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

The vice president was horrified and slammed his fist on the keyboard to destroy the evidence, but just an inch before his fingers reached the enter key, he was paralyzed by a stun gun fired by the cyber security team that broke down the door.

The high-voltage current surged through his entire body in a microsecond.

The withered right arm trembled violently in mid-air.

The miniature servo motor inside the cybernetic prosthetic fingertip was instantly overloaded under the ravages of a strong electric arc.

A pungent wisp of blue smoke rose up.

The index finger, which should have landed precisely, brushed weakly across the edge of the alloy Enter key, leaving a trace of despair on the cold keyboard casing.

But he could no longer muster even the slightest strength to change the situation.

He looked like a soft-skinned snake with its bones removed.

He convulsed and slumped off the huge floating office chair.

The mangled body crashed heavily onto the cold floor, which was littered with discarded chips and conductive silver paste.

The thick holographic glasses on his nose, symbolizing his status as a top scholar in the Tang Dynasty, were also flung off, hitting the corner of the alloy wall and shattering into pieces.

Bright blue microscopic lens fragments were scattered all over the floor, reflecting the red alarm light that was flashing erratically in the hall.

"The Cyberspace Administration of China is hereby ordering the immediate implementation of its No. 1 iron-fisted crackdown!"

Wu Zetian's holographic projection, gleaming with cold light, stood in the center of the hall.

Although her voice was an electronically synthesized voice encrypted through a quantum gateway, it carried an undeniable thunderous majesty.

It exploded directly into each assault team member's radio via tactical headsets.

The cybersecurity team acted as swiftly as a pack of tigers descending from the mountain.

The heavy black titanium tactical boots pounded on the alloy floor covered with fiber optic cables, producing a rapid and muffled thud.

They divided into three standard tactical echelons, guns raised at eye level, and instantly suppressed any possible physical resistance in the server room.

They didn't even glance at the vice dean lying on the ground, convulsing like a dead dog.

Two cyber security team members, each wielding a high-frequency demolition axe, quickly stepped forward and kicked away the obstacle of the corpse lying on the ground.

Several core data engineers stepped forward and pulled out a special connecting cable with a high-frequency electromagnetic shielding stamp from their machine belts.

"Click! Click!"

The cold, metallic clicks of physical latches closing echoed repeatedly in the dimly lit server room.

They used the most brutal physical means to directly take over all the core mainframe control consoles of the Royal Academy of Sciences.

The engineers' eyes widened, and they exerted force with both hands.

One by one, the quantum fiber bundles emitting a faint blue glow were violently ripped out, and the physical network bus connecting the Datang Central Academy of Sciences to the outside world was forcibly and completely severed in that one second.

As the high-energy optical fiber was instantly removed, large swathes of dark blue ion sparks erupted from the interface.

The cabinet shells with flashing indicator lights were smashed so hard they made a crackling sound.

Before everyone could breathe a sigh of relief, the multi-dimensional holographic screen on the main control panel suddenly began to twist violently and horrifyingly.

The originally neatly arranged data blocks were as if they had been crushed by an invisible hand, turning into countless fragments of random code flying everywhere.

"Warning! Sandbox isolation failed! Ghost code has broken out of the Academy of Sciences network segment and is engaging us in a deep encounter within the neural network!"

The mechanical alarms echoed wildly in the hall, their tone becoming shrill and piercing due to the overload of computing power.

The green workflow curtain wall, which was originally as calm as a deep pool.

In that instant, it was like a piece of pig iron that had fallen into concentrated sulfuric acid, corroded in large swathes into a shocking blood red.

The red color spread extremely quickly.

Following the backbone optical cables of Datang's civilian network, it radiates wildly across the entire Guanzhong Plain at a speed of tens of thousands of kilometers per millisecond.

Those were hackers from the "Old Tang" organization, lurking in the shadows, launching a final, frantic counterattack through the hidden backdoor left by the former vice president.

The faces of the Cyberspace Administration's core operators turned as white as a sheet of rice paper in an instant.

Their ten fingers left blurry afterimages on the virtual keyboard, the dense tapping sounds forming a thunderous roar.

"Quickly! Activate the third defense sequence! Construct a quantum firewall! Block that data path leading to the civilian mainnet completely!"

The foreman engineer shouted at the top of his lungs, and due to extreme emotional tension, the veins on his neck bulged like wriggling black earthworms.

Cold sweat trickled down his forehead and into his mouth, tasting bitter and salty, but he didn't even have time to blink.

The cold light on the holographic screen intertwined wildly, while gold and blood clashed fiercely on the trading board.

The cybersecurity team's computing power barrier transformed into thick, golden holographic Bagua shields.

On the opposite side of that shield were densely packed, locust-like, eerie blue data spears disguised by dark web hackers using an early, obsolete protocol.

Every collision of codes was accompanied by a piercing whistle from the cooling pipes of the underground supercomputing center.

The high-pressure liquid cooling pipeline emitted a tooth-grinding metallic scraping sound amidst violent tremors.

The air in the entire server room was so tense it felt like it was about to spontaneously combust.

"This thing is strange! It's not an ordinary Trojan horse; it has extremely strong parasitic properties!"

Another operator sitting at the side control panel suddenly screamed, his voice filled with undisguised fear.

On the screen in front of him, the string of virus code was blocked by the golden holographic shield the instant.

Instead of collapsing and dissipating, it disintegrated itself in a fraction of a second, turning into hundreds of millions of tiny data fragments.

These fragments did not dissipate into the void of the network, but rather clung to the underlying public protocols of the Datang civilian network like maggots clinging to bones.

"It used the digital identity cards of 300,000 households in Chang'an as human shields!"

The engineer's voice trembled violently as he stared at the densely packed civilian accounts lit up with red dots, his face ashen.

"These fragments are forcibly requisitioning the microprocessor chips from people's wristbands."

"If we forcibly utilize high computing power to indiscriminately wipe out the entire network, the sensor chips in these civilian smartwatches will burn out instantly due to overload!"

"At that time, at least one-third of the shops and workshops in the city will have their payment systems permanently paralyzed!"

"The people will be unable to buy rice, workshops will be unable to operate, and the livelihood of the entire Chang'an will come to a complete standstill within half an hour!"

This ruthless tactic of using the lives of millions of ordinary people as a defensive line demonstrates the old aristocratic families' determination to destroy everything.

The eerie blue light flickered on the screen, growing increasingly strange, until it densely intertwined to form a giant, ghostly face.

It was as if those aristocratic rats hiding in the underground passages of Chang'an were silently mocking the invincible imperial power through a cold holographic screen.

The difficult choice turned into an invisible pressure, heavily choking everyone in the computer room.

Apart from the roar of the machines, the only other sound in the hall was the heavy breathing of the operators.

Conventional cybersecurity measures became completely ineffective at this moment.

To hesitate to act for fear of breaking the law.

Even Wu Zetian, who was usually ruthless and decisive, was shocked when she looked at the 300,000 civilian accounts that were flashing green but tightly bound by red light.

Those beautiful phoenix eyes narrowed slightly, and a rare hint of hesitation flashed deep within them.

Even for the Tang Dynasty at its current size, such a loss would be difficult to bear.

"The Cyberspace Administration of China does not accept threats."

Wu Zetian's holographic projection took a step forward, and the cold blue light on her body suddenly intensified, illuminating the entire hall as bright as day.

"Command: Forcefully switch in from the thirteenth and fourteenth computing clusters."

"Physically cut off and isolate the civilian network segment, prepare to perform a global format and wipe it clean, and all losses to people's livelihood will be covered by the national treasury in advance."

Her slender right hand slowly rose into the air, creating a gentle breeze of data.

My fingertips were fixedly hovering over the black format button that represented a complete reshuffle and cataclysmic destruction.

That one second felt maddeningly slow under the watchful eyes of everyone in the server room.

Everyone knows that once this button is pressed, Chang'an will be plunged into complete darkness tonight.

The vice president, lying on the floor, was still convulsing due to the aftereffects of the electric shock.

His leg was kicking unconsciously in the dirty water mixed with engine oil, making a screeching sound.

Upon hearing Wu Zetian's order to confront the powerful families head-on at all costs...

His face, covered in grime and bloodstains, suddenly began to twitch strangely.

Then, a terrifying smile, utterly insane and twisted to the extreme, appeared.

"Cough... Haha... Hahahaha!"

The vice-dean vomited bloody mucus while laughing hysterically on the cold floor.

His laughter was hoarse and shrill, sounding so jarring and chilling against the backdrop of the blood-red alarm lights that filled the room.

With his cloudy old eyes, now free of glasses and almost dripping with blood, he stared intently at Wu Meiniang high in the sky.

In those eyes, a morbid fanaticism flashed, dragging the entire Tang Empire down into an abyss.

"You stinky woman who plays the finance game... do you think you understand technology?"

With the last of his strength, the vice dean spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, which splattered onto the alloy floor in a mournful pattern.

He stared intently at the pale finger hovering in mid-air, laughing maniacally: "Too late! The ultimate code has already been uploaded; its true target isn't the civilian network at all!"

"What?" Wu Meiniang's phoenix eyes widened, and her fingertips suddenly hovered in the air.

"You think I'd care about those 300,000 peasant bracelets? Go look at the heavy armory in North America! Those 10,000 killing machines don't have any basic human morality or logic, hahahaha!" The vice dean roared, slamming his head hard on the floor.