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

On the large screen, the illusory image of the Forbidden City resembled a giant beast lurking in the darkness.

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the screen, his eyes so sharp they could peel a layer of skin off a person.

"Family members, let's shift our focus from Ningxia back to Beijing."

"April, the fifth year of the Zhengde reign. Some time had passed since the rebellion, but the urgent military report, delivered by the courier over eight hundred li, had just crashed into the Ministry of War's main hall in Beijing!"

"From God's perspective, we know that Zhu Zhifan, the Prince of Anhua, was a useless man with no troops, and that this was just a local smuggling case that ended in a farce in eighteen days."

Zhu Dijun slammed his gavel down.

boom!

"But! Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao, sitting in the Leopard Chamber, didn't know that!"

"The twenty-year-old emperor heard that Ningxia, a crucial border town of the Ming Dynasty and holding the reins of the Ming's elite defenses, had been captured, and even the imperial envoy had been beheaded!"

What was his first reaction?

On the big screen, a portrait of a young emperor looking anxious appeared.

"He panicked!"

"He was too hasty! He didn't even bother to calmly assess the situation. Where would a prince who had already been stripped of his three guards and treated like a pig come from to launch a massive rebellion that would sweep across the northwest?"

"Emperor Wuzong only saw the sky full of rebellious banners and heard only the exaggerated military intelligence sent back by those with ulterior motives!"

A long scroll suddenly unfurled in the center of the screen.

It was a manifesto written in wild cursive script, exuding endless murderous intent.

"Come, family. Let's take a look at this 'Proclamation to Punish the Traitor,' which terrified the twenty-year-old Zhu Houzhao and rallied the entire nation to rise up in rebellion!"

Zhu Dijun picked up the red laser pointer and touched the first line of the scroll.

He lowered his voice and read aloud the article that had been extensively recorded by the historians in an extremely cold and sour tone.

"[Jin misled the court, disrupted ancestral laws, abandoned loyal and virtuous officials, gathered wicked and cunning individuals, blocked channels of communication, extorted wealth from the people, confiscated the property of high-ranking officials, bestowed titles upon marquises and earls, instigated numerous major cases, fabricated charges against the innocent, dismissed officials and school officers, and coerced people far and wide!]"

"Zhang Cai, Liu Ji, Cao Xiong, and Mao Lun, civil and military officials, are colluding internally and externally, plotting rebellion."

"[We are now raising a righteous army to purge the court of corrupt officials. All who share our sentiments should respond and spread this message to the border regions!]"

After these few lines were read, the entire live stream room fell into a brief silence.

In the fifth year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty, in August.

On the dilapidated inner city wall of the imperial city.

As Zhu Houzhao listened to the proclamation read aloud from the sky, his eyes instantly turned red, and he bit his lip, leaving a deep bloody mark.

To disrupt ancestral laws? To plunder the people's wealth? To confiscate the property of high-ranking officials?

Is this an insult directed at Liu Jin?!

On the sky, Judy Jun let out a burst of extremely mocking laughter.

"Hahaha! Did you understand, family members?"

"Every single charge against Liu Jin in this proclamation, wasn't personally ordered by Emperor Wuzong (Zhu Houzhao)?"

Zhu Dijun's finger slammed heavily on the screen.

"Disrupting ancestral laws? It's because Emperor Wuzong wanted to bypass the Grand Secretariat and break the civil officials' monopoly on government affairs!"

"Extorting money from the people? It's because Emperor Wuzong sent people to investigate tax evasion by powerful families in Jiangnan and warlords in the nine border regions!"

"Confiscating the titles of high-ranking officials? It's because Emperor Wuzong publicly destroyed the privilege certificates of those 675 high-ranking officials!"

"The numerous purges? It was because Emperor Wuzong used the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Imperial Depot to arrest those corrupt officials who embezzled the lifeblood of the state!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the teacup on the table and smashed it hard on the ground, shards of porcelain flying everywhere!

"This isn't a campaign against Liu Jin at all!!"

"This is clearly a direct attack on Emperor Wuzong (Zhu Houzhao), accusing him of being a tyrant who overthrew the vested interests of the Ming Dynasty!"

The entire internet was in an uproar.

The barrage of comments scrolled wildly.

"Holy crap! Every word is a veiled attack on Liu Jin, but every single one is a direct critique of the emperor!"

"The pens of civil officials are too sharp! This directly negates all the reforms implemented since Emperor Wuzong ascended the throne!"

["They pretend to be purging corrupt officials, but in reality they're rebelling against the emperor! These vested interests have no shame whatsoever!"]

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

"Emperor Wuzong's reforms offended all the interest groups in the country."

"From civil officials who monopolized government affairs, to local tyrants who seized land, and then to military nobles who embezzled funds and engaged in smuggling!"

"This manifesto speaks for all of them!"

The screen's color tone instantly turned a glaring blood red.

A vast network of political relationships within the Ming Dynasty emerged, with the spot of light representing Emperor Wuzong surrounded by countless red lights symbolizing enemies.

Looking across the entire Ming Dynasty court, who is left to stand by Emperor Wuzong's side?

Zhu Dijun raised his finger, his voice stern.

"Except for the common people at the bottom of society who can't even read or speak."

"By Emperor Wuzong's side, only those few eunuchs he had promoted and used as vicious dogs to bite people remained—the so-called Eight Tigers of the Ming Dynasty!"

"Oh, no, that's not right."

A cruel sneer curled at the corner of Zhu Dijun's mouth.

"Even the Eight Tigers are not all here."

"Faced with the encirclement and suppression by civil and military officials across the land, and with this overwhelming political pressure."

"Zhang Yong, one of the Eight Tigers, had long been secretly colluding with the civil service, preparing to turn against Liu Jin and the emperor!"

"Only seven tigers remain!"

"A twenty-year-old boy, accompanied by seven eunuchs, was driven to the brink of despair by the entire bureaucratic machine of the empire!"

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang gripped the armrests of the dragon throne tightly, his breathing heavy and labored, like a bellows.

The whole world is our enemy!

These four words, like a mountain, weighed heavily on the heart of this founding emperor.

When he killed Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu, it was also in opposition to bureaucrats and powerful nobles. But he had veteran soldiers he had raised from mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and he possessed absolute prestige as a founding father!

But what does this child, Houzhao, have in his possession?

He only possessed the vague and ethereal title of imperial power!

"A desperate situation..."

Crown Prince Zhu Biao closed his eyes, a bead of cold sweat sliding down his cheek. He wondered if his own descendants could have survived like Zhu Houzhao.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun straightened his back.

He stared intently into the camera, his voice no longer furious, but instead carrying an extreme coldness that seemed to see through the cycles of history.

"Family members."

"Studying history makes one wise, because history is never in the past tense; it is a constantly cyclical spiral."

"Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao, in order to improve the national treasury and break down class barriers, threatened the interests of those powerful vested interest groups. In the end, he became an enemy of the world and was relentlessly smeared by civil officials with their pens."

Zhu Dijun paused, then uttered the sentence, word by word, that was enough to silence the entire internet.

"This moment is just like that moment!"

"At some point in our modern history, some person, or even some unspeakable group, attempted to break the monopoly of capital and to challenge certain deeply entrenched vested interests."

"They face the same smear campaigns, the same isolation, and the same enemies all over the world!"

In the live stream, millions of netizens felt their scalps tingle.

An indescribable shock and tremor crept up the spine of everyone via the internet cable.

"Got it... Jun-ge, stop talking, or the account will really be gone!"

"This moment feels just like that moment back then. The weight of history instantly makes it hard for me to breathe."

"Those who were once condemned as tyrants and traitors may have been simply those who blocked the path to wealth for the entire court."

Zhu Dijun did not back down.

Despite the flashing warning lights on the backstage, he managed to cut out a blank imperial edict image.

"In the imperial court of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign, the civil official group, the noble group, and the local powerful families had already reached an extremely terrifying political consensus, taking advantage of the fire in Ningxia!"

Blood-red characters spread wildly across the blank imperial edict!

"Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao, didn't you want to implement reforms?"

"Weren't you going to send the Imperial Guards to audit the accounts?"

"Weren't you going to destroy our immunity certificates?"

With a sudden wave of his hand, Zhu Dijun's voice boomed like thunder, shattering the last vestiges of hope of all the emperors!

"Since this emperor is disobedient."

"Since the master of this dragon throne insists on opposing all the scholars and officials in the world."

"Then don't blame us, your subjects, for disregarding this damned code of conduct between ruler and subject!"

In the scene, a statue of a young emperor is pushed over and smashed to pieces by countless invisible hands!

Immediately afterwards, a new statue with a blurred face, dressed in the attire of a feudal lord, was carefully placed on its base by the group of hands.

"This is the ultimate reason why the civil official group has been so slow to quell the rebellion of the Prince of Anhua!"

Zhu Dijun stared intently at the camera, a chillingly fierce light flashing in his eyes.

"They're waiting!"

"They're forcing Emperor Wuzong to make a mistake!"

"If Emperor Wuzong takes any extreme actions during this nationwide panic, he will lose the last bit of popular support."

"The entire court of officials and the powerful clans of the land would simply overturn the table!"

"Welcome the foreign vassals! Enter the capital!"

"We will depose you, Zhu Houzhao, and completely strip you of your imperial throne!"

boom!

The myriad worlds and timelines were as if they had been directly hit by a nuclear bomb with a yield of 10,000 tons!

The fifth year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty

On the walls of the imperial city.

Twenty-year-old Zhu Houzhao suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood, and his body fell backward like a kite with a broken string.

Depose the emperor!

These officials actually dared to plot to depose the emperor!