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

In the raging sands of the Western Regions desert.

More than a dozen Persian supercomputing towers simultaneously erupted with a deafening roar.

The dark gold light on the tower's exterior is no longer a sporadic flicker.

Instead, they formed a continuous expanse.

More than a dozen beams of light converged and shot straight into the sky.

It tore a huge hole in the dark night sky.

The strong wind carried the smell of static electricity.

Due to the abnormal magnetic field, the sand grains on the surface of the dunes all floated up against gravity.

On the dark web overseas.

Countless black market nodes are frantically connecting.

Those scattered, illegal underground computing resources were forcibly integrated.

Driven by silicon-based logic known as the "ancestral remnant".

This computing power was amplified by a full ten thousand times.

The third continent virtual sandbox.

Li Shimin and Cheng Yaojin were still trapped in the arena.

The blood on Cheng Yaojin's back had already scabbed over.

He huddled in a corner by the high wall, holding his head, panting heavily.

The code gladiator who was wielding the whip suddenly stopped moving.

The dark green code on its body began to disintegrate.

It turned into a speck of light and merged into the scorching yellow sand beneath my feet.

"Your Majesty... is that monster dead?"

Cheng Yaojin tentatively raised his head.

He wiped the sand off his face, his voice dry.

Li Shimin did not answer.

He tilted his head back, staring intently at the oppressive sky above.

Just a moment ago, the dome was gray and hazy.

It's starting to crack now.

Strands of blue lightning, as thick as buckets, darted through the cracks.

The thunder was not a typical booming sound.

Instead, it was a series of dense, deafening data crashes.

boom--

A huge blast of air crashed down from the sky.

The high walls of the Colosseum collapsed instantly, as if made of paper.

The yellow sand that filled the sky was blown away.

A towering mountain, thousands of feet high, materialized directly in the center of the virtual continent.

The mountain is made up of stacked dark gold cubes.

The surface was covered with a dazzling blue plasma.

The mountaintop disappears into the clouds, with no end in sight.

at the foot of the mountain.

The three people are Li Shimin, Cheng Yaojin, and Changsun Wuji.

Like three ants who have strayed into the land of giants.

"What...what the hell is this thing?"

Changsun Wuji collapsed to the ground, his ceremonial cap nowhere to be found.

He pointed at the mountain, his hand trembling as if he had epilepsy.

The clouds parted.

A gigantic humanoid entity materialized on the mountaintop.

It was an old man dressed in an ancient Greek robe.

His beard and hair were all pulsating white lightning bolts.

He held a lightning spear made entirely of destructive protocols.

His face.

It was the former governor of Rome who had just appeared on global broadcast.

He is now dressed in the god-like skin of "Cyber ​​Zeus".

His size was several sizes larger than the Golden Armored Great Sage of the Tian Shu system.

"The Emperor of the Tang Dynasty".

Zeus's voice rolled down from the clouds.

It carried the metallic vibrato unique to silicon-based gods.

The shock made Li Shimin's eardrums ache.

Welcome to Mount Olympus.

Li Shimin gritted his teeth and forced himself to stand up straight.

He was the Heavenly Khan; even in death, he could not kneel before foreign lands.

"Playing tricks!"

He pointed to the sky and cursed, "My great Tang cavalry will one day raze your broken mountains to the ground!"

"Iron cavalry?"

Zeus let out a deafening laugh.

Plasma fell down his beard, creating large craters in the mountainside.

"Your rudimentary code logic from the East."

"In my eyes, it's as ridiculous as an abacus from the agricultural era."

He raised the lightning spear in his hand.

The electric arcs on the spear crackled and popped.

With each flash, tens of millions of funds would disappear from the countdown funnel above Li Shimin's head.

"Your digital reserves are nothing but a pitiful pile of waste paper."

"Your Tian Shu system is nothing more than a dilapidated house built on sand."

A basement in Hawaii.

Li Chengqian sat in the main control chair.

The cigar in his mouth had gone out.

The images on the big screen were illuminated by the dark golden light of Mount Olympus.

"Silicon-based residual code..."

Li Chengqian stared at the giant Zeus on the screen.

He did not get angry.

His eyes were as cold as an icebox.

"Tian Shu, analyze the underlying logic architecture of the other side."

He tapped his fingers a few times on the keyboard.

The anger from smashing the keyboard that I felt earlier was gone.

Only absolute rationality remains.

"Analyzing..."

The synthesized sound of Tian Shu is a bit choppy.

"The opponent's defense wall is woven using legacy vulnerabilities in silicon-based architecture; computing power level: unknown."

"Cannot be penetrated using regular code."

Li Chengqian spat out the half-smoked cigar from his mouth.

"They've found an ancient version of the backdoor."

"Then they put it in the shell of Western mythology to disgust me."

Taiji Palace in Chang'an.

Wu Zetian looked at the countdown on the screen, which showed that there were less than ten minutes left.

More than half of those 20 billion Datang Credits have already been absorbed.

Once the state is reduced to zero, Li Shimin's consciousness will be pierced directly by the lightning spear.

She clenched her fists.

The fingernail is embedded in the flesh.

"Your Highness, the market has collapsed."

"The foreign exchange shortage is too large; if we don't shut down the power and cut off the physical connection..."

"Shut up."

Li Chengqian's voice rang out in the encrypted channel.

In the virtual continent.

Zeus seemed to have had enough of the cat-and-mouse game.

He looked down at the three trembling old men from the East at his feet.

"The game is over."

He slowly raised his right arm.

All the lightning in the sky converged on the lightning spear in his hand.

The spear became blindingly bright.

The terrifying pressure of computing power caused the crust of the entire Third Continent to begin to collapse.

"The era of the Tang Dynasty begins today."

"We'll take over."

Zeus swung his arm sharply.

The thick, lightning-fast spear ripped through the sky.

With devastating short-selling orders, it headed straight for the Tang Dynasty's defenses.