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

The words "What's the panic?" were transmitted back to Chang'an via radio waves. Old Lu was stunned when he heard them, and even his crying stopped in his throat.

The finance director, who controlled the empire's purse strings, remained kneeling, his bloodshot eyes wide open, staring blankly at his prince, who was enjoying the sunshine on the other side of the ocean, through the semi-transparent holographic screen. The piercing alarm in the control room continued to echo wildly, but Old Lu felt as if time itself had fallen into a viscous stillness.

"Your Highness... the treasury of the Great Tang's central bank is really going to be emptied out. This is no joke."

Old Lu wiped the cold sweat from his face, his voice trembling uncontrollably, carrying an almost desperate plea.

Li Chengqian turned over, removed the straw from his mouth, and casually placed the emerald green coconut on the wooden tray next to the beach chair.

He grabbed a handful of fine, warm sand from his feet, letting the fragments slip through his fingers like water, his eyes filled with a look of disdain as if he were looking at an idiot.

"Old Lu, you've been with me for so long, how come your mind is still stuck at the level of counting copper coins?"

Li Chengqian patted the sand off his hands and slowly pointed to the red line on the screen, which was plummeting.

"The powerful families brought in a thousand chests of gold to cash out, and you stupidly opened the warehouses for them to move? Your Great Tang Central Bank is open for business, holding all the digital assets in the world, and you're scared to death by a pile of heavy yellow metal? I'd be ashamed to tell anyone."

Old Lu's lips trembled, his mind a complete mess.

"But...but they have genuine receipts in their hands. They're cashed on demand, that's the rule. If we don't give them to them, the rioters outside will definitely tear the building down."

He reached up and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, looking aggrieved.

"Rules are rigid, but people are flexible. In the digital age, rules must be set by those who control computing power."

Li Chengqian sneered and pointed to the half-empty coconut shell.

"Today I'm going to teach you a lesson on what it means to be a dimensionality-reducing force in modern finance. Listen carefully, right now adjust two core parameters in the Tian Shu system's backend: first, activate the 'digital reserve pool'; second, increase the 'leverage interest misalignment rate'."

These two strange, unheard-of terms were like two muffled thunderclaps striking a calm lake, making Old Lu's head buzz.

"Digital reserve pool? Leveraged interest?"

Old Lu looked around at the core operators for help, only to find that those guys who usually considered themselves top students were also looking at each other blankly.

Besides confusion, all that remained in everyone's eyes was an instinctive fear of the unknown.

This thing, which was completely beyond their cognitive scope, made them feel like uncivilized savages.

Li Chengqian was too lazy to look at their ignorant and foolish appearance, so he simply explained it in the most straightforward way.

"Simply put, if the wealthy families want to turn their data into physical gold and take it away, then let them do it. However, from now on, for every physical gold withdrawal, 20% must be deducted from the central bank as a 'digital security reserve' as a system maintenance fee."

The smile on Li Chengqian's lips gradually turned somewhat sinister; it was the kind of scheming that only capitalists would show.

"In other words, if they have a note with 100 strings of cash, you can only give them 80 strings of gold. The remaining 20 strings of cash must be forcibly left in Datang Digital Treasure as risk collateral."

"This...this is blatant robbery! Do you think that old fox Cui Yonglin would agree to this?"

Old Lu gasped, scrambled to his feet, and slapped his thigh in surprise.

"He has no choice but to agree, because we control the gate and the system permissions."

Li Chengqian shrugged dismissively and continued to throw out the next, even more insidious, killing move.

"Simply talking about robbing is too low-end. We need to focus on mutual benefit and win-win. Tell those shopkeepers outside who are experiencing a run on their gold that as long as they are willing to leave their gold with the Central Bank of the Tang Dynasty for more than three months, the system will return 'Tian Shu Credit Points' to them every day at an interest rate of one-thousandth. This interest can not only be used for direct consumption in the City That Never Sleeps, but also to offset future taxes."

Li Chengqian's words, though spoken slowly, were like a heavy hammer, shattering the backward financial defenses of the old era inch by inch.

Old Lu stood in front of the control panel, his body, which had been stiff from excessive fear, trembled violently in that instant due to the immense mental shock.

His small eyes gradually widened, the blood vessels inside seemingly glowing with excessive excitement.

From initial bewilderment, to shock in the middle, and finally to a sudden realization that dawned on my mind.

The face of the CFO of Datang changed from deathly pale to a sickly flush at an eerie speed.

"Brilliant... Your Highness, that move is absolutely brilliant!"

Old Lu slapped the alloy control panel, his excited laughter echoing through the hall, making him seem ten years younger.

"Those powerful families take their gold back, but you can't have children in the cellars, and you have to hire guards. But if they deposit their gold with us, they can see the amount increasing in their bracelets every day. Those greedy aristocratic managers are shrewd accountants; as long as the interest is high enough, they'll take the gold back to our vaults themselves!"

This is not defense at all; it is the ultimate harvest disguised as retreat.

The way Old Lu now looks at Li Chengqian is completely devoid of the respect he once had for the crown prince; instead, it is filled with a bone-deep fear of his unfathomable, almost divine wisdom.

This young man, sitting on the beach drinking juice, turned the family's months-long plan to wipe out their entire fortune into a feast of wealth delivered to their doorstep with just two sentences.

The efficiency of the central bank of the Tang Dynasty was maximized in this one second.

Old Lu roared at the stunned operators around him, "What are you standing there for! Didn't you hear the Crown Prince's decree? Adjust the system parameters immediately! Change all the big screens in the city to the central bank's high-interest deposit-taking announcements! Go now!"

As the command was issued, the red light in the control room suddenly disappeared, replaced by a smooth green workflow.

Outside the hall, the once imposing family managers stopped in their tracks on the white jade steps after seeing the large red text on the big screen that read "Deposit to Receive Virtual Appearance" and "Super High Digital Interest".

The greed born from the lure of profit instantly overwhelmed the strict orders of the Cui family head.

What was originally a life-or-death financial run turned into a farce in just a few minutes, with wealthy family managers scrambling to deposit money with the central bank.

Before those heavy camphor wood chests could even be pushed back to the mansion, they were once again sealed with the seal of the Tang Dynasty Central Bank in front of the counter.

On a beach in Hawaii, Li Chengqian looked at the now completely subsided fluctuations on the holographic screen and curled his lip in boredom.

He was just about to reach out and turn off the annoying transoceanic call so he could lie back down and enjoy the sea breeze.

Wu Meiniang, who had been sitting quietly to the side, suddenly froze in mid-air with her slender, jade-like hands, which were about to offer fruit.

Her beautiful almond-shaped eyes were fixed on the bottom log of the holographic terminal, where a string of barely perceptible, ghostly blue afterimages were flashing wildly.

The strange frequency, which did not belong to any known technological prototype of the Tang Dynasty, made the financial queen frown deeply, and her expression became somewhat solemn in an instant.

"Your Highness, don't sleep yet. There seems to be something dirty in the Tian Shu system."