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

Outside Chang'an City, in an abandoned mine, purple-red fluorescent lights flickered as bankrupt patriarchs gathered.

It was an ancient mining area abandoned by Datang Heavy Industry.

The ground was covered with rusted alloy tracks.

At the end of the dark tunnel, a cheap fluorescent tube was emitting a hissing sound of leakage.

The air was filled with the smell of musty, earthy soil.

Young Master Wang stared intently at the control panel.

His once haughty eyes were now filled with the madness of losing everything.

The elders from the Cui and Zheng families standing nearby were also emaciated, looking like skeletons draped in brocade.

"This is our last bargaining chip."

Young Master Wang pulled a heavy package from his pocket and slammed it hard onto the rough wooden table.

The package was unpacked, revealing more than a dozen gleaming gold bars.

Under the purplish-red light, the gold shimmered with an almost sickly cold gleam.

"All the credit points on the surface have been harvested by the Crown Prince."

We can't withdraw a single penny from the public internet right now.

Since Li Chengqian isn't leaving us a way out, let's all cut it off and go straight to the bottom!

He turned around and forcefully inserted the network card, stained with ancient bronze rust, into a huge black server rack.

Accompanied by a muffled roar of an electric motor.

The cooling fan at the top of the server rack spewed out a foul-smelling, cold draft.

This is a taboo left behind by the Gongshu family three years ago.

[Illegal Neuron Deep Dive Technology].

It failed to pass the safety certification of the Donggong Academy of Sciences and was listed as the number one prohibited technology in the Tang Dynasty.

But in the eyes of these desperate aristocratic families, this became their ultimate weapon against imperial power.

"Young Master, this technique was used to burn many assassins to death back then."

The elder of the Zheng family next to him swallowed hard, his withered fingers trembling.

"It does not use the logical gateway of the TianShu system."

Instead, they directly use microampere-level high-voltage current to forcibly stimulate the brain of ordinary people.

It can provide users with an extreme hallucination and ecstatic pleasure that transcends human limits within a fraction of a second.

"So what? Who cares about human lives now?!"

Young Master Wang suddenly turned his head, his facial features twisted so grotesquely they appeared menacing.

He gripped the Zheng family elder's shoulder tightly.

The fingernails were almost embedded in the other person's old flesh.

"What we need is computing power! The computing power from the underground black market that can bypass the monitoring of Tian Shu!"

As long as enough brains get connected, we can form a secret hacker network.

At that time, I will take over the reins in the metaverse and completely destroy Li Chengqian's resources!

This morbid fanaticism born of despair spread like a plague through the dark mines.

The remnants of several aristocratic families exchanged glances.

A blood-red flame, characteristic of gamblers, ignited in their eyes.

"Then let's do as the eldest son wishes."

The refugee camps in the West Market were never short of people with lowly lives.

"For just two coins, we distributed these homemade stun helmets throughout the slums at the extremely low cost of two coins."

In the middle of the night, the sound of the night watchman's gong in the West Market of Chang'an had just faded into the cold wind.

Deep within the refugee camp, in those shacks made of scrap metal and rotten straw mats.

Several servants from a noble family, dressed in black robes, were quietly pushing open a dilapidated wooden door.

Inside the room lay an exhausted dockworker.

He couldn't find work in real life and had been starving for three whole days.

I barely have the strength to even lift my eyelids.

"Two coins, just two coins."

Wearing this iron hat will allow you to enter the celestial realm and become an immortal.

Inside, there was an endless supply of roast chicken, and countless beautiful concubines.

The man in the black robe had a seductive, husky voice.

In the darkness, he handed over a purplish-red iron helmet with rough weld marks on the edges.

The laborer rummaged through his waistband and pulled out the last two copper coins, which smelled of sweat.

His withered fingers grabbed the helmet and, without hesitation, pressed it firmly against his forehead.

"Buzz—!"

That one-thousandth of a millisecond of contact was slowed down by the darkness.

The moment the laborer's body came into contact with the electrode.

It convulsed violently without any surprise.

That's not normal trembling.

Instead, the subcutaneous high-voltage current instantly tears apart the central nervous system, causing severe muscle overload.

His two thighs suddenly bent backward, and the joints made a cracking sound.

He was like a dead fish thrown into boiling oil, leaping wildly on a moldy straw mat.

His facial muscles completely changed shape in a microsecond.

His eyes bulged out, and his pupils began to dilate and become unfocused in an instant.

Large patches of white foam mixed with dark red blood dripped down his mouth and nostrils.

But inside the holographic helmet.

His cerebral cortex is experiencing a dopamine surge a million times greater than normal.

The illusory bliss made him chuckle foolishly.

His physical body was withering away, but his consciousness had become a digital battery that provided black market computing power for the aristocratic families.

"Great, the first battery is online."

Inside the mine, Young Master Wang stared at a dark purple dot that had lit up on the main control panel.

I couldn't help but let out a nervous scream.

"Look! How fast this computing power is increasing!"

The minds of refugees are more efficient than those of quantum cores!

"Keep sending people to deliver helmets! Bring in all those tens of thousands of peasants from the refugee camp in the west of the city!"

"But young master, if you wear this thing for more than three days, your brain will be burned into a puddle of mush by the high voltage."

The Cui family steward standing nearby stared at the data feedback, his face ashen.

"Burn it and replace it with a new one! Guanzhong may not have much else, but it has plenty of refugees!"

Young Master Wang slammed his hand fiercely on the power switch.

"While Li Chengqian is sunbathing in Hawaii, let's build a cyber hell out of human brains right here beneath Chang'an!"

The dark industrial chain, unseen by anyone, began to grow wildly and unchecked.

Those low-class vagrants who live worse than dogs in reality.

For that illusory roast chicken.

They lined up to offer their heads to the powerful families.

They thought they were ascending to immortality.

Little did they know that their souls were being burned away piece by piece by those greedy old aristocrats, like cheap firewood.

Time flies by as data flows by.

Half a month passed in the blink of an eye.

The dazzling neon lights of the entire inner city of Chang'an still shimmered in the sky above the city that never sleeps.

However, the once densely packed laborers at the docks of Xishi began to disappear in large numbers at an eerie rate.

In reality, the blast furnace lacked workers to add coal, and the flames began to dim.

Inside the main hall of Wannian County Government Office.

Although it was noon, the atmosphere in the courtroom was so oppressive that it was hard to breathe.

The county magistrate of Wannian County sat behind his high desk.

His official robes, belonging to an eighth-rank official, were completely soaked with cold sweat, sticking stickily to his back.

His two fingers, covered in chilblains, were gripping the gavel absentmindedly.

But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it to go down.

"My lord... this is an urgent file sent from various neighborhoods of the West Market's refugee camp this morning."

The clerks below knelt on the white marble bricks, their voices trembling as if they were crossing a river in the dead of winter.

"It's not just the dockworkers who have gone missing."

Even some young men from small merchant families.

These past two days, they've started dying stiffly in the house.

When the family found him, his forehead was covered with two black holes as if struck by lightning; he was already dead.

The magistrate swallowed hard, feeling as if he had swallowed a handful of rusty sand.

He looked at the large mahogany table in front of him.

The physical Xuan paper scrolls on top were already stacked up to a height of three feet.

Each sheet of paper was stamped with a bright red death forensic doctor's seal.

The endless cold that surged from the ground transformed into an invisible hand, gripping his neck tightly.

He dared not report the matter to the State Council.

In the entire household registration database of the Donggong Tianshu system, these people's system accounts still show as "online".

This is a silent evaporation that exists outside the Imperial algorithm.

The facade of a prosperous era still dances in the sky.

But the foundation at the bottom is being hollowed out layer by layer by people using iron caps.

The magistrate trembled as he stretched out his right hand and slowly turned the topmost final report, stained with dried blood.

His teeth started chattering in fear, making a comical cracking sound.

Half a month later, in the Wannian County government office, the magistrate looked at the mountain of case files on the table, on which were written four words: missing persons.

"My lord, if this matter is not reported to the Eastern Palace Cyber ​​Security Department, we will be physically expelled from the ranks if something goes wrong!" The clerk below kowtowed so hard that it made the sound of a billiard ball.

The magistrate gripped his thigh tightly, his eyes red-rimmed as he stared at the death stamps, his voice filled with desperate sobs: "Report? How am I supposed to report this? The Tian Shu system's backend shows these 40,000 people are still embracing women in Pingkang Ward. Am I supposed to tell the Cyberspace Administration that these 40,000 people are all dead underground?!"