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

That eerie green zigzag line was like a dagger laced with venom, piercing deeply into Li Shimin's retina.

The air inside the Taiji Hall seemed to be drawn into a vacuum in that instant, so silent that the sound of a dripping copper kettle in the corner of the hall could be heard. The magnetic field that had been surrounding Li Shimin was violently distorted. He stared intently at the grim green light on the holographic screen, a color he had never seen before, yet it carried a sense of destruction that made his very soul tremble.

Li Shimin genuinely couldn't understand those complicated put options or short positions.

But he understood Old Lu's tearful wail—the Tang Dynasty was losing money, and the real gold and silver in the national treasury were being plundered by a group of unseen bandits through these pulsating lines.

This feeling made the once all-powerful emperor feel an unprecedented sense of frustration.

He recalled how, when Khan Jieli's army besieged the Wei River, though it was a humiliating treaty, at least he could see the clash of swords and feel the breath of warhorses. But now, the other side hadn't even shown their face; they had merely smeared some green on this luminous board, and they thought they could turn the Tang Dynasty's eternal foundation into nothingness?

An emotion called "humiliation" was like a long-dormant evil dragon, rampaging through Li Shimin's chest.

He felt as if he had been slapped in the face in public without even seeing who it was. This extreme sense of absurdity quickly fermented into a raging fire that burned his eyes to the point of bursting.

Li Shimin's five fingers suddenly clenched, gripping the edge of the specially made alloy holographic platform tightly.

"Crunch—crunch—"

A sickening metallic clang echoed through the hall. The aerospace-grade alloy, supposedly produced by the system and capable of withstanding a heavy hammer blow, was being crushed by Li Shimin's fingers, leaving several dents. His fingernails dug into his palms from the excessive force, and bright red blood trickled from between his fingers, dripping onto the cold control panel, only to be instantly swallowed by the eerie green light.

The officials below the main hall all shivered in unison.

Fang Xuanling shrank back; he knew his emperor all too well. When Li Shimin stopped roaring and began to silently destroy inanimate objects, that was the most terrifying moment for the Tang Dynasty.

In that instant, Li Shimin's gaze locked onto the specially made, streamlined e-sports grade wireless mouse in his hand.

This is the "high-dimensional manipulation tool" that Li Chengqian gave him before.

He suddenly grabbed the mouse, his eyes bloodshot, and the muscles in his arm bulged like tightly wound steel cables as he exerted force.

"Bang!"

With a crisp, explosive sound, the expensive, custom-made mouse was slammed hard against the hard white marble floor tiles.

The plastic casing shattered instantly under that terrifying force, black fragments scattering like flying meteors. The delicate integrated circuit board inside was smashed into several pieces, and a few tiny capacitors sparked blue electrical sparks upon impact, followed by a puff of burnt smoke.

The mouse wheel rolled to Changsun Wuji's feet, and under the astonished gaze of the Tang Dynasty prime minister, it spun twice in despair before finally falling silent.

"They've rebelled...they've all fucking rebelled!"

Li Shimin let out a low, suppressed roar. His voice was terribly hoarse, as if it had been rubbed against rough sandpaper. He ignored the chaos below and instead grabbed the red office telephone on the table.

That was a secure line leading directly to the bedroom of the governor of the Central Bank of the Tang Dynasty.

Li Shimin's hand gripping the receiver trembled violently with rage. Without waiting for the other party to speak, he unleashed a roar into the microphone that could shatter windows.

"Listen to me! Wherever you are, even if you're on your wife's belly, get back to your treasury right now!"

His spittle landed on the holographic screen in front of him, leaving a faint, blurry mark on the eerie green.

"Open the national treasury! Take all the gold bricks, silver beans, and that damned reserve funds that I've accumulated over the years and put them all on the stock exchange!"

On the other end of the phone, the governor of the People's Bank of China was clearly stunned by this sudden outburst of anger and stammered as he tried to explain something.

"Shut up! I don't want to hear about liquidity or hedging risks!"

Li Shimin slammed his hand on the holographic platform, producing a loud bang like muffled thunder.

"All I know is that the face of the Tang Dynasty is now trampled on! Smash it immediately! Smash it with money! Smash it with gold! Smash those damned green lines, bit by bit, until they turn red!"

"If I don't see a red candle before the market closes today, you're going to Lingnan to spend the rest of your life repairing the Earth!"

After saying that, he slammed the receiver down hard, so hard that he almost smashed the landline phone as well.

The ministers in the hall exchanged bewildered glances. This violent bailout, using feudal thinking to combat a modern financial crisis, struck them as inexplicably absurd, yet none dared to provoke the tyrant at this moment.

Li Shimin was panting heavily, his eyes fixed on the screen.

He fantasized that when mountains of gold bricks crashed into the market, those green vipers would be instantly severed. He imagined that the petty thieves lurking in the shadows would scatter in fear.

A minute passed.

Five minutes passed.

The eerie green on the holographic screen didn't fade; instead, it seemed to absorb the nourishment from the national treasury funds, becoming even more intense and even beginning to transform into a deeper, darker green. The curve representing the shipping index, after a brief resistance, plummeted even more dramatically.

"Ring ring—"

The red dedicated line rang again.

Li Shimin suddenly grabbed the receiver, and before he could speak, he heard the almost desperate voice of the central bank governor.

"Chairman, we can't break it!"

The bank manager's voice trembled violently, and the background noise was filled with the operators' noisy exclamations.

"The funds on the other side are unfathomable! It seems they anticipated our aggressive market intervention! Every ounce of gold we dumped was instantly absorbed, while our silver investment didn't even make a ripple!"

"Chairman, the shipping sector... has completely collapsed!"

The central bank governor cried out on the phone, his voice trembling with emotion, "Chairman, we can't break through! The funds on the other end are bottomless; our cash injections haven't even made a ripple!"