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

Above the sky, flames surged and roared.

Those documents that carried the Ming Dynasty's dream of conquering the stars and the sea turned to ashes amidst Liu Daxia's ferocious and triumphant smile.

At this moment, Judy Jun's voice became utterly disgusted, as if he were looking at a pile of rotting maggots.

"Family members, this is the 'wise minister' recorded in history books."

"Liu Daxia, this 'pure stream' who has been praised by literati for hundreds of years, burned Zheng He's voyage drawings more than once in history."

"He burned it down once during the Chenghua era, and then pulled the same stunt again during the Zhengde era!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly leaned closer to the camera, his eyes revealing a sharpness that seemed to see through time and space.

"He kept saying it was 'for the country and the people,' 'competing with the people for profit,' and 'to save hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in expenses.'"

"Isn't that ridiculous?"

"Does the Ming Dynasty lack those few hundred thousand taels of silver?"

"No! What he truly fears is that if the official fleet of the Yongle era were to reappear, it would completely destroy the livelihoods of those behind him!"

In the image, a huge map of interests is slowly unfolded.

Along the southeastern coast, a dense network of smuggling routes were inextricably linked to the impeccably dressed officials in the imperial court, with threads of blood-red silk.

"Who does Liu Daxia represent? He represents the wealthy merchants of the southeast region, those incredibly rich landowners!"

"Once the official fleet goes to sea, the profits from maritime trade will be collected into the national treasury and become guns and cannons and military provisions in the hands of the emperor."

"Then how will these private conglomerates' smuggling networks make money?"

"For the sake of their family's interests, they did not hesitate to burn the legacy left by their ancestors and to emasculate the ambition of the entire nation!"

"Family members, remember this: The History of Ming was written by Confucian scholars; it was a self-righteous facade erected by a group of vested interests."

"Therefore, the History of Ming must be read backwards to see the blood flowing between the lines!"

[Modern Live Streaming Room]

The barrage of comments erupted like a volcano!

"Damn it! These bastards! I used to think Liu Daxia was a good official who dared to speak out, but now I want to slap myself!"

"What 'serving the country and the people'? It's all about business! This is the Ming Dynasty's version of 'deindustrialization'!"

"Cutting off someone's livelihood is like killing their parents; ruining a nation's future is like digging up someone's ancestral graves! These corrupt officials like Liu Daxia must die!"

Yongle Time and Space.

Zhu Di's body swayed even more violently as he stared intently at the official named Liu Daxia on the sky.

He recalled the pride and ambition he felt when he watched the first treasure ship being launched at the Longjiang Shipyard.

That was the capital that Zhu Di left to his descendants to conquer all nations and to demonstrate the power of the nation!

As a result, it was burned to the ground by this scoundrel who spouts nothing but benevolence and morality.

"deliver an imperial order……"

Zhu Di's voice, squeezed out from between his teeth, carried a strong smell of blood.

"Investigate Liu Daxia's ancestors for eighteen generations!"

"Arrest all those who share the same clan, hometown, or birth year as this traitor!"

"I want them to know how many heads will be needed to fill the void left by burning my archives!"

Above the sky, Zhu Dijun sneered and continued to reveal the bloody truth.

"Xiang Zhong has fallen, and Liu Daxia has been arrested, but this war has only just begun to reach its climax."

Zhu Jianshen was well aware that killing one or two outspoken individuals was only a temporary solution.

"What he wants to do is peel away the entire bureaucratic system, layer by layer, like peeling an onion!"

In the fourteenth year of the Chenghua reign, Zhu Jianshen unleashed the most terrifying killing move since the founding of the Ming Dynasty—the Capital Inspection!

In the scene, countless scholars dressed in official robes are dragged out of government offices, crying and wailing, under the escort of the Western Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

"This is a system established by Zhu Yuanzhang, with an assessment every three years, originally intended to evaluate political performance."

"But in Zhu Jianshen's hands, the capital inspection became a scythe used by the emperor to reap the heads of civil officials!"

In the fourteenth year of the Chenghua reign, during the first major examination, Zhu Jianshen directly dismissed 2,016 officials!

"In the seventeenth year of the Chenghua reign, during the second purge, 1,909 people were sent back to their hometowns to farm!"

"By the twentieth year of the Chenghua reign, this number had reached its peak—more than three thousand five hundred!"

Zhu Dijun's voice echoed through every time and space, shaking the civil officials to their core.

"Nearly 8,000 officials were purged in just ten years!"

"With these bloody statistics, Zhu Jianshen told all the civil officials in the land: Who really calls the shots in this Ming Dynasty!"

"Not only that, he also bypassed the Ministry of Personnel and the Cabinet directly through the 'Imperial Appointment Official' system, extending his reach into the power of personnel appointment and removal!"

"What is a 'Chuanfeng Guan'? It's an official appointed directly by the emperor with a written decree, without needing your cabinet to draft the proposal or your Ministry of Personnel to conduct an assessment!"

"When the civil officials were compiling the 'Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty,' they would deliberately add the words 'By Imperial Decree' after the names of these officials. This was both a humiliation and an expression of their anger!"

"Because Zhu Jianshen, through this addition and subtraction, successfully planted countless spies loyal to the imperial power in the court, completely hollowing out the cabinet and turning it into a mouthpiece!"

The Hongwu Era.

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes lit up when he heard this, and he couldn't help but slap his thigh.

"Good! This kid has the style we had back in the day!"

"That's how the inspections in the capital should be conducted! Those who disobey, those who hogging the position without doing their job, all get out of here!"

"This move by the official in charge of appointing officials is even more brilliant. Do I have to consider the opinions of you accountants when appointing officials?"

However, Zhu Dijun's sudden change of tone on the screen caused Zhu Yuanzhang's smile to freeze instantly.

"Family members, having rectified the court, Zhu Jianshen's next move is to set his sights on that most rotten, most stinking, and most dangerous place."

"The army of the Ming Dynasty."

"Having learned a painful lesson from his father, the 'Great Ming War God,' Zhu Jianshen never left the capital in his life, but he sent Wang Zhi to the border."

"Because he discovered that the Ming Dynasty's border troops had been rotten ever since the 'Three Yangs' took over the government."

"Those so-called border generals aren't busy training troops; instead, they're colluding with civil officials and landlords to resell the country's grain, salt, iron, armor, and even their own weapons!"

"They sold these strategic resources to the Oirats, to the Tatars, to any enemy that could give them money!"

Zhu Dijun's tone was full of disgust.

"The so-called 'Eight Great Shanxi Merchants of the Late Ming Dynasty' were, to put it bluntly, originally nothing more than frontmen supported by border generals and high-ranking officials of the imperial court!"

"They were selling out the country in front, the civil officials were covering for them behind the scenes, and the landlords were dividing the spoils in the middle."

"This is the parasitic group that Zhu Jianshen will have to face—a group that is terminally ill and frantically sucking the lifeblood of the nation!"

Soon, Zhu Dijun conducted an AI simulation.

The scene depicts the Ming Dynasty, specifically a crucial border town.

The wind and sand swept across the dilapidated city walls, and the soldiers guarding the city were dressed in rags, their spears even rusted.

However, inside the general's mansion not far away, the lights were on full display, and there was a scene of wine, women, and meat.

Above the sky, Judy Jun pointed his camera at the caravans moving through the darkness.

"Family members, look closely, these horses are not carrying ordinary goods."

"That's the finest rice from the Ming Dynasty's official granaries, the superior iron armor forged by the Armory Bureau, and the powerful crossbow that can pierce a chest in an instant!"

"These things are being sent into the enemy's camp in batches by the generals of the Ming Dynasty."

Zhu Dijun's voice was as cold as ice, every word dripping with blood.

"This is called 'smuggling'? No, this is aiding the enemy! This is treason!"

"When Zhu Jianshen dismissed Xiang Zhong in the capital, he was merely eliminating the political backers of these people."

"But Wang Zhi, leading the Western Depot's men, infiltrated the Nine Border Regions; that was their true aim to sever this life-sucking pipe!"

In the scene, Wang Zhi, dressed in a black outfit, stands in the cold wind of the northern frontier, his eyes sharp as knives.

The West Depot token in his hand gleamed with a chilling, eerie light under the moonlight.

"Whenever Wang Zhi arrived at a place, the first thing he did was not to check the military registers, but to check the accounts."

"Investigate the missing salt permits, the empty granaries, and the armor that should have been distributed to the soldiers but ended up on the Oirat cavalry!"

He discovered that the waters behind this were deep enough to drown everyone.

"Starting from the era of the Three Yangs, the civil service group discovered an excellent way to control the army—withholding military pay and condoning smuggling."

"Once the generals have private wealth and the civil officials have leverage over them, they will no longer be the emperor's henchmen, but rather the servants of the civil official group!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly waved his hand, and a huge list appeared on the big screen.

"Li Zhen, the Earl of Xingning; Yang Xin, the Earl of Zhangwu... which of these nobles who rose to prominence after the Tumu Crisis had a clean record?"

"To protect their own wealth and status, they didn't hesitate to turn the Ming Dynasty's borders into sieves!"

"Zhu Jianshen had another purpose in re-establishing the Western Depot: to personally dig out these malignant tumors parasitic in the army, one by one, through a bloodbath!"

The [Modern Live Stream Room] has completely exploded.

"Holy crap, isn't this a repeat of the late Ming Dynasty? The root cause lies in the Three Yangs during the Zhengtong era. When the God of War (Yang Jianshen) was auditing the accounts, it triggered the Tumu Crisis. And during the Chenghua era, Zhu Jianshen conducted another audit!"

"The ancestors of the Eight Great Shanxi Merchants were actually border soldiers, civil officials, large landowners, and nobles of this time? These people are truly deserving of death!"

["No wonder the civil officials hate Wang Zhi and Zhu Jianshen so much; they're cutting off their source of income and even trying to take their lives!"]

The Chenghua Era.

Inside the Qianqing Palace, Zhu Jianshen looked at the sky, a faint yet incredibly cruel smile appearing on his lips.

He turned to look at Wang Zhi and asked softly, "Wang Zhi, are you scared?"

Wang Zhi suddenly knelt down, his forehead slamming heavily against the blue bricks, his voice firm:

"I would gladly die to serve Your Majesty!"

Zhu Jianshen nodded, gazing at the deep night sky.

"Go, kill all those traitorous dogs for me."

"I will ensure that there is never another general on the borders of the Ming Dynasty who would dare to betray the country for personal gain!"

"I will ensure that no civil official in this Ming Dynasty will ever dare to threaten me again!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice rang out for the last time, carrying a heavy, fateful weight.

"Family members, this is the truth about the Chenghua reign."

"It's not about 'eunuchs disrupting the government,' but about a lonely emperor, wielding his only weapon, fighting to the death against an entire corrupt era!"

"And in the next chapter, we will see how Zhu Jianshen, having firmly grasped the hilt of his sword, will launch the final...fatal blow against that vast and arrogant civil service group!"