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

The darkness of the live stream room was cleaved open by a blinding beam of white light.

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the screen, his hands supporting him on the table, his eyes like a drawn dagger.

"Family members, let's continue digging! Let's see how this young emperor, during the Zhengde Reforms led by Liu Jin, utterly humiliated those hypocritical 'ministers'!"

On the screen, the map of the Ming Dynasty's nine border defense lines suddenly lit up, and several red inspection routes cut into the vital points like sharp blades.

"In the first month of the fourth year of the Zhengde reign, Liu Jin's secret police forces stormed into Guyuan, Ningxia!"

"The investigation results shocked the world!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his gavel down and shouted loudly.

"From Feng Yue, the commander of Guyuan, down to a total of 180 military officers and officials, all were directly imprisoned for embezzling military funds and misappropriating public funds!"

"Then, in May, the account books of Datong and Xuanfu, two crucial border towns, were completely overturned!"

"Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao, holding that utterly chaotic bill, directly issued an edict severely punishing more than twenty officials, including former Minister of Revenue Han Wen and current Minister of Personnel Liu Yu!"

A series of shocking data points scrolled wildly across the public chat screen.

"When Liu Jin investigated the accounts, everywhere he looked was a mess! Public funds were being misappropriated, military expenses were being laundered, and local finances were riddled with problems!"

Zhu Dijun's lips curled into an extremely mocking sneer.

"Family members, this is the 'Hongzhi Restoration' that later historians lauded to the skies!"

"This is the 'peaceful and prosperous era' that those so-called famous ministers and Confucian scholars left for Zhu Houzhao!"

"They are not capable ministers who can govern well; they are a massive, bloodthirsty tyrant of the empire!"

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the sky, his teeth grinding together.

"One hundred and eighty people... one hundred and eighty officials in Guyuan Guard alone were corrupt!"

He suddenly kicked the dragon table over.

"Our initial decision to skin them alive was too lenient! These beasts deserve to have their entire families executed!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's speech became faster and faster, carrying a sense of exhilarating ruthlessness.

Faced with this utterly chaotic situation, the hot-blooded young Emperor Wuzong, Zhu Houzhao, launched a frenzied campaign of revenge!

"His first targets were Minister of War Ma Wensheng and Liu Daxia!"

"These two old foxes have been directly dismissed from their posts, stripped of all salaries, and stripped of all honorary titles!"

"But that's not enough. Zhu Houzhao wanted to destroy not only their hearts but also their souls!"

On the big screen, a royal archive bearing the Zhengde Emperor's seal appeared.

"At the end of September of the fourth year of the Zhengde reign, a rebellion broke out in Tianzhou, Guangxi."

"Logically, this should have been the responsibility of Governor Pan Fan, General Mao Rui, and the garrison eunuch. But Zhu Houzhao wouldn't have it; he directly sent the case back for retrial and forcibly set the tone!"

Zhu Dijun pointed to the red annotations on the file, emphasizing each word.

Emperor Wuzong believed that Liu Daxia, the former Minister of War, bore an undeniable "leadership responsibility" for this matter!

"The Imperial Guards stormed into Liu Daxia's hometown, chained the retired 70-year-old man, and dragged him back to the capital's prison like a dead dog!"

"After a joint trial by the three judicial departments, Zhu Houzhao personally issued the verdict!"

Zhu Dijun threw the original text of the verdict directly into the center of the live broadcast room.

"Liu Daxia's incompetence in military command led to a rebellion among his subordinates, a crime punishable by death. However, considering his advanced age, I will grant him a lighter sentence and exile him to Suzhou to guard the border forever!"

boom!

The live stream room was instantly flooded with comments.

"Hahahaha! What kind of leadership responsibility is this?! They're just looking for a pretext to condemn someone!"

["Zhu Houzhao: I said you bear leadership responsibility, so you bear responsibility. So what if you're seventy? Get out of here and go to the Northwest to starve!"]

"Awesome!!! The only way to deal with these shameless civil servants is to use their specialty: fabricating charges!"

"Using magic to defeat magic, Wu Zong's 'settling scores after the fact' move was too clever!"

Zhengde Era.

Inside the Leopard Chamber Hall, Zhu Houzhao threw his head back and laughed wildly, then casually downed a cup of strong liquor in one gulp.

"happy!"

"You old scoundrel, you burned my Great Ming Maritime Chart, so I'll send you to Suzhou to eat sand! This is called an eye for an eye!"

However, Judy Jun on the sky did not stop his attack.

He suppressed his smile, and his eyes became extremely cold and deep.

"Dealing with Ma Wensheng and Liu Daxia only cut off the claws of the civil service group."

"Next, Zhu Houzhao finally held the knife to the necks of the core leaders of the Ming Dynasty's civil service—former Grand Secretary Liu Jian and Vice Grand Secretary Xie Qian!"

On the screen appeared portraits of four scholars dressed in Confucian robes, their faces full of arrogance.

February of the fourth year of Zhengde's reign.

"Zhou Li, Xu Ziyuan, and two others from Zhejiang responded to the imperial court's call for recommending talented individuals and volunteered to serve as officials in the court."

"Family members, in ancient times, the 'recommendation system' sounded wonderful, as it was a way to select talent for the country. But what was it really like?"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fingers on the table, making a loud thud.

"It's all business! It's all about cliques and factions!"

"In the last chapter, we mentioned an extremely terrifying term—'fellow villagers'!"

"Those recommended by high-ranking officials are invariably from their own hometowns. Through this method, they forge an impenetrable network of regional interests within the court!"

"And where did these four people who volunteered come from?"

Zhu Dijun's finger suddenly pointed to four large characters on the screen.

"【Zhejiang! Yuyao!】"

"This is also the hometown of Grand Secretary Liu Jian!"

The scholars of all realms and timelines felt a suffocating sensation descending from the heavens.

Zhu Dijun's voice resounded throughout the hall.

"What Zhu Houzhao hated most was forming cliques and engaging in corruption! Upon seeing the hometowns of these four men, he flew into a rage on the spot!"

"The emperor issued a direct decree, confirming that Liu Jian had engaged in favoritism and nepotism in the appointment of officials!"

"Not only were Liu Jian and Xie Qian, who had long since retired, severely punished again, but the imperial guards were even ordered to head south to arrest these two old geezers, bring them back to the capital, imprison them, and confiscate their property!"

"If it weren't for Li Dongyang, the only remaining 'mudfish chief minister' in the cabinet, clinging to Zhu Houzhao's leg and begging desperately, Liu Jian and Xie Qian would have died in the imperial prison back then!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands on the table, his eyes blazing with extreme fanaticism.

"However, while the death penalty may be avoided, punishment is inevitable!"

"While letting them go, Zhu Houzhao issued a final, decisive order that caused a complete upheaval in the Zhejiang officialdom!"

On the large screen, a golden imperial edict suddenly unfolded, its glaring red characters sending chills down the spines of all the civil officials.

[“Liu Jian, a native of Yuyao, Zhejiang, is permanently barred from holding office in the imperial court!!!”]

Quiet.

A deathly silence.

Throughout the entire Ming Dynasty era, countless officials and scholars from Zhejiang Province were stunned into silence upon seeing the imperial edict.

Viewers in the modern live stream were completely dumbfounded.

But after a few seconds of stunned silence...

A chilling logical loop exploded in everyone's minds in an instant!

Zhu Dijun used a red pen to circle the four characters "Zhejiang Yuyao" on the screen, and then drew a shocking arrow.

The arrow pointed to a familiar statue of a saint.

"Family members!"

Judy Jun's voice ripped through the night sky.

"Now you know why I dare to assert that Wang Yangming was the ultimate tyrant!"

Wang Yangming's original name was Wang Shouren!

His ancestral home is Yuyao, Zhejiang!

boom!!!

The Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Wanshou Palace, Emperor Jiajing, Zhu Houcong, who was refining elixirs, suddenly stood up, knocking over the Bagua furnace in front of him, scattering scalding ashes all over the ground.

"Wang Yangming was from Yuyao!"

He gasped, and the hairs on his body stood on end.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's cold laughter sounded like the pronouncement of death.

"To ruin someone's future is like killing their parents!"

"Zhu Houzhao's imperial edict, 'No longer employing people from Yuyao,' was tantamount to smashing the rice bowl of the Wang Yangming family and the entire Zhejiang hometown clique for generations!"

"He not only cut off Wang Yangming's official career, but also, during the investigation, discovered that Cheng Wen, the Right Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review in Nanjing, was Liu Jian's son-in-law. Emperor Wuzong, with a stroke of his pen, directly stripped Cheng Wen of his official position and sent him back to his hometown!"

"You guys do the math yourselves!"

Judy Jun pointed to the intricate web of relationships on the screen.

"Within six months, all members of the cabinet and core ministers of the Hongzhi reign, except for Li Dongyang, were completely uprooted and purged by the sixteen-year-old Zhu Houzhao!"

"As long as Emperor Wuzong is on the throne, the civil officials in Yuyao, Zhejiang, will never have a chance to rise in rank!"

"Do you still believe that Wang Yangming later founded his philosophy of mind truly to educate the people?"

"He did that to unify the thoughts of the entire Jiangnan gentry, to gather a terrifying force capable of overthrowing imperial power!"

The chat in the live stream went crazy.

"Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap! The gears of history have completely jammed here!"

"It's a closed loop! The logic is completely closed! No conspiracy theory is more deadly than this direct conflict of interest!"

"Emperor Wuzong's sweeping generalization went too far, turning some of the smartest and most powerful people in the entire Ming Dynasty into mortal enemies!"

"It's chilling to think about; behind all those glorious and righteous figures in history books lies a naked, deep-seated blood feud!"

Zhu Dijun picked up his water glass and took a sip to moisten his dry throat.

He looked at the screen, a sudden look of extreme sorrow and mockery flashing in his eyes.

"But, family members."

"Do you know what the most ironic thing is?"

"Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao did not actually want to kill anyone."

Zhu Dijun's words instantly cooled down the previously enthusiastic live stream.

"I went through all the official annotations and records from the fourth year of the Zhengde reign. I discovered a truth that left me utterly helpless."

"At this time, during the Zhengde reign, the war in the northwest was intense, with battles raging everywhere, yet the national treasury was so empty that rats could starve to death."

"Emperor Wuzong ordered Liu Jin to frantically investigate accounts, arrest people, and even issued a harsh decree that he would never be employed again."

His real purpose can be summed up in just two words—[to refund the money]!

Two large, blood-red characters appeared on the screen.

"Zhu Houzhao's bottom line was: the law does not punish the masses. He knew that if he killed them all, the Ming Dynasty's bureaucratic system would be paralyzed."

"He's applying maximum pressure!"

"He was telling these civil officials: spit out the dirty money you've embezzled and the taxes you've concealed to pay for the military expenses of the nine border regions. As long as the money is there, you can continue to wear these crimson official robes."

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the table.

"But Zhu Houzhao was still too young. He underestimated human greed and the perverse obsession of these Ming Dynasty civil officials with money and privilege!"

"Does the imperial power want their money?"

The civil service's response was: "Not a penny! If you want money, we'll take your life first!"

The screen went dark instantly, leaving only a thick, indistinguishable crimson color spreading wildly.

Judy Jun's voice tolled like a death knell in the darkness.

"It was precisely because Emperor Wuzong wanted to reclaim the money and grain that belonged to the Ming Dynasty."

"A long-planned, all-out assassination, orchestrated by the Jiangnan gentry and the traitorous generals of the Nine Border Regions, was finally launched in the fifth year of the Zhengde reign!"

"The death of Liu Jin, the most powerful eunuch in the Ming Dynasty, has come."

"And the sixteen-year-old Emperor Wuzong was about to face the most devastating betrayal of his life within his Forbidden City..."