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

"This tactic, doesn't it sound familiar, everyone?"

Zhu Dijun's question echoed for a long time in the myriad worlds and timelines.

Viewers in modern live streaming rooms react extremely quickly, and the chat is flooded with comments in an instant.

"Holy crap! Isn't this just a repeat of the Tumu Crisis, where Yu Qian and the civil official group supported Zhu Qiyu as emperor?!"

"That's right! After the coup d'état, the civil officials did the same thing! First, they purged the old officials, then replaced them with their own people!"

"Incredible! One is a civil official, the other a military commander; one manages personnel, the other controls the military. The emperor has been completely sidelined and turned into a figurehead!"

"No wonder history books praise him as 'Emperor Xiaozong's autocratic rule,' but this is clearly 'civilian autocratic rule,' shifting all the blame onto the emperor!"

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Seeing the barrage of comments on the screen, Zhu Yuanzhang was so angry that he swept all the memorials on his desk to the ground.

"Excellent tactic! Truly excellent tactic!"

"We established the Six Ministries to divide the power of the prime minister and concentrate power in the hands of the emperor."

"These civil officials have really gone too far, they've lumped the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War together!"

"With officials in charge and soldiers in command, does this empire belong to the Zhu family or the Wen family?"

Zhu Yuanzhang turned his head and stared intently at Zhu Biao, his gaze fierce.

"Biao'er, you better remember this!"

"From now on, in the Ming Dynasty's imperial court, the Minister of Personnel and the Minister of War must never wear the same pair of pants!"

"Anyone who dares to form a faction will be executed along with their entire family!"

Yongle Time and Space.

Zhu Di wiped the blade of his sword with a cold smile.

"Wang Shu? Ma Wensheng?"

"He abused his seniority and acted like Huo Guang and Cao Cao under the guise of a regent."

"Zhu Youcheng is such a spineless coward, he didn't even dare to put up a fight."

"They have truly disgraced Emperor Taizu!"

Above the sky, Zhu Dijun's narration continued to deepen.

He pulled up a diagram of the power structure of the imperial court in the early years of the Hongzhi reign.

"Family members, let's take a closer look at the value of this 'one literary and one martial' skill."

"Let's start with Wang Shu."

"This fellow is a veteran who served under four emperors: Zhengtong, Jingtai, Tianshun, and Chenghua."

"Within the civil service, his prestige was terrifyingly high, and his protégés and former subordinates were all over the country."

"What was the first thing Qian did after he became Minister of Personnel?"

"It's about drastically reinstating those civil officials who were demoted or dismissed by Zhu Jianshen during the Chenghua reign!"

In the scene, appointment documents are being issued by the Ministry of Personnel.

Those officials who had been expelled from the capital for opposing the Western Depot and the imperial power returned to the court in a grand procession.

"Wang Shu controlled personnel matters and replaced everyone in the court with his own people."

"Zhu Youcheng wants to promote someone? Sorry, the Ministry of Personnel does not agree."

"Zhu Youcheng wants to demote someone? Sorry, the Censorate will immediately submit a memorial to remonstrate to the death."

Zhu Dijun slammed his fingers heavily on the table.

"This is what you call the loss of personnel power!"

"The emperor has become nothing more than a rubber stamp, only good for stamping documents!"

Hongzhi Era.

Zhu Youcheng's face was ashen.

He looked at Liu Jian, Li Dongyang, and the others beside him, a hint of resentment flashing in his eyes for the first time.

He recalled his more than ten years as emperor.

He worked tirelessly from dawn till dusk reviewing memorials.

As a result, the approved proposals were all prepared by the cabinet, and he didn't even have the power to change a single word.

He barely expressed any of his own ideas when these old ministers knelt on the ground, weeping and wailing, trying to suppress him with ancestral laws.

It wasn't that he didn't want to resist; he was truly powerless.

On the sky, Judy Jun's laser pointer moved to another portrait.

"Let's talk about Ma Wensheng again."

"This one is even more ruthless."

"After he became Minister of War, he directly took over the defense of the capital."

"The Twelfth Battalion was the most elite field army of the Ming Dynasty, originally directly commanded by the emperor."

"But during the Hongzhi reign, the power of the Ministry of War was amplified to an unlimited extent."

"The promotion and transfer of military officers, and even the distribution of provisions, were all controlled by civil officials."

"With just one word from Ma Wensheng, a border general could be sent packing."

There was a hint of sadness in Zhu Dijun's tone.

"Family members, from this moment on, the military system of the Ming Dynasty is completely rotten."

"Military generals have become the servants of civil officials."

"Without a sword in his hand, how can the emperor deter those greedy scholar-officials?"

The viewers in the live stream felt their scalps tingle.

"Isn't this just a carbon copy of the Song Dynasty? They valued civil affairs over military matters, and in the end, they were utterly humiliated by foreign invaders!"

"This is terrifying! The civil service not only wants money, but also power, and even lives!"

"Zhu Youcheng is so pitiful! He's not an emperor, he's clearly a high-ranking prisoner!"

Zhu Dijun picked up the water glass and drank the rest of the water in one gulp.

His gaze became incredibly sharp.

"So why did the civil service group extol Zhu Youcheng as a 'benevolent ruler for all time'?"

"Because Zhu Youcheng is too obedient!"

"He abolished the Western Depot, thus removing the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of civil officials."

"He abolished the system of appointing officials by imperial decree and returned all the power to appoint officials to the Ministry of Personnel."

"He even strictly controlled his private life, marrying only Empress Zhang, precisely to prevent the influence of his maternal relatives from interfering with the rule of the civil officials!"

boom!

This conclusion caused an uproar throughout the myriad worlds and timelines.

It turns out that the so-called monogamous system was not a matter of imperial affection at all.

Rather, it was a form of political castration of the emperor by the civil service group in order to prevent the empress dowager from interfering in politics and to prevent the empress's relatives from seizing power!

The Chenghua Era.

Zhu Jianshen laughed loudly, but his laughter was full of desolation.

"What a deeply affectionate emperor!"

"Even the right to sleep with several women is controlled by those pedantic scholars!"

"Zhu Youcheng, what's the point of you living!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun gave his final summary.

"Family members, whose 'restoration' was it really during the Hongzhi Restoration?"

"It's a resurgence of the civil service!"

"During the Hongzhi reign, land annexation reached its highest peak since the founding of the Ming Dynasty!"

"Countless people have lost their land and become displaced."

"But the homes of those civil officials are filled with vast tracts of fertile land and mountains of gold and silver!"

"The national treasury was so empty that it couldn't even afford disaster relief funds, and the emperor even had to sell items from the palace to make ends meet."

"This is the golden age praised in history books!"

"This is the insurmountable pit that Zhu Youcheng dug for the Ming Dynasty!"

The image freezes on Zhu Youcheng's timid and submissive face.

The backdrop is the countless ordinary people of the Ming Dynasty struggling in famine, and the scholar-officials who compose poems and spend money like water in taverns.

The stark contrast stung everyone's eyes.