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

The Ming Dynasty, Zhengde 3rd year.

Inside the imposing government office of the newly established factory.

The air was bitterly cold.

Liu Jin stood before the enormous golden nanmu wood table, her whole body trembling violently.

His face, which was lightly powdered, was deathly pale, devoid of any color, like that of a dead man.

Three thousand three hundred and fifty-seven cuts.

He was executed by slow slicing.

This is the final verdict read to him by the anchor who later claimed to be a descendant of the King of Zhao, on the sky.

Liu Jin subconsciously reached up and touched his neck, then his chest. He even felt as if his flesh was being sliced ​​off piece by piece by an invisible blade, the pain making his teeth chatter and clench.

"This servant...am I going to die in the fifth year of Zhengde's reign?"

Liu Jin slumped into the armchair in a daze.

He was a greedy man, a man who craved power. He enjoyed the feeling of those civil and military officials who were usually high and mighty kneeling at his feet, kowtowing and shouting "Your Majesty!"

He knew that implementing new policies would offend people. But he believed that as long as the Emperor was there, and as long as he held the power of the Eastern Depot and the Inner Depot, those powerless literati could do nothing to him.

But he never expected it.

Those civil officials who spouted righteousness and morality actually dared to instigate a mutiny!

They not only want to kill him, but also to cut off all of His Majesty's wings!

"It's over...it's all over..." Liu Jin laughed bitterly, her eyes filled with deep despair and resentment.

Even if one wields absolute power, what good will it do? In the end, not only will one suffer the fate of being slowly sliced ​​to death, but one will also bear the infamous name of "eternal eunuch" in history, forever condemned and nailed to the pillar of shame.

Just when Liu Jin was in despair...

On the sky, Judy Jun's deep, hoarse voice, yet filled with an extreme sense of tragedy, pierced through the barriers of time and space, striking everyone's hearts heavily.

"Family members."

"In ancient feudal society, which placed great importance on the continuation of the family line and believed that the greatest of the three unfilial acts was having no descendants."

"If they weren't truly desperate, if they weren't driven to the brink, who the hell would willingly cut off their own manhood to become a eunuch, childless and unable to even be buried in their ancestral graves?!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers pounded on the keyboard, and an extremely tragic picture of refugees appeared on the screen.

"History books will only write that Liu Jin was greedy for money and lustful, and a corrupt eunuch who brought chaos to the government."

"But those scholars who compiled the history books made no mention whatsoever of the consecutive years of famine that Shaanxi experienced from the end of the Chenghua era to the Hongzhi era!"

"Drought! Earthquake! Torrential rains and flash floods! Windstorms!"

"Liu Jin was from Xingping, Shaanxi! He was originally a poor peasant who toiled in the fields for a living!"

"The civil officials own vast tracts of land, and their homes are overflowing with grain from the Ever-Normal Granaries. And what about the common people? They can only sell their children, or even resort to cannibalism!"

"To save his own life and ensure his family could have food, Liu Jin castrated himself and entered the palace as a lackey!"

These words, like a muffled thunderclap, resounded across the land of Zhengde's era.

Inside the factory's office, Liu Jin was stunned.

Suddenly, a surge of warmth welled up in his eyes, which had been filled with fear.

how many years?

Since entering the palace, all he heard was cold stares and insults. Even after he climbed to the position of Grand Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, the civil officials still called him a man who had been tortured and a rootless eunuch behind his back.

No one has ever investigated why he wanted to become a eunuch.

No one ever treated these eunuchs as living, breathing people forced into this situation by the world!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly rose, carrying a power that went straight to the heart.

Therefore, Liu Jin knew just how miserable the common people were!

"He also knew what kind of Ming Dynasty his master, Zhu Houzhao, who dared to challenge the civil service at the age of sixteen, desired!"

"He knew better than anyone that he needed to investigate the nation's fiscal deficits, force local powerful families to pay back taxes, and implement the performance evaluation system."

"These three strikes will enrage all the gentry and officials in the land, leaving him infamous for eternity, and may even condemn him to a death without a proper burial!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes were extremely sharp as he pointed at Liu Jin's portrait on the screen.

"But he did it anyway!"

"He risked his life to become the sharpest blade for Emperor Wuzong, to cleave open the deeply rotten tumor within the Ming Dynasty!"

"Did he embezzle? Of course he did. But in an era where the civil service was rife with corruption and every official was greedy, how could he recruit the elite guards of the Imperial Guard if he didn't amass wealth? How could he fill the financial hole left by Emperor Wuzong's military training programs?"

"He died a gruesome death, but he was by no means a corrupt eunuch who harmed the people!"

"He was a reform martyr who was strangled to death by the vested interests of the Ming Dynasty!"

boom!

The phrase "martyr of reform" completely shattered Liu Jin's last psychological defenses.

He suddenly fell off the chair and knelt down on the ground, kowtowing desperately towards the sky.

His forehead struck the blue bricks with a dull thud, and blood flowed down his cheeks, mingling with his torrent of tears.

"I understand... His Majesty's third great-uncle's descendant... understands this servant!"

Liu Jin burst into tears, crying like a child who had suffered countless injustices but had finally been exonerated.

There was no abuse, no ridicule. Millions of people and historians of later generations, on this vast sky, pulled him out of that stinking ditch of false history and washed away all the filth from his body!

"His Majesty desires the revival of the Ming Dynasty, and I am his weapon!"

Liu Jin lay on the ground, raising his blood-stained face, laughing and crying at the same time.

"So what if I'm subjected to slow slicing? So what if I'm infamous for eternity!"

"May future generations know the suffering I endured! May they know that I died for the Ming Dynasty!"

"My life has been worth it!!!"

at the same time.

In the main hall of the Leopard Room.

Fifteen-year-old Zhu Houzhao clenched his fists tightly, his nails digging deep into his flesh, drawing blood.

He looked at the sky, and at the old slave who was torn to pieces because of the failure of the reform.

My eyes were already red without me even realizing it.

"Liu Daban..."

Zhu Houzhao suddenly pulled out the Emperor's sword stuck in the ground and cleaved the imperial desk in front of him in two!

Amidst the flying sawdust, the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty's eyes became more violent and resolute than ever before.

"What a mutiny! What a brilliant civil servant!"

"You want my life, you want to cut off my path to reform. So, in the annals of history, I've actually lost to you!"

Zhu Houzhao raised his head, stared intently at the sky, and gritted his teeth.

"But now, I know everything."

"Since history has foreseen my fate five years after the Zhengde Emperor's reign, I swear that no one under heaven, except myself, will be able to harm a single hair on Liu Jin's head!"

"Anyone who dares to block my path, anyone who dares to instigate a mutiny, I will exterminate their entire family, leaving not a single one alive!"

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang silently sat back on the dragon throne.

He looked at the old eunuch kneeling and weeping in the third year of the Zhengde reign on the screen, which was being broadcast live by the power of the sky, and sighed deeply.

"The entire court is filled with nobles, but they are all vampires."

Zhu Yuanzhang chuckled self-deprecatingly.

"We went to great lengths to prevent eunuchs from seizing power and interfering in politics. But in the end, it was an old eunuch who had no manhood who was desperately protecting the Zhu family and demanding justice for the common people."

"How come those who study the classics have become so spineless and rotten? How come their hearts have become so black and wicked!"

Inside a modern live streaming studio.

After a brief silence, the comments section erupted in a frenzy of defending and reversing the situation.

"Holy crap! I cried! This is the truth!"

"Civil officials who embezzle are considered upright, while eunuchs who embezzle money for the emperor and audit accounts are considered power-hungry eunuchs? What kind of double-standard history book is this?!"

"Liu Jin was a pitiful man too! Even the natural disasters of so many years have been erased. The pen of the civil officials kills without drawing blood!"

[Salute! Salute to the streamer for daring to speak the truth! Salute to this loyal dog of the Ming Dynasty!]

Just as the emotions across the internet reached their peak, and the ancient people of countless worlds were immersed in this magnificent and tragic atmosphere.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun suddenly picked up his teacup and drank the rest of the cold tea in one gulp.

Snapped!

He slammed the teacup down, a cold smile returning to his lips, his eyes becoming extremely arrogant.

"Family members, wipe away your tears."

"The tragic drama has come to an end."

The color tone on the screen instantly changed from a gloomy blood red to an extremely dazzling color of war and conquest!

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the table, like a tiger eyeing its prey.

"The bloody mutiny in the fifth year of Zhengde's reign did indeed kill all of Emperor Wuzong's confidants and stifle the reforms of the performance evaluation system and the investigation of taxes and grain."