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

The blood on the screen gradually solidified, transforming into four sharp, black characters.

Local powerful figures!

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the large screen, his eyes sharp as knives.

"Family members, in addition to issuing salt permits, collecting copper coins, and investigating the national treasury deficit during the Zhengde era, Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao also accomplished something unprecedented in history!"

"This major event has essentially desecrated the ancestral graves of the Jiangnan civil official group!"

"That is—to purge the powerful families of Jiangnan!"

Judy Jun grabbed the gavel and slammed it down!

"And the first strike of Emperor Wuzong was aimed directly at a top-tier aristocratic family that is renowned throughout our modern times!"

A thick family tree appeared on the screen.

The cover features two large, gold-embossed characters: "Qian's"!

"Yes! Family members, you're not mistaken! This is the modern-day Qian Zhenjun, the one who created a national strategic weapon that made US military generals exclaim 'worth five Marine Corps divisions,' and his family with a thousand-year-old heritage!"

"Starting with Qian Liu, the King of Wuyue during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, the Qian family of Jiangnan has truly been the foremost family in Jiangnan!"

"A tall tree catches the wind! In the first month of the fourth year of the Zhengde reign, Liu Jin, wielding the swift blade of life and death, precisely targeted the Qian family of Zhejiang for trouble!"

The Ming Dynasty, during the Zhengde era.

Jiangnan, Yuyao, Zhejiang.

Countless members of the Qian clan, dressed in silk, looked at the enormous Qian clan genealogy on the sky. Their hearts, which had been filled with anxiety due to the Zhengde New Deal, instantly plummeted into an icy abyss.

It’s over.

The names of those destined for posterity have been called from the heavens! The emperor's sword has finally fallen upon their heads!

Inside the Leopard House.

Fifteen-year-old Zhu Houzhao twirled the wine glass in his hand, a bloodthirsty smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.

"The foremost family in Jiangnan? My Great Ming Dynasty has no need for any so-called foremost family!"

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

"Family members, you must be very curious about what earth-shattering evidence Liu Jin has seized against the Qian family, specifically their alleged treason?"

"Could it be that they're hoarding armor? Or are they plotting a rebellion?"

Zhu Dijun shook his finger, and an extremely inconspicuous grain reimbursement form popped up on the screen.

"The truth is so good it'll make you laugh!"

"The main character in this story is Qian Yue! He was the former governor and censor-in-chief, and a key figure in the Qian family."

"During his tenure in Henan, in accordance with the imperial court's regulations, he was to provide a stipend and grain to Prince Chong, a member of the Ming imperial family. The amount was: 9000 shi of millet and 1000 shi of polished rice."

Zhu Dijun tapped the grain data on the screen.

"But this Lord Qian thought that Prince Chong was not used to eating millet, or perhaps he was trying to curry favor with the Prince's mansion. Without reporting to the Ministry of Revenue of the court, he changed the distribution ratio without authorization."

"He exchanged four thousand shi of millet for an equivalent amount of polished rice!"

"In modern terms, this is called—replacing millet with rice!"

Inside the live stream, a barrage of question marks instantly filled the screen.

"That's it???"

"Replacing millet with rice? What kind of capital offense is that?"

"According to current laws, at most it would be considered abusing one's position, embezzling public funds, or violating regulations, right? It doesn't even qualify as corruption!"

Zhu Dijun looked at the comments and burst into an extremely wild and cold laugh.

"Yes! To us modern people, this is just a minor violation."

"But in the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty, in this life-or-death meat grinder of imperial power and civil officials, this was irrefutable evidence enough to warrant the execution of the entire family!"

Four blood-stained characters crashed down in the center of the sky.

[Having an affair with a feudal lord!]

boom!

During the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Upon seeing these four characters, Zhu Yuanzhang's eyelids twitched, and he immediately slapped his thigh and burst into laughter.

"Hahaha! Brilliant! This fabricated charge is even more brilliantly executed than when we killed Hu Weiyong back then!"

The Prince of the Ming Dynasty!

This was the most untouchable taboo in the hearts of emperors throughout history!

Would civil officials dare to secretly do favors and grant preferential treatment to vassal kings behind the emperor's back?

What are you trying to do? Are you trying to incite a rebellion among the imperial clan?!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice sounded like a vengeful ghost summoning death.

"Family members, Liu Jin and Emperor Wuzong's tactic of fabricating charges and using pretexts to their advantage is a textbook example of imperial power politics!"

"Don't civil officials like to use moral principles to kill people? Then Emperor Wuzong will use political red lines to confiscate your property!"

"What's the scariest thing?"

Zhu Dijun suddenly leaned close to the camera, his eyes icy cold and devoid of any warmth.

"When this case broke out, in the fourth year of the Zhengde reign, the official Qian Yue involved was already dead!"

He's already collapsed! His bones are practically pounding!

"But the phrase 'accounts are settled after a person dies' simply doesn't exist in Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao's dictionary!"

On the screen, countless heavily armed Imperial Guards and secret police officers rushed into the ornate mansions of ancient families in Jiangnan like wolves and tigers.

The door was kicked down!

The women are screaming!

Boxes of gold and silver accumulated by generations were forcibly sealed!

"Qian Yue is dead? Then confiscate his property!"

"Emperor Wuzong issued a swift and decisive imperial edict: arrest all of Qian Yue's family and relatives and escort them to the capital!"

"Does this look familiar? It's exactly the same thing that happened when Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty confiscated Cao Xueqin's property!"

"But Emperor Wuzong was even more ruthless than Emperor Yongzheng!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers flew across the keyboard, and six extremely glaring blood-red anchor points lit up on the map of the Nine Garrisons of the Ming Dynasty.

"Qian Yue left behind six sons!"

Emperor Wuzong wrote with a flourish: "Send them all to the army!"

"Shaanxi, Jiuquan, Guyuan! Throw them directly into the harshest and most desolate garrisons along the nine borders, to serve as military households for generations to come, filling the pits for the Ming Dynasty!"

In the modern live-streaming room, viewers felt their scalps tingle as they watched the ruthless exile route.

"Holy crap! They don't even spare the dead, throwing all their sons into the Northwest to eat sand!"

[Emperor Wuzong: You exchange rice for my uncle, and I'll send your son to the Northwest to develop the frontier. That's reasonable, isn't it?]

"A ruthless person! No wonder he dared to confront the entire civil service at the age of fifteen!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly stood up, placed his hands on the table, and an extremely grand historical perspective emanated from him.

"Family members, if you only see this as a form of retaliation, then you are greatly underestimating the sixteen-year-old Emperor Wuzong of Ming!"

On the big screen, a phantom image of an emperor wearing a Han Dynasty crown slowly emerged behind Zhu Houzhao.

"Emperor Wuzong's methods of dismantling the most prestigious family in Jiangnan are essentially the same as those of the great emperor who crushed the Xiongnu two thousand years ago!"

"This is called—the 'Edict for Moving the Imperial Tomb to Maoling'!"

All the emperors throughout history who heard these four words gasped in shock.

Emperor Wu of Han's decree to move the imperial mausoleum to Maoling!

That was the ultimate weapon to forcibly uproot all the wealthy and powerful people in the country and relocate them all to the vicinity of the capital for safekeeping, in order to completely destroy the local separatist forces!

"Zhu Houzhao didn't care whether Qian Yue had exchanged the rice for rice; what he wanted was to uproot this deeply entrenched and powerful family in Jiangnan!"

Zhu Dijun opened a statistical chart of the places of origin of the successful candidates in the imperial examinations of the Ming Dynasty.

Among the densely packed red pillars, there is one pillar that, in an extremely distorted proportion, stands tall and reaches for the sky!

"Why the Qian family from Zhejiang? Why are you so determined to attack the Zhejiang and Jiangxi gangs?"

"Family members, take a look at these statistics!"

"From the Yongle reign to the Zhengde reign, a period of one hundred years, those who passed the imperial examinations in Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces accounted for half of the entire Ming Dynasty's officialdom!"

"The number of Jinshi (successful candidates in the highest imperial examinations) from Zhejiang Province consistently ranked first in the country during the mid-Ming Dynasty!"

Judy grabbed the gavel and slammed it hard against the red pillar.

"What does this 'first place' represent?"

"The Six Ministries, the Cabinet, and the Censorate, which represent the imperial court, are all staffed by people from Zhejiang and Jiangxi!"

"Whatever policy the emperor wants to implement, these local acquaintances will use their power to forcibly distort it into a private law that favors the interests of Jiangnan!"

"This is called policy hijacking! This is called monopolizing the imperial examination system!"

The viewers in the live stream suddenly realized the truth.

"I understand! I completely understand!"

"This isn't just a corruption case; it's the ultimate showdown between centralized power and local tyrants!"

"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. There are too many people from Zhejiang. If we don't target you, who will we target? If I were Emperor Wuzong, I would also make Zhejiang families the first to be sacrificed!"

"It's terrifying to think about. If Emperor Wuzong hadn't forcibly dismantled it physically, the Ming Dynasty might have been completely usurped by the powerful clans of Jiangnan long ago!"

The era of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

In the main hall of the Leopard Room.

As Zhu Houzhao listened to the perfect analysis of his strategic intentions on the sky, he raised his head and exhaled a long breath.

understood.

Five hundred years later, my descendants understand me better than these civil officials who all claim to be the sons of sages!

"Master." Zhu Houzhao looked at the dark night sky outside the door with a cold gaze.

"This servant is here." Liu Jin knelt on the ground, trembling all over.

"Draft an imperial edict. As Tianmu instructed, immediately dispatch imperial cavalry to Jiangnan. Bring back the Qian family members one by one!"

"yes!"

However, on the sky, Judy Jun felt no joy of victory.

The image on the screen began to shake violently, like the calm before a storm.

"Family members."

Zhu Dijun's voice was extremely low, carrying a suffocatingly terrifying sense of oppression.

"The copper coins were confiscated, and the salt permits were burned."

"The treasury was robbed, and even the most prestigious family in Jiangnan was uprooted and exiled to the border regions."

He stared intently at the camera.

"The entire civil official group in Jiangnan and all the interest groups in the south have been pushed to the very edge of a precipice by the sixteen-year-old Emperor Wuzong."

"To retreat means utter destruction. It means the ruin of a century-old enterprise!"

The screen instantly turned a deathly blood red.

"So, when the time came to that desperate autumn of the fifth year of Zhengde's reign..."

"Since the imperial power leaves us no way out, and since reasoning with us is useless."

A chilling glint flashed in Zhu Dijun's eyes.

"Then there's only one path left—"

"Tear off the mask of civility and force a coup with armed force!"

"The bloody coup of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign—a hunting frenzy instigated by all the vested interests of the nation—finally revealed its most ferocious fangs!"