Sky Curtain: The opening scene explains the four major cases of the Ming Dynasty plus the early Ming

boom!

When the words "The Ming Dynasty will already be a mere shell of its former self" fell on the screen, all the Zhu family emperors across time and space felt a chill that penetrated to the bone!

This is no longer a criticism of Zhu Gaochi.

This is a declaration that this so-called "Emperor Renzong" almost became the gravedigger of the Ming Dynasty!

"Holy crap! That scared me to death! I never knew there were such deep secrets behind 'Xingzai'!"

"Brother Jun, isn't this just setting your son up for failure? No wonder you look down on Emperor Renzong of Ming, oh wait, I mean Emperor Fei of Ming. It turns out you're not only setting your father up for failure, but also your son and grandson!"

"Yes, Zhu Gaochi really is the son of Zhu Di and Xu Miaoyun, right? The Yongle Emperor was such a brilliant and ambitious man, and Empress Xu was also a remarkable woman. How could they have given birth to such a thing?"

"Hey upstairs, stop insulting genes! This person was definitely misled by those pedantic scholars! 'One is influenced by one's company!'"

The comments on the screen were like countless steel needles, piercing the hearts of everyone in the Yongle Hall.

Zhu Di's gaze fell on his grandson Zhu Zhanji, who was still kneeling.

That look was filled with pity, but also with an unprecedented severity.

He now finally understood why the descendants in the sky said that Zhu Zhanji was "exhausted" and "addicted to cricket fighting to escape reality."

If it were him, facing such a mess, and a group of powerful ministers whom his own father had supported, who were all sweet talk and treacherous and who were constantly hindering him, he would probably be driven crazy!

Above the sky, Zhu Dijun seemed to have taken a sip of water to moisten his throat.

His icy voice rang out again, carrying a hint of final judgment.

"Fellow family members, if we say that Zhu Gaochi provided the civil service group with weapons by cultivating his own faction and undermining imperial power!"

"By destroying his own Great Wall and denying the Northern Expedition, Zhu Gaochi removed an external threat to the civil service!"

"His intention to move the capital would shake the very foundations of the nation; Zhu Gaochi wanted to relocate the entire Ming Dynasty into the comfortable haven built for him by the civil service!"

"So what he left his son Zhu Zhanji was the last and most insidious 'political legacy'!"

"A single system that would completely lock up the descendants of the Zhu family, reducing the emperor to nothing more than a tool for affixing seals!"

Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly rose, each word distinct and deliberate, like a thunderclap!

"This system is—the Cabinet's draft proposal system!"

When the phrase "cabinet draft" appeared, many people across time and space were still completely bewildered.

But in the first year of the Xuande reign, Zhu Zhanji's pupils contracted to their maximum size in an instant!

The blood in his body seemed to freeze at that moment!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun quickly released a "standard" historical interpretation that had been altered by later generations.

The system of drafting proposals by the Grand Secretariat originated during the Xuande reign of the Ming Dynasty, and was granted to Grand Secretaries by Emperor Xuanzong (Zhu Zhanji).

[Development Process: During the Hongwu and Yongle reigns, the Grand Secretariat served primarily as advisors. During the Xuande reign, Emperor Xuanzong began allowing the Grand Secretariat to draft proposals, marking the beginning of its power. In the early Zhengtong reign, Emperor Yingzong was young, and the Three Yangs (Yang Xizhi, Yang Xun, and Yang Gongzhi) assisted in governing, making the drafting of proposals a fixed system. During the Jiajing and Wanli reigns, this power reached its peak, with the Grand Secretary effectively becoming a prime minister.]

As Zhu Dijun looked at the text, he let out a cold laugh filled with utter sarcasm.

"See that? Family members, here we go again! It's that same old euphemism again!"

"It's that same old trick again—throwing dirty water on a good emperor while washing their own master's name clean!"

"Those damned civil servants and academic cliques are rewriting history again, feeding us wrong information and data!"

Zhu Dijun's voice, like the sharpest knife, tore this disguise to shreds!

"I'll tell you the truth today!"

"The system of 'Drafting Drafts by the Cabinet,' which rendered the emperor a mere figurehead, was not actually initiated by Emperor Xuanzong of Ming, Zhu Zhanji!"

"But it was his fat, pig-like father, Emperor Hongxi, Zhu Gaochi, who only reigned for ten months!"

Boom!!!

This sentence struck Zhu Zhanji, the first emperor of the Xuande reign, like a thunderbolt!

He suddenly raised his head, staring intently at the sky, his eyes filled with disbelief and bloodshot veins!

How is that possible!

After he ascended the throne, in order to check the power of the three Yangs and to seize power back into his own hands, how many open and covert struggles did he have with the cabinet over the power of "drafting"?

He always believed that this was a power he had "granted" to the cabinet to facilitate the handling of government affairs!

He always believed that the power to grant or withhold this authority was entirely up to him!

But now, the sky is telling him that this was not something he "granted" at all!

It was his father who had given him away long ago!

"As soon as Zhu Gaochi ascended the throne, in order to repay the Three Yangs and others for their support and to demonstrate his 'benevolent rule,' he immediately handed over the memorials that should have been reviewed by the emperor himself to the cabinet, and had them write down their opinions on small slips of paper, also known as 'drafts.'"

"And what about him? All he has to do is stamp and circle the opinions drafted by the cabinet!"

"Family members, do you understand what this means?"

Judy Jun's voice was filled with anger!

"This is equivalent to the company chairman handing over the empire his father worked so hard to build to a few department managers!"

"His daily work consisted of sitting in his office and signing off on documents handed to him by the managers!"

"This is what Zhu Gaochi called 'benevolent governance'! This is the deepest and most poisonous pit he dug for his son, Zhu Zhanji!"

"Upon ascending the throne, Zhu Zhanji faced this situation: the cabinet, armed with his father's 'imperial edict,' was righteously exercising its power of 'drafting'! This was no longer a gift from the emperor, but a power that the cabinet was entitled to!"

"If Zhu Zhanji wanted to retract it, he would be making an enemy of the entire civil service! He would be negating his father's 'benevolent rule'!"

"How could a young emperor who had just ascended the throne and whose power base was not yet secure possibly defeat this group of deeply entrenched old foxes who had already tasted the power?!"

"His father only took ten months to leave him with an inescapable death warrant!"

"puff--"

In the first year of the Xuande reign, Zhu Zhanji could no longer hold back and spat out a mouthful of blood, staining the gold bricks in front of him red!

"Father...you...how cruel you are!!!"

He let out a heart-wrenching roar of grief and despair!

怨！

Endless resentment!

He finally understood!

Why does he feel like a puppet on a string?

Why is it that every single one of his decisions is rejected by the three Yangs in the cabinet with various "ancestral rules" and "benevolent governance"?

Why does he feel like a high-ranking prisoner when he is clearly an emperor?

It turns out that from the moment he ascended the throne, he carried the burden left by his own father and wore the shackles that his own father had given to others!

He is not governing the country!

He's paying off his father's debts!

……

The Ming Dynasty, during the reign of Emperor Jiajing.

In the Western Garden of the Forbidden City, a middle-aged emperor dressed in a Taoist robe with the Eight Trigrams, exuding an imposing aura, coldly gazed at the sky.

He was the Jiajing Emperor, Zhu Houcong, who would later spend his life fighting against the civil service.

When he heard that the source of the "cabinet draft" was Zhu Gaochi, a look of realization flashed in his deep eyes, which then turned into raging anger and contempt.

"So that's how it is... so that's where the root of the problem lies!"

He recalled his decades-long life-or-death struggle against the civil service group led by Yang Tinghe over the "Great Rites Controversy".

He recalled how those officials used "ancestral laws" and the power of the cabinet to pressure him, the emperor.

He always believed that this problem originated from the time of Emperor Chengzu.

Only now did he realize that the seed of this malignant tumor had been planted by that so-called "Emperor Renzong" more than a hundred years ago!

"Hmph, Emperor Renzong?"

The Jiajing Emperor let out a cold snort, his voice full of contempt.

"A fool who traded his ancestors' legacy for a hollow posthumous reputation!"

"A piece of trash who hands the butcher's knife to outsiders, only to harm his own descendants!"

"Does something like this deserve to be in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, to receive the incense offerings of my Zhu family descendants?"

A murderous glint flashed in his eyes, and he gave an order to the eunuch beside him that would shock future generations.

"deliver an imperial order."

"Throw out the memorial tablet of Emperor Renzong—no, I mean, Emperor Gaochi of the Ming Dynasty—from the Imperial Ancestral Temple!"