Deposed? I couldn't be happier! I wouldn't even be a dog to the crown prince.

This is beyond just being described as shocking.

Li Shimin had prepared himself to welcome his son's triumphant return and, incidentally, to see the Goguryeo royal family's surrender document. But when he followed the crane's boom and saw the things continuously emerging from the depths of the treasure ship, he felt as if his head had been struck hard by a sledgehammer.

"Besides—clang!"

A heavy-duty gantry crane driven by a steam engine emitted a dull mechanical sound.

Its thick iron chains suspended a specially made wooden net bag, about the size of a horse-drawn carriage. The net bag contained neither silk, nor spices, nor any exotic local products.

Instead, they were silver bricks that shimmered with a dazzling light in the early winter sun!

"Bang!"

The net was roughly untied, and hundreds of heavy refined silver bricks poured onto the cement dock like a silver waterfall, producing an extremely crisp and pleasant metallic clanging sound.

Meanwhile, dozens of heavy four-wheeled wagons with reinforced chassis were lined up, waiting to load the unrefined but incredibly high-grade raw silver ore.

"This...this is all silver?"

Li Shimin stood there dumbfounded, his legs feeling as if they were filled with lead, unable to move an inch.

The high-ranking officials of the Tang Dynasty behind him, including Changsun Wuji and Fang Xuanling, were collectively speechless. Everyone stared wide-eyed, mouths agape, emitting meaningless gurgling sounds.

Back then, the Tang army decisively defeated the Eastern Turks, captured the Khan of the Eastern Turks alive, and drove back a million head of cattle and sheep. The scene was considered by the entire court to be an unprecedented victory.

But no matter how many cattle and sheep there are, they are still living creatures that need to eat grass, get sick, and are difficult to preserve for long.

Nothing is more impactful than the hard, shiny gold and silver right in front of you.

"Quick! Don't just stand there! Move it for me!"

Dai Zhou had already washed ashore at some point.

This notoriously stingy Minister of Revenue of the Tang Dynasty, at this moment, was like a mad miser, tumbling and crawling towards the pile of silver bricks.

As he directed the clerks from the Ministry of Revenue to frantically load silver onto the carriages, he shouted at the top of his lungs:

"Be careful! Handle them with care! If you break even a corner, I'll skin you alive!"

As time went on, the hold of the thirty treasure ships was gradually emptied.

The unloaded silver and ore were piled up on the wide cement dock of Tianjin Wei, forming a silver mountain several meters high!

The sunlight shone on that silver mountain, and the reflected light was almost blinding to everyone.

The terrifying weight even caused the modern dock, constructed with countless layers of cement and steel, to groan under its strain. Several fine cracks appeared faintly on the ground.

"Father, why are you standing here lost in thought?"

Li Chengqian, dressed in a snow-white fox fur coat, slowly descended the gangway of the flagship.

He was carrying an exquisite purple clay teapot in his hand, and as he walked, he casually stepped over a silver brick scattered on the ground.

His nonchalant movements made it seem as if he were stepping over not priceless silver, but a broken stone by the roadside.

Li Shimin suddenly came to his senses.

He neither hugged his son nor inquired about the situation at the front.

This Heavenly Khan of the Tang Dynasty, disregarding the gazes of the court officials and countless common people, suddenly collapsed onto the silver mountain with a "thump," completely losing his composure.

"Silver...it's all my silver..."

Li Shimin was tightly clutching a large silver brick weighing several dozen kilograms, his face a mixture of crying and laughing, tears and snot streaming down his face.

He spent his life on the battlefield, starting his rebellion in Taiyuan, fighting his way to Xuanwu Gate, and eventually winning the submission of the entire world.

He had seen countless treasures of gold and silver, and even boasted that the national treasury was as full as it had been in all previous dynasties.

But he swore he had never seen so much silver in his entire life, or even in his past life!

This is not just wealth; it is the confidence that can elevate the national strength of the entire Tang Dynasty by several dimensions!

"Chengqian..."

Li Shimin, holding the heavy silver brick, turned his head with great difficulty.

He looked at his son, who was leisurely drinking tea, and his voice trembled violently.

"What...what exactly did you do?"

"Didn't you say you were going to 'borrow' some money to spend? What kind of sea god's dragon palace did you raid?!"

Li Chengqian blew on the tea leaves, a slightly irritating smile playing on his lips.

"Look at what you're saying! I'm a reasonable person, how could I do something as despicable as ransacking someone's home?"

He stepped forward and gently kicked the silver brick in Li Shimin's arms with his toe.

"This is all 'protection money' that old man named Shu Ming voluntarily paid to the Tang Dynasty."

"I saw that they were so poor on their dilapidated island that they couldn't even afford to eat, and there was no point in keeping this silver. So I reluctantly decided to dig it out for them and bring it back to Chang'an."

Li Shimin rolled his eyes when he heard this.

Reluctantly? Or voluntarily showing filial piety?

With this mountain of silver piled up like a mountain, you think it was given voluntarily? Nobody would believe it! It's clearly like they went to their house with cannons and ripped it out of the ground!

But this did not diminish Li Shimin's overwhelming sense of happiness at that moment.

"Good! Good son! Well done robbed... no, well done borrowing!"

Li Shimin was so excited that he was incoherent. He stood up shakily, still reluctant to put down the silver brick in his hand.

He looked at the astonishing wealth before him, enough to buy half the world.

Then look at those thirty Ming Dynasty treasure ships in the distance, which look like steel behemoths.

A sudden, unreal sense of disorientation washed over this emperor, one of the greatest emperors of all time.

"Chengqian..."

Li Shimin held the silver bricks, swallowed hard, and spoke with a bewildered and confused tone, as if he had been overwhelmed by the money.

"So much silver... how many lifetimes would it take our Great Tang Dynasty to spend it all?!"

This question voiced the sentiments of all the important officials of the Tang Dynasty present.

Yes, having too much money is a problem.

The national treasury was already overflowing. Officials' salaries in the Tang Dynasty had been increasing again and again, and military funds were so abundant that soldiers could eat canned meat every day.

How should we spend this unexpected mountain of silver?

Are you really going to build a swimming pool in the Taiji Palace with silver bricks?

Looking at his father's unsophisticated and uncultured appearance, Li Chengqian sighed helplessly.

He handed the purple clay teapot to Wu Meiniang behind him, then put his hands behind his back.

In those deep eyes, a grand and ambitious blueprint for development, far beyond the reach of this era, flashed.

"How many lifetimes would it take?"

Li Chengqian chuckled, his eyes gradually becoming sharp as knives.

"Father, you're still too short-sighted."

"I have no intention of letting this silver rot in the national treasury."

"I will use them to carve out a place on this land of the Tang Dynasty that all other nations in the world can only kneel and look up to..."

"Peerless Divine Kingdom!"