles, but he needed sufficiently powerful instruments as "bows" to assist him.

The signal traveled along the network cable and was ultimately released through the nearest transmitter or signal tower. At that point, it entered the launched state. The data that should have gone into the cloud drive entered his own phone with Absolute Hit because he had been thinking of his phone's home screen before launching it.

This effect had not triggered while he was browsing the internet, but it had triggered when he uploaded the file, making Mo Qiong realize that he was merely shooting a "file," not shooting light signals.

Just as every object contained countless basic particles, when he shot an arrow, the countless particles within it went together with it.

In other words, though he could not shoot basic particles individually, he could combine some basic particles as much as possible into a macroscopic object. That object could even be a virtual item, changing his ability's judgment from "toward the microscopic" into "toward the macroscopic, with the microscopic included."

"Even shooting a virtual macroscopic object counts?"

"What kind of joke is this? This ability allows me to Deceive Oneself? No, does this count as deceiving myself?"

"No, no, perhaps this ability simply allows it?"

The more Mo Qiong thought, the more confused he became. Still, this judgment could at least be explained as "shooting a file."

But...

Why had a computer-themed folder appeared on his phone's home screen?

Mo Qiong opened the folder and discovered that he could actually browse it. The interface was still like browsing it on a computer... but he was holding a phone.

This time, truly and completely, the process of transmission had ignored natural laws. How could different systems possibly be compatible?

Had it even modified his phone in passing?

"Why? Why?"

The more Mo Qiong explored his ability and the more he understood its principles, the more terrifying it felt.

This was not a superpower at all. Its foundation extended beyond physics, biology, and even the relative laws that Mo Qiong's pitiful intelligence could imagine.

It involved concepts more fundamental and more primordial, beyond the limits of human thought and beyond the bounds of comprehension.

He was frightened by the hidden profundity behind his ability.

If sanity were a value, he could feel it plummeting wildly, dropping wildly because his own ability had scared him.

"Adaptation?"

"My phone's system forcibly adapted to the computer files that my ability had stuffed into it. This phenomenon did not appear in the previous experiments."

"Is this a Hegemonic Way that only appears in the virtual world?"