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

Deep within an abandoned underground mine outside Chang'an, an unsettling purplish-red glow flickered. Several patriarchs, utterly bankrupt due to failed short-selling attempts, gathered there, their faces gaunt and haggard.

The dark stone wall was covered with bluish-black moss, which emitted a rotten, fishy smell under the light of the cheap fluorescent tubes.

At this moment, the acting clan head of the Wang clan in Taiyuan, the eldest son of the clan, was slumped on a dry piece of slag without any regard for his image.

His bright yellow silk robe had long been torn by the pebbles and covered with sticky black mud.

Those once arrogant eyes were now filled with nothing but a deathly gray madness.

"Everything is gone... the land deeds, the mines, even the cyber land of our ancestral home was forcibly liquidated."

Young Master Wang dug his dry fingernails into the soil, his voice hoarse and sounding like that of a dying beast.

The elder Lu, who was standing nearby, coughed violently and spat out a mouthful of dirty blood that smelled of coal smoke.

The web of false information that Wu Zetian laid behind the scenes not only drained their last penny of working capital.

They even used all the margin they obtained from selling their real assets as illegal short-selling positions, swallowing every last penny into the bottomless pit of the national treasury.

There's no hope of a comeback.

The legal net of the new Tang Dynasty law was tightening overhead, and the workshops in reality no longer had the funds to pay wages.

"Rather than go to the refugee camp and be laughed at by those lowlifes, it's better to fight that rebellious son to the death!"

Young Master Wang suddenly stood up, his dragon boots slamming into a piece of ore at his feet, creating a piercing sound of physical shattering.

He slammed the last heavy package in his arms onto the rough wooden table.

That was the last bit of gold left behind by their major families in reality; it was heavy and radiated an alluring dark golden light.

They made a crazy decision.

Since the rules on the surface are no match for the Eastern Palace, then let's sink to the darkest depths.

Young Master Wang pulled out a strange, jet-black metal box from under the table, without any official cybersecurity seal.

"This is the 'Illegal Neuronal Deep Dive Technology' that I just obtained from the black market. It's the ultimate backdoor left by those traitors in the Gongshu family."

He stared at the gold on the table, his eyes flashing with a morbid fanaticism that bordered on desperate.

"Brother Wang, this thing can eat people if it hasn't been filtered through the logic firewall of Tian Shu."

A newly joined, fallen nobleman next to him shrank back, his voice trembling with fear.

"Cannibalism? Can it really devour people cleanly using Li Chengqian's algorithm?!"

Young Master Wang sneered and reached out to pry open the physical casing of the pitch-black box.

The needle was exposed, revealing a dense array of dark purple neurons inside, wriggling like living creatures.

The evil nature of this technology, from the very first second of its creation, brought with it the extreme destruction of the mortal body.

It completely bypasses the security locks and ethical restrictions of the Tian Shu system, and no longer uses mild retina rendering.

Instead, it forces a high-voltage physical current directly into the user's central nervous system through the gaps in the skull.

It can provide users with the ultimate sensory stimulation that breaks through the limits of the human body.

The hallucinatory thrill of becoming a god or immortal in the world of code, where you can manifest whatever you want.

It can make even the most rational mortal completely succumb in a fraction of a second, experiencing an addictive ecstasy akin to drug addiction.

"As long as we distribute this stuff, those refugees who live worse than dogs in reality will sell their lives to us."

Young Master Wang's withered lips moved, forming a cruel, subtle curve.

"They want to become immortals, we want our principal."

"Use this helmet to drain the resources from the bottom layer. Once we have tens of millions of computing power, we can secretly poke a huge hole in Li Chengqian's metaverse!"

A black industrial chain was launched with a roar in the desolate mountains and rivers of the Tang Dynasty on this moonless night.

Less than ten days had passed.

The slums and shacks on the very edge of Chang'an, where the sun never shines.

In the dead of night, a series of extremely eerie slow-motion details began to appear.

A dockworker covered in frostbite, after a long day's work, only earned two coins.

Staring blankly at his almost broken wrist, his eyes were filled with despair for the reality of life.

"Want to become a lord in the 'Second Chang'an,' a place where immortals reside? No identity card needed, just two coins."

Deep in the dark alley, a servant of a noble family, dressed in a black robe.

He floated over like a ghost, handing over a rough, dark purple old helmet covered in physical welding marks.

The laborer swallowed hard.

His mind went blank for a minute.

Trembling, he handed over the two copper coins, still damp with the sweat of his palms, and slammed the heavy iron object tightly onto his head.

"Buzz—!"

As the switch was pressed, a blinding purplish-red current instantly and violently pierced into his temple.

The laborer's body convulsed violently within that millisecond.

His eyes widened instantly, his pupils dilating.

But in his mind, the hunger, cold, and the foreman's whip in reality vanished completely in an instant.

He saw himself with golden wings several meters long on his back, and countless holographic fairies dancing around him, pouring barrels of fragrant imperial wine into his mouth.

That illusory sense of happiness caused by extreme overload of neurons.

It became an indelible digital mark, firmly welded to the deepest part of his soul.

This dark, siphoning speed is more frenzied and savage than any previous financial method.

The heads of powerful families sat in the tunnel.

Looking at the low-quality computing power and scattered copper coins flowing back through illegal backdoors.

Their gaunt faces, finally flushed with renewed vigor due to the resurgence of wealth, erupted into a nervous, hoarse laugh.

"It's gone up! Our computing power index has rebounded!"

Li Chengqian, you use the law to control the public eye, but I'm right here underground, ready to drain the very foundation of your Tang Dynasty into a dried-up corpse!

However, the cost of such illegal deep-sea diving, which completely disregards the lives and deaths of ordinary people, is devastating.

Countless ordinary people who had used up their last rations to pay for their food.

After experiencing several days and nights of physical overload in the virtual world.

Their brains were physically burned into a puddle of mush by those high-voltage currents.

Their bodies lay silently on the moldy straw mats, exuding the deathly stillness, while their souls were forever locked in the ownerless core cell of the Gongshu family.

A deathly stillness and desolation began to permeate the streets and alleys of the slum, a result of collective addiction.

The dragon and lion dances on the long street continued.

The holographic light show of Daming Palace continues to weave a dreamlike and beautiful picture of the Tang Dynasty's golden age in the sky.

But in this pitch-black mud pit where no light or shadow can reach.

The collapse of social classes and the silent evaporation of the population are spreading wildly at a speed that is utterly shattering the rationality of ordinary people.

Just half a month later, in the Wannian County government office in Chang'an City, the county magistrate looked at the mountain of case files on his table and broke out in a cold sweat.

His neat official uniform was soaked with sweat.

Large beads of sweat streamed down his forehead, landing heavily on the cold Xuan paper and blurring the black ink.

His thighs trembled uncontrollably and rapidly beneath the desk.

Even the gavel in his hand, used for judging cases, felt as heavy as a thousand-pound boulder, impossible to lift.

The magistrate turned his head in a daze, looking out the window at the once again dazzling, towering blue neon lights of the city that never sleeps. He felt that the light was as blinding as steel knives scraping his bones.

"My lord... this is the 312th report this month. They are all men from the West City Wharf and the refugee camp. They have disappeared without a trace, neither alive nor dead." The clerk next to him knelt on the ground, his voice filled with a complete sob and distorted tone.

The magistrate stared intently at the thick stack of files.

A bluish tinge of terror instantly spread across his neck.

He abruptly pushed aside the clerk beside him, his hands gripping the final report covered in bloody handprints with a dazed expression. His body lurched forward in extreme fear, almost crushing the case completely.

This bizarre dead end, where a technological black hole is frantically devouring the population beneath the surface of prosperity, has driven the grassroots administrators of this ancient capital to madness.

The case file contained the shocking words: missing persons.