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

"Five hundred thousand... five hundred thousand for a single pancake..."

An old farmer knelt on the ground, his turbid tears streaming down his face, which was as rough as old tree bark.

He thought of his wife, who had worked herself to death in the fields trying to raise enough money for the land rent.

He remembered his daughter, who had been favored by the young master of a wealthy family, and was pulled out of a well the very next day.

Five hundred thousand?

It's more than 500,000!

That's fate! It's the fate of a family, generation after generation!

"That's right! Damn, that's absolutely right!"

A man with a broken arm suddenly smashed the broken bowl in his hand on the ground and let out a heart-wrenching roar.

"My arm was broken by a falling stone when I was building the ancestral hall for Master Wang's family! They only compensated me with three bushels of rice!"

"Three bushels of rice! That could buy me an arm! Now, I can't even afford a flatbread!"

"Five hundred thousand! This pie, it's fucking worth five hundred thousand!"

The anger, despair, and hatred that had been suppressed for countless generations were completely ignited by the absurd yet incredibly real number "500,000"!

This is no longer just a number.

This is a symbol of blood and tears!

It is a totem of accusation!

"Kill those heartless, treacherous officials!"

"Kill them! Take back our land!"

"Your Majesty! You must do us justice!"

The crowd went crazy.

Those tens of thousands of numb eyes were now filled with the same emotion—revenge!

They are no longer docile lambs, but awakened beasts ready to devour their prey!

They turned around and stared with hatred at the group of officials and gentry who had just been "compassionate" towards them.

Wang Tingxun was completely dumbfounded.

He stood there blankly, his whole body cold, as if he had fallen into an ice cave.

He didn't understand.

He couldn't understand how his seemingly perfect "benevolent plan" could be so utterly shattered by such an absurd joke about "a pancake costing 500,000."

He looked at the group of people he had once regarded as ants, and now the terrifying fierce light bursting from their eyes sent a chill down his spine.

He was afraid.

An unprecedented fear gripped his heart.

"No...no...you...you mustn't listen to his nonsense!"

Wang Tingxun's voice became sharp and shrill due to fear.

"He's a tyrant! He's a devil! He's inciting you to your deaths!"

"Injustice! I am innocent!"

However, his explanation was so weak and feeble.

Faced with Judy Jun's piercing words, any explanation would be nothing more than sophistry.

……

[Sky Screen Modern Live Broadcast Room]

"Holy crap! Holy crap! I'm totally dumbfounded! You can actually play like this?!"

["Zhu Qiyu, a famous economist during the Jingtai era of the Ming Dynasty! He used a '500,000-dollar pie' to complete the most profound, popular, and shocking deconstruction of the feudal exploitation system! I would call it—Pie Economics!"]

[Stop laughing! Upstairs, you think this is a joke? Go look up the Weimar Republic in Germany. After World War I, there was hyperinflation, and a loaf of bread cost hundreds of billions of marks! History is far more magical than fiction!]

"Yes! Brother Jun isn't talking nonsense, this is called 'narrative construction'! He completely smashed the hypocritical narrative of 'benevolence and morality' of the gentry and landlords! And then built a completely new narrative of 'class hatred' belonging to the poor people!"

"That's ruthless! This move is like cutting off the enemy's own supply lines, turning the very weapons the enemy used against them (the civilians) into the sharpest knife to stab the enemy in the heart! Wang Tingxun is probably crying his eyes out in the toilet!"

"To kill someone, you must first destroy their spirit! And after destroying their spirit, you'll use their corpse as a weapon! Brother Jun, I kneel before you in utter despair!"

……

[Qin Dynasty, Xianyang Palace]

The First Emperor, Ying Zheng, gazed at the sky, speechless for a long time.

Behind him, Li Si, Feng Quji, and others were all pale-faced and sweating profusely.

"Calling a deer a horse..."

After a long while, Ying Zheng slowly uttered four words, but his eyes held a strange light.

"The tricks that Zhao Gao used were actually used even more elaborately by his descendants."

"The Zhu Qiyu he portrayed, played by Zhu Dijun, is not one to call a deer a horse."

"He dissected that 'deer' alive, letting the world see clearly that this deer ate human flesh and blood every day!"

"Such methods are either divine or demonic!"

[Han Dynasty, Weiyang Palace]

Liu Che slapped his thigh suddenly, his eyes shining!

"Great! What a 500,000 dollar pie!"

"My decree of grace was meant to weaken their power! But this son has directly uprooted them!"

"He showed the world who the real enemy is!"

"Wei Qing! Huo Qubing!"

"Your subject is here!"

"Tell me, if my army has such popular support, what are the Xiongnu...?"

[Tang Dynasty, Taiji Palace]

Li Shimin's hand was clenched tightly.

Looking at the image of the Yangzhou prefect, trembling with fear amidst the anger of the people, he seemed to see in him the Shandong gentry whom he had both won over and suppressed back then.

"Guanyinbi, he...he succeeded..."

Empress Zhangsun sighed softly:

"Your Majesty, he did not succeed; he opened a door for all the people in the world who could not survive."

A gate to hell, a gateway to revenge and hope.

[Ming Dynasty, Hongwu Reign]

The memories of the past, once dead, continue to haunt Zhu Yuanzhang, the MVP of the Yuan Dynasty's thousand-mile journey.

He sat on the dragon throne, completely absorbed in a state of frenzied excitement.

"Five hundred thousand! Yes! Five hundred thousand!"

He pointed to the sky, and spoke excitedly and incoherently to Empress Ma and Zhu Biao beside him.

"Back when we were begging, let alone 500,000 coins, we couldn't even afford a pancake that cost 50 coins!"

"Those damned gentry and landlords, they're eating their fill while we can't even get a sip of soup!"

"These descendants are our confidants! They are our true confidants!"

"If he had been born a hundred years earlier, would we have suffered so much back then?!"

At this moment, this legendary emperor, who rose from beggar to emperor, was somewhat teary-eyed.

He seemed to see in Judy Jun his younger self, filled with the most primal hatred for the entire rentier class.

Not only him, but also Li Wenzhong, Xu Da and others, knew how much the flatbread cost back then. Now it seems expensive, but according to the stories told by their descendants, the flatbread was really worth 50 copper coins!

……

Beneath the walls of Yangzhou.

Zhu Dijun rode his horse slowly into the boiling crowd that had completely sided with him.

The people spontaneously made way for them.

That look in their eyes was no longer numb, but rather one of fervent worship.

It was as if he were not an emperor of the mortal world, but Maitreya descended to earth, a god who saves people from suffering.

Zhu Dijun approached the weeping old farmer and dismounted.

He personally helped the old farmer up and used his sleeve to wipe away the tears on his face.

The movements were incredibly gentle.

The voice, however, carried a power as strong as metal and stone.

"Grandpa, don't cry."

"I assure you."

"From today onwards, the flatbread you eat will no longer cost half a million!"

He raised his head, his gaze passing over the crowd, and looked once again at the trembling city of Yangzhou.

A chilling yet compassionate smile curved at the corners of his mouth.

"Because, I have arrived!"

"I've come here to let you eat free pancakes!"

He suddenly drew his Emperor's Sword, its blade pointing directly at the gates of Yangzhou!

"Soldiers!"

"Fellow citizens!"

"Follow me... into the city!"

"Kill those man-eating jackals!"

"Their granaries are yours! Their mansions are yours! Their gold and silver are yours!"

"Take back everything that belongs to us!"

"kill!!!"

At a single command, tens of thousands of civilians and thirty thousand cavalrymen converged into an unstoppable torrent, sweeping towards the undefended city!

Wang Tingxun and the gentry and officials were instantly overwhelmed by the angry crowd.

Yangzhou has fallen.

It was broken so easily.

So broken, so absurd.

Judy Jun stood in the center of the torrent, watching everything indifferently.

he knows.

From today onward, the "500,000-dollar pie" will become a legend.

One, enough to ignite a prairie fire that would set the entire Ming Dynasty ablaze, and even the entire course of history.