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

Wu Zetian's fingertips flew across the data stream like a hunter searching for bloodstains.

Those few deep purple streaks of light, detached from the official firewall, writhed wildly in the massive Datang Digital ledger backend, like a few startled electric eels.

The Cyberspace Administration's cold, miniature fan emitted a sharp, long whistle under high-speed overload, and the cold air it spewed out carried a faint smell of burnt copper wire.

Wu Meiniang stared intently at the dancing characters with her beautiful phoenix eyes, her fingernails digging a deep white mark into the holographic lever.

"Hidden? Playing cross-source jumpers right under my nose, do you really think the Tang Dynasty's ancestral key is just for show?"

Her lips were pressed tightly together, and her cold and beautiful profile, illuminated by the pale blue light, looked like a statue carved from millennia-old ice.

"Sir! The enemy has activated multi-threaded circuit breakers and is frantically switching between more than a dozen sub-gateways in Guanzhong and Jiangnan Road!"

The operator sitting in front of the control panel was sweating as he typed on the keyboard.

His mind was so tense that his ten fingers left almost invisible afterimages on the physical keyboard.

A drop of cold sweat splattered down his temple onto the collar of his anti-static suit, leaving a small, dark stain.

"No! They've started forcibly dismantling the physical network cables! The three main base stations in Xinluo and Xiyu have just turned completely gray on the main display!"

Those cunning family hackers had no intention of leaving any trace.

The cleaning process of the Tian Shu system was about to be crushed underfoot.

With a resolute determination to destroy everything, they detonated the explosives buried at the bottom of the base station in reality.

Although the muffled, rumbling sound of the physical explosion was thousands of miles away, it was reflected in the red interruption waveform that instantly broke on the large screen.

A suffocating technological fog swirled within the control room of the Daming Palace.

"They're trying to use physical force to cut off the trail halfway through!"

The operator's voice was noticeably hoarse.

"You think this little bit of mud and water can dazzle my eyes?"

Wu Meiniang let out a long sigh of relief, her slender right hand drawing a sharp geometric arc in the air.

Her highest-level master planner authority was fully activated in every millisecond.

Instead of repairing the decommissioned base stations, she bypassed the public route of the Datang household registration database.

"Correct the deflection angle of the Hawaii-13 special quantum satellite by three micrometers to the left!"

Wu Zetian forcibly mobilized the supreme computing power of Satellite No. 13 to violently smash through the fog and lock onto the abandoned air-raid shelter in Jiangnan Road.

It was a deep black stainless steel celestial eye quietly lying dormant at an altitude of ten thousand meters.

Within that tiny second of receiving the seal of the founding ancestor of the Eastern Palace.

The microparticle thrusters at the bottom of the satellite's belly suddenly spewed out two jets of eerie blue, high-temperature flames.

The heavy satellite hull completed a precise infrared focal alignment in space.

The vast, ocean-like computing power of dimensional reduction transformed into a pale white high-frequency pulse invisible to the naked eye.

It pierced through the wind and snow of Guanzhong.

It shattered the thousands of layers of deception and stepping stones laid out by the powerful families.

"boom!"

The fog of data on the main control screen was instantly washed away by this powerful force.

The leaping purple electric eels instantly froze, turning into a lifeless, leaden gray straight line.

The coordinates were precisely reset within one microsecond.

"Located! In Jiangnan Road, thirty miles west of Jiangdu County, a collapsed, old air-raid shelter!"

The operator slapped the table with excitement, making the brass teacup next to him resonate crisply.

Wu Zetian's cold face showed no extra emotion. She turned her head slightly and opened the deep infrared vision grid transmitted back by the satellite.

Infrared scanning confirmed that the mastermind was the remnants of the Wang and Lu families who had failed in their short-selling attempt.

Inside that once desolate underground ruin.

At this moment, a dozen or so human bio-thermal sources, displaying an eerie bright red color, were sitting around a giant, heat-generating supercomputer unit.

The data labels of the heat sources are compared along the historical lineage of the Tian Shu system.

Two large family surname stamps appeared unsurprisingly in the center of the screen.

An elder of the exiled Cui clan of Qinghe, a branch of the Wang clan of Taiyuan.

"What a bunch of old bones, like centipedes that don't die but still stand strong."

Wu Zetian stared at the red figures that were trembling rapidly, her smile devoid of any warmth.

These gamblers have been stripped naked in real life.

Hidden in the shadows is a code factory capable of corrupting the sanity of ordinary people.

They used the brains of the Tang people as a battery to turn the tide. This insane and vicious tactic has completely crossed the bottom line of the Eastern Palace.

"Sir, Captain Xu Xiao's Xuanjia Guards are already waiting outside. Should we issue the order to encircle and annihilate them?"

The constable commander stood to the side, clasping his hands in a fist salute.

The leather boots on his feet made the billiard balls clatter as they hit the alloy floor.

"Encirclement and suppression? No, this is called physical formatting."

Wu Zetian's voice remained as cold and aloof as ice.

She stretched out her slender left hand, and with a click, pulled out the Radiant Short Blade from the black titanium alloy tactical belt at her waist. She then ordered the Great Snow Dragon Rider Company to set off, leaving no survivors.

The foot-long dagger, illuminated by the cold light, refracted a dazzling arc of bright blue particles.

"Tell Xu Xiao that there is no need to read out the new laws of the Tang Dynasty, nor is there any need to keep their brains to record their confessions."

The Great Snow Dragon Riders, a mixed unit of the first and second companies, were physically deployed with particle blades.

"Smash that air-raid shelter, along with all the people and their metal boxes, into a useless, lifeless mosaic!"

"Yes, sir! Leave no survivors!"

The constable commander gripped the hilt of his sword, gave a cold military salute, and strode out of the side hall.

The heavy steel gate slammed shut behind them, leaving a dull, metallic echo.

In that minute, the Tang Dynasty's violent machine, with its most absolute technical decisiveness, finally smashed down hard on that dark lair in Jiangnan Road.

The alarm lights in the main hall began to turn from red to green in large swaths.

The initial panic level was forcibly suppressed below the passing grade by the Crown Prince's iron fist in those milliseconds.

Changsun Wuji sat on the back of a chair not far away, looking at the infrared image representing the purge, and wiped the large patch of cold sweat from his forehead.

"The Wang family... this time, even their family tree will really be canceled by the Crown Prince."

The old minister's withered lips trembled, and his two old eyes were filled with a cold dread of algorithms.

Fang Xuanling also gripped his court tablet tightly, leaning against the edge of the broken dragon desk and sighing.

However, before the emperor and his ministers in the side hall of the Taiji Hall could finally exhale the pent-up frustration they had been holding in, they were left speechless.

The superconducting copper wires deep within the foundation of the Daming Palace suddenly emitted a sharp technical whistle without warning.

The sound was too loud.

The vibrations even caused the physical commemorative scrolls on the table to vibrate at high frequencies.

"Sir! Something's wrong! The physical pressure sensors on the Cyberspace Administration's network are showing a sharp increase in red!"

The operator's hands, which had already been lowered, suddenly froze in mid-air, and his eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets.

On the main panel, the azure icon representing the external defense network turned eerily blood red within a microsecond.

Just as Wu Zetian ordered the Snow Dragon Cavalry to make the arrest, a deafening commotion and crashing sounds suddenly erupted outside the Cyberspace Administration's gate.