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

"Boom—"

The heavy echo of the Taiji Palace gate closing seemed to shatter the global economic lifeline along the power cable.

For a second, the air in Chang'an seemed to freeze.

Tens of thousands of miles away, an Arctic research station is currently experiencing an unprecedented blizzard. The deadly polar cold front, like an enraged white beast, is frantically tearing at the reinforced titanium alloy bulkhead, producing a teeth-grinding metallic scraping sound.

Station manager Chen Ke stared at the central server's display screen, his eyes bloodshot.

On the screen, the golden dragon icon representing the core authorization of the Tang Dynasty suddenly flashed violently a few times, and then turned into a deathly gray without warning.

"The authorization for the directive was rejected? That's impossible!"

Chen Ke's voice was shrill with terror as his trembling fingers frantically pounded on the specially made mechanical keyboard, attempting to re-establish contact with the Taiji Palace data center. However, all he received was a cold, impersonal message: [Highest privileges have been disabled; the entire system has entered silent mode].

In that instant, meteorological data transmission ceased, the ice detectors stopped humming, and even the nuclear heating furnaces maintaining the base's temperature began emitting piercing alarms due to the loss of real-time dynamic balance adjustments from the central control room. Chen Ke slumped in his swivel chair, watching the white smoke billowing and engulfing everything outside the window, with only one thought in his mind: the brainstem of the Great Tang had been forcibly removed.

At the same time, the industrial heart of North America fell into a deathly silence.

King Li Tai of Wei was standing in front of the world's largest blast furnace for manufacturing mechs. His once ruddy, chubby face was now ashen.

Because it did not receive the raw material and energy quotas issued by the Privy Council of the Tang Dynasty, the coolant circulation system, which had been boiling like magma, instantly stalled. The massive metal piston, deprived of pressure, emitted a muffled roar before slowly coming to a stop.

"What about the quota? Doesn't the old man usually value this batch of steel production the most?"

Li Tai roared furiously into the communicator, his once-elegant silk shirt now soaked with sweat. He watched as the indicator lights on the expensive, precision-engineered machines went out one by one, feeling a suffocating sense of unease he'd never experienced before. Without his father's imperial approval, the planet's most massive industrial machine couldn't even produce a single screw.

Meanwhile, in South America, King Li Ke of Wu was gazing in despair at the endless giant transport ships.

These steel behemoths, laden with a third of the world's grain production, lay haphazardly in the port like piles of scrap metal, having lost their navigation authorization from the Tang Dynasty Maritime Administration. Port dispatchers, their authority locked, couldn't even lower the crane hooks. Millions of tons of fresh grain emitted a nauseating stench of decay under the scorching sun—a prelude to the collapse of civilized order.

Our gaze travels across the ocean and returns to the long street shrouded in dark clouds.

The rain in Chang'an was falling heavily and rapidly.

Outside the imperial city gates, the heads of the five clans and seven powerful families, who once held sway in the business world and controlled more than half of the light industry in the Tang Dynasty, were experiencing the longest and darkest minutes of their lives.

Cui Yonglin, the head of the Cui family, stared intently at the holographic tablet in his hand that was still displaying errors.

The moment the Taiji Palace was locked, the Tang Dynasty Global Trade Index, like a kite with a broken string, drew a terrifying, almost vertical green line on the screen.

"How could this be... How dare His Majesty go on strike?"

Cui Yonglin's voice sounded weak and trembling in the rain. His once meticulously combed sideburns were now soaked by the cold rain, sticking messily to his wrinkled forehead. His hands were shaking; the physical fear caused by the sudden loss of a third of his assets made it almost impossible for him to hold the tablet.

The head of the Lu family standing next to him suddenly collapsed to his knees on the hard, cold bluestone ground.

"Quota... my silk trade quota is locked."

The head of the Lu family muttered to himself, his eyes vacant like a soulless puppet. His long robe, worth thousands of strings of cash and made of specially supplied Indian silk, was now soaked in mud and water, heavy and filthy, clinging to his pampered body. He was oblivious, only nervously touching the already blacked-out terminal.

They once believed that the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty was inseparable from their capital, and that as long as they controlled the distribution channels, even the emperor would have to give them some face.

But now, Li Shimin has shown them a truth in the most brutal and unreasonable way: in the Tang Dynasty, capital is merely a footnote to power.

Once the center of power stops turning, their enormous wealth, which they are so proud of, is nothing more than a pile of worthless data that cannot be redeemed.

Cui Yonglin looked at the tightly closed Vermilion Bird Gate and at the Snow Dragon Riders standing straight in the rain, their eyes like cold stone sculptures.

His psychological defenses completely collapsed in that one second.

He no longer cared about the dignity of a noble family, nor did he care about the horrified looks of the onlookers. This business tycoon, who once dared to slam his fist on the table with Fang Xuanling in the imperial court, suddenly fell forward, his knees slamming heavily into a puddle, splashing up a cloud of filthy mud.

"Your subject, Cui Yonglin, requests an audience with Your Majesty!"

His voice was hoarse from excessive fear, and even carried a hint of a pitiful sob.

Cui Yonglin kowtowed frantically, his usually well-maintained face striking the hard ground with a dull thud. Rainwater soaked into his clothes down his neck, but he was oblivious, mechanically repeating the act of kowtowing.

This scene seems to be a signal.

Immediately afterwards, the heads of the Lu, Zheng, and Li families—those long-established aristocratic families that had been prominent in the history of the Tang Dynasty for hundreds of years—were all like stray dogs.

They discarded their oil-paper umbrellas for shelter from the rain and their precious jade pendants, kneeling down outside the imperial city in the pouring rain, disregarding all decorum.

Their once-noble silks and satins were tumbling in the mud and water, stained with black dust. Some people, due to their violent movements, struck their foreheads against the edges of the stone steps, blood flowing down their noses and instantly blurred by the heavy rain.

Changsun Wuji stood atop the distant clock tower, a black folding umbrella clutched in his hand, his knuckles white from the force of his grip.

He looked down at those big shots who he usually had to feign politeness to, who were now kowtowing in the mud like thugs, drawing blood, all for a quota or a permission.

Changsun Wuji's eye twitched violently.

He sensed it.

This sense of terror and oppression stems from a social structure characterized by a high degree of centralization of technology, administration, and imperial power.

This suffocating feeling of being choked doesn't just belong to capitalists, but to everyone who is in the gears of this vast empire.

The one who can break free of these shackles is currently enjoying a final moment of peace on an island tens of thousands of miles away.

The rain grew heavier and heavier, as if it would submerge the entire city of Chang'an in this deathly stillness of snowflakes.

Amidst this chaos and despair, the fax machine at the Chang'an Telegraph Office was running frantically, even emitting plumes of smoke due to overheating.

Countless urgent telegrams, stamped with red seals, crossed the Pacific Ocean like snowflakes, eventually landing on the beach in Hawaii, at Li Chengqian's feet.