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

On the big screen, the red circle dripping with blood was fixed on the words "Li Dongyang" and "Ningxia Town".

The atmosphere in the live stream instantly shifted from its previous intensity to an extremely eerie silence.

Zhu Dijun did not immediately decipher the contents of the letter.

He picked up the teacup on the table, gently swirled it, looked at the tea leaves floating on the surface, and let out an extremely mocking sneer.

"Family members, before we uncover what that old fox Li Dongyang did before this mutiny."

"We need to figure out one thing first."

"In the capital inspection of the third year of Zhengde's reign, in order to save face for the Ming Dynasty and to stabilize the court in the early stages of the new policies, Emperor Wuzong reluctantly retained the old guard of the cabinet."

"But have you ever considered why these civil officials from Jiangnan dare to threaten the emperor with their resignations at the drop of a hat?"

"Where does their confidence come from?"

Zhu Dijun suddenly raised his head, his eyes flashing with two terrifying beams of light.

"Just because they are aloof? Just because their disciples and former subordinates are all over the world?"

"wrong!"

Bang! The gavel slammed down heavily, causing all the civil and military officials in the myriad worlds to tremble.

"Because they hold in their hands the ultimate lifeline of the Ming Dynasty—the power to issue the nation's currency!"

Four large, blood-red characters crashed onto the center of the screen.

The chat in the modern live stream paused for a second, then a screen full of question marks appeared in a frenzy.

"Wait! Brother Jun, weren't the currencies of the Ming Dynasty copper coins and silver?"

"Isn't the power to issue currency under the Ministry of Revenue's Bureau of Precious Coins? What does this have to do with civil officials? Isn't that an institution of the imperial court?"

Zhu Dijun reached out and tapped the screen, a cold smile curving his lips.

"This is the most deeply hidden and malicious scheme that those civil officials devised when compiling history!"

"Aside from the Ming Dynasty's worthless paper notes, which were so stiff they weren't even good enough to wipe your bottom, the only currency in the mid-Ming Dynasty that could truly circulate in the market and whose value was even more stable than silver was called—the Salt Certificate!"

"Whoever controls the salt permits effectively controls the Ming Dynasty's printing press!"

A yellowed salt certificate was magnified to the point of taking up half the sky.

"And the majority of the control over salt permits in the Ming Dynasty was not actually located in the capital, Beiping!"

Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly rose, like a heavy hammer hitting everyone's head.

"It's thousands of miles away—at the [Ministry of Revenue] in Nanjing!"

boom!

The moment those four words were uttered, the live stream chat exploded.

"Holy crap?! The Ministry of Revenue in Nanjing?! The Ministry of Revenue in the wartime capital controls the biggest money-printing machine in the Ming Dynasty?!"

"What kind of ingenious operation is this? The emperor is in Beijing, but the treasury is in Nanjing?"

"I'm shocked! Nanjing is the stronghold of civil officials in Jiangnan! This is tantamount to setting up the national treasury directly in the backyard of these civil officials?!"

The fourteenth year of the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang, who had been sitting upright, turned ashen-faced upon hearing these words.

He slammed his hand on the imperial desk, causing the memorials on it to scatter all over the floor.

Those old eyes, which had killed countless people, shot like knives towards Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, who was standing in front of the ranks of military officers.

Zhu Di felt a chill run down his spine when his father gave him that murderous look, and he knelt down on the gold bricks with a thud.

"What are you looking at me for? Look at the mess you've made in the future!" Zhu Yuanzhang gritted his teeth, wishing he could grab his shoe and whip him.

But after uttering that curse, Old Zhu's once straight back involuntarily hunched over slightly.

He turned his head and looked at Crown Prince Zhu Biao standing beside him, a flash of extreme pain and regret in his eyes.

Historical issues.

The descendants in the heavens have long since settled this messy account.

"Jungpachi..."

Empress Ma slowly walked out from behind the main hall.

She didn't look at the kneeling court officials, but walked to Zhu Yuanzhang's side and gently placed her hand on the back of his hand, where the veins were bulging from the effort.

"This isn't Biao'er's fault, nor is it Lao Si's fault."

Empress Ma's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a powerful, stabilizing force.

"If Biao'er and Xiong Ying hadn't died so young, if Yun Tong hadn't been suppressed by the Lü family and lost the backbone of the eldest grandson."

"If you hadn't chosen Yunwen, that idiot who can only act."

"Why did the Ming Dynasty have to wage that four-year-long internal strife? Why did the Fourth Prince leave such a vital financial bag in Nanjing just to appease the literati of Jiangnan?"

Zhu Yuanzhang closed his eyes, his throat bobbing violently.

wrong.

Big mistake!

Zhu Biao stood quietly to one side, a fine layer of cold sweat seeping from his forehead.

Since the dawn of the new era, after learning of the impending doom of himself, his wife, and his eldest son, he has been spending his days and nights deducing the future of the Ming Dynasty.

The fourth prince, who lived in a remote and harsh land, commanded hundreds of thousands of border troops. After ascending the throne, he was so tormented by these civil officials that he had to leave a purse in Jiangnan as a compromise.

If it really was someone from my lineage back then, I would have been sitting on the dragon throne in Nanjing, surrounded by the gentry of Jiangnan.

Will the Ming Dynasty become just another Southern Song Dynasty, completely sidelined by its civil officials?!

Zhu Biao clenched his fist tightly, his knuckles cracking.

What heartless bastards! They really treat the Ming Dynasty as their private property!

at the same time.

Parallel Yongle Time and Space.

Inside the Fengtian Hall.

Zhu Di, dressed in a dragon robe, looked up, staring intently at the sky, his teeth grinding together.

I regret it! I regret it so much!

The Jingnan Campaign was won, but the scholars in Jiangnan were not satisfied.

In order to keep the empire running, he moved the capital to Beiping, but had to retain the entire set of six ministries in Nanjing, thus leaving the precious salt permits in the south.

"What I left behind back then wasn't a way out, but a deadly pit I dug for future generations!"

Zhu Di suddenly turned his head, his bloodshot eyes staring straight at Crown Prince Zhu Gaochi, who was sweating profusely and trying to shrink his size.

"Boss!" Zhu Di's voice sounded as if it had been pulled out of an ice hole.

"Father... Your son is here." Zhu Gaochi dragged his obese body and knelt down with difficulty.

"When I was in power, I compromised for the sake of the bigger picture. What were you doing when you were in power?!"

Zhu Di kicked over the imperial desk in front of him. "You like listening to civil officials so much, so you just leave this printing press in Nanjing and let them print money at will?!"

Zhu Gaochi's entire body of fat jiggled wildly, and he couldn't squeeze out a single word.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun mercilessly tore apart the most hypocritical veil of the Ming Dynasty.

"Family members, in name only, Nanjing is the secondary capital of the Ming Dynasty."

"But by the mid-Ming Dynasty, Nanjing was practically on the verge of rebellion, declaring independence!"

"The taxes and profits from salt permits in Jiangnan were completely divided up by these officials from the Ministry of Revenue, local salt merchants, and powerful families!"

"Emperor Wuzong needed money to train troops in the capital, but he had none! In the early years of the Zhengde reign, all he managed to reclaim were a pitifully small number of salt permits held by the imperial relatives in the capital!"

"The real big money, that giant printing press, is still running at full speed in the hands of the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue!"

The scene on the screen is frozen in the harsh winter of 1508 AD.

December of the third year of Zhengde's reign.

In the snow-covered capital city, at the Leopard Chamber Hall.

"Therefore, in order to completely break the backbone of the civil service group, and in order to prolong the life of the Ming Dynasty."

"Under the instigation of Liu Jin and Zhang Cai, the Salt Commissioner Yuwen Zhong submitted a memorial that was enough to ignite a nationwide uproar!"

Zhu Dijun drew his finger sharply in the air.

Yuwen Zhong proposed: "Immediately issue new salt permits in Beiping! Completely halt the exercise of salt permit rights by the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue!"

"This strike has pierced the very lifeblood of the Jiangnan civil service group!"

"Cutting off someone's livelihood is like killing their parents. Taking back the Nanjing salt permits is tantamount to stripping the civil officials of Jiangnan of their right to mint coins!"

The era of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

The civil officials who were confined to their respective residences had gone completely mad.

As they gazed at Yuwen Zhong's memorial displayed on the sky, their eyes turned bloodshot, as if they had lost their parents.

That's the foundation of their generations of comfortable living!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice was filled with intense sarcasm.

"The moment the memorial was released, the entire Ming Dynasty court erupted in chaos!"

"The Nanjing Ministry of Revenue, the Beiping Ministry of Revenue, and even those old foxes in the cabinet—they've all jumped out!"

"They used the civil service's ultimate weapon—the ancestral laws!"

"They submitted a memorial to Emperor Wuzong, weeping and wailing, saying: 'Your Majesty! The issuance of salt permits in Nanjing is a rule established by Emperor Taizu Gao, and it is the foundation for maintaining stability in Jiangnan!'"

"Ancestral rules cannot be violated. If you forcibly take them back, the Ming Dynasty will perish!"

"Any other emperor would have backed down long ago, faced with the entire bureaucracy threatening to kill themselves."

Zhu Dijun suddenly stopped.

He leaned forward, and two terrifyingly mad flames burned in his dark eyes.

"But they were facing the sixteen-year-old Emperor Wuzong of Ming, Zhu Houzhao!"

On the big screen, a golden imperial edict, radiating unparalleled domineering power, crashed down!

"Emperor Wuzong didn't listen to their nonsense at all!"

"He issued a decisive imperial edict, bypassing the cabinet, and circulated it throughout the land!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the gavel on the table and slammed it down with all his might!

boom! ! !

"[Effective immediately, all salt certificates printed by the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue shall be destroyed on site!]"

"Burn it all to ashes! Leave not a single scrap of paper!"

"All salt permits for the entire country will be reprinted and uniformly distributed by the Ministry of Revenue in Beiping! Anyone who dares to obstruct this will be treated as a treasoner and executed without mercy!"

Boom!

At this moment, all the scholars in the myriad worlds felt as if the sky had fallen.

It burned?

They just burned those salt certificates worth tens of millions of taels of silver in the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue's treasury like waste paper?!

This is practically digging up the ancestral graves of the civil service!

The live stream chat was flooded with comments, the screen filled with the bright red text "Martial Sect is awesome".

"Ruthless! Decisive! This was the core economic battle of the Zhengde Reform!"

Zhu Dijun leaned back in his chair, his eyes turning extremely cold.

"This money-printing machine was finally forcibly brought back to Beijing."

"But, family members."

The scene instantly switched back to the dripping red circle.

"It cut off the financial lifeline of the entire Jiangnan gentry and destroyed their money-printing machine that had been exploiting them for a century."

"Can these ravenous wolves, driven to the brink of despair, simply sit and wait to die?"

"The answer is no, and Emperor Wuzong not only affected the salt certificates issued by the Nanjing Ministry of Revenue, but also another currency issuance right—copper coins."