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

"Fellow family members, here, the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming' is clearly a shameless lie!"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the big screen, his eyes like knives, ruthlessly tearing away the fig leaf.

"He didn't accurately record how Liu Jin was arrested at all. Let's use the most basic logic to utterly discredit this nonsensical historical record!"

He drew two red question marks heavily on the whiteboard.

"First, the procedure for arresting Liu Jin was extremely illegal! According to the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming,' there wasn't a single official edict issued by Zhu Houzhao from beginning to end! Not even a single clear oral instruction! Is this the arrest of the most powerful minister of the Ming Dynasty? This is more like a gangland brawl!"

"Secondly, there's the absurdly large number of people arrested! The official records say that the emperor led four people to arrest Liu Jin."

Zhu Dijun's lips curled into an extremely sarcastic sneer, and his voice rose.

"Fellow family members, consider the true nature of the civil service! If these four eunuchs had actually followed the emperor and captured Liu Jin, who was plotting a rebellion, thus achieving an unparalleled feat of turning the tide, those scribes in the civil service would absolutely extol their names in the history books! They'd erect monuments and write biographies for them!"

"But what was the result?"

Zhu Dijun shrugged.

"These four people weren't even given names in the history books! Not even their surnames!"

"Why not write it down? Because these four people never existed! The whole 'night raid on Donghua Gate' scene on the fifteenth of August was a ridiculous farce fabricated by civil officials afterward to cover up the truth of the coup!"

The large screen instantly turned into a somber, dark red.

"Since history books are concealing the truth, let's use all the existing fragmented information to conduct a final deduction! Let's see what really happened on that night when blood flowed like a river in the capital!"

Zhu Dijun's slender fingers furiously tapped on the keyboard, and an aerial view of the inner city of the capital suddenly appeared.

"First, Liu Jin's elder brother, Liu Jingxiang, passed away in August. Right after the banquet, Liu Jin had to leave the palace to continue his work on his brother's funeral."

A red trail extends from the Forbidden City.

"No sooner had Liu Jin left the palace's perimeter than Zhang Yong, the traitor who had infiltrated Zhu Houzhao's inner circle, immediately tipped off the civil officials on the outer perimeter!"

"Having received the signal, the civil service, along with the nobility of the Five Military Commands who had been sharpening their knives for a long time, launched a coup!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly slapped a photocopy of the "Ming Shilu" (Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty), and circled two extremely obscure lines of text on it with a red laser pointer!

"Family members, keep your eyes peeled! Although the history books have altered the main storyline, fatal flaws have still been revealed in some obscure details!"

The official record states that on the night of the mutiny: "At that time, the curfew was strictly enforced; those who violated it would be executed!"

"Martial law declared throughout the city! Anyone seen walking around, without asking why, will be shot on sight!"

"What's even more terrifying is the following line: 'The sound of armor and weapons clashing was heard, one after another!'"

Zhu Dijun slammed his gavel down.

boom!

"In modern terms, that night, the sounds of thousands upon thousands of weapons clashing and heavy armor scraping echoed throughout the night sky of the Ming capital!"

"Four eunuchs going to arrest someone, and they manage to create this commotion of a massive army charging forward?!"

"There's only one truth!"

Judy Jun's eyes transformed into those of a predatory beast.

"This was an extremely large-scale armed operation! A fierce urban battle ensued in order to capture Liu Jin and eliminate his influence in the capital!"

"Liu Jin's Inner Depot was staffed with a large number of officers and captains, all of whom were agile and ruthless, wielding embroidered spring knives. Ordinary troops simply couldn't handle them!"

"The mysterious force that launched its attack that night was well-equipped and numerous; it utterly crushed the inner factory's defenses into a bloody pulp with its overwhelming military might!"

On the large screen, a blood-soaked, steel army phantom slowly emerged, stepping over the corpses of the Imperial Guard officers.

"This army is none other than the most core and elite of the three major camps of the Ming Dynasty—the Fifth Army Camp!"

Zhu Dijun leaned forward, placed his hands on the table, and looked directly at the camera.

"Family members, guess who has the audacity and the capability to mobilize the Ming Dynasty's most elite field forces to stage an armed coup in the middle of the night, right under the Emperor's nose?"

The live stream chat was instantly flooded with comments.

"He's definitely a big shot in the civil service! Li Dongyang?"

"No, the civil officials can't mobilize the troops! Zhang Yong must have taken the military command!"

[“Brother Jun mentioned the Five Military Commands earlier, which must be those old-guard nobles! Which one exactly?!”]

Various names flashed and intertwined on the public screen.

Finally, a comment accurately floated across the screen: ["Could it be Zhang Mao, the Duke of Yingguo?"]

Zhu Dijun snapped his fingers!

"Congratulations to the person who typed Zhang Mao's name; you got it right!"

Three large, blood-red characters, accompanied by a portrait of Xun Gui, who was bloated and had a sinister look in his eyes, crashed and shattered the screen!

【Zhang! Mao!】

The Yongle Era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall.

Zhu Di suddenly stood up from the dragon throne, his eyes instantly becoming bloodshot as he stared intently at the name on the sky!

"Zhang Mao... Duke of England..."

Zhu Di gritted his teeth and kicked the imperial desk in front of him to the ground.

"Zhang Yu's great-grandson! Zhang Fu's son! A top nobleman who has received countless favors from the Ming Dynasty! He actually led troops to rebel in the capital?!"

The entire court of officials knelt on the ground, so terrified they could hardly breathe. Everyone knew that the Zhang family was an absolute pillar that rose to power alongside Emperor Chengzu during the Jingnan Rebellion; they were the military bloodline that Zhu Di trusted most!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice was filled with extreme disgust and disdain.

"Who exactly is Zhang Mao?"

"He served four emperors and held military power in the capital army for a full forty years!"

"Logically, someone with such seniority should be a pillar of strength protecting the country, right? Wrong! He's a complete scumbag!"

Judy Jun listed a series of shocking crimes.

"His lifestyle was extremely extravagant! He blatantly seized military farms! He ruthlessly exploited the lower-ranking soldiers of the Beijing garrison, drinking their blood until his mouth was greasy! Later historians definitively condemned him as the worst of the worst!"

"If it weren't for the Ming Dynasty's hereditary system, based solely on the capital offenses of corruption, bribery, and embezzlement he committed, he would have been dragged to the execution ground and beheaded at least a hundred times over by the emperor!"

Zhu Dijun sneered repeatedly.

"This old beast has utterly disgraced his ancestors who served the country loyally during the Yongle era, as well as his descendants who died for their country at the end of the Chongzhen era!"

"In the second year of Zhengde's reign, Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao could no longer bear to see the Beijing Garrison in such a wretched state, so he directly issued an edict stripping Zhang Mao of his military power, retaining only his honorary title and position."

"Because of this incident, Zhang Mao harbored a deep hatred for Zhu Houzhao!"

"With old and new grudges combined, when the civil service group approached them for cooperation in order to cover up their smuggling network, the Duke of Ying of the Ming Dynasty didn't hesitate for even half a second, readily agreeing to their request for a mutiny!"

The fifth year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

The city walls besieged by war.

Zhu Houzhao raised his blood-stained face, looked at the sky, and let out a heart-wrenching, miserable laugh.

"Zhang Mao... what a Zhang Mao who has received the nation's favor for generations!"

"I stripped you of your military power, and you secretly tried to kill me!"

In the live broadcast room, Zhu Dijun raised an extremely crucial question.

"Family members, you must be wondering at this point. Didn't Zhu Houzhao strip Zhang Mao of his military power in the second year of Zhengde's reign? Why was Zhang Mao able to so easily pull out the Five Armies Camp on the night of the mutiny?"

On the screen, the organizational chart of the five military battalions is dissected layer by layer, like peeling an onion.

"This exposes the most cruel and despairing festering wound in the Ming Dynasty's military system!"

Zhu Dijun angrily slammed his fist on the whiteboard.

"Zhu Houzhao drove Zhang Mao away."

"But! The network of interests among officers at all levels who, along with Zhang Mao, exploited soldiers, embezzled salaries, and seized military farmland in the Beijing garrison still exists!"

"The lower-ranking soldiers can't even get enough to eat; they can only survive on scraps given to them by their officers!"

"This central army of the Ming Dynasty has long since become the Zhang family's private army!"

Zhu Dijun stared directly into the camera, speaking each word slowly and deliberately, as if piercing the hearts of all emperors with a knife.

"On the night of the mutiny in August, the elite troops of the Five Armies did not recognize Emperor Zhu Houzhao in the inner palace at all! They only recognized their elder brother—Duke Zhang Mao of Yingguo!"

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang gripped his palms tightly, blood dripping from between his fingers.

Soldiers belong to their generals. These four words were tantamount to a death sentence for the Ming Dynasty's capital garrison!

The emperor has been completely sidelined!

"Therefore, the real timeline of the civil service group and the nobility's actions is not August 15th at all!"

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the table, revealing the true timeline with a bang.

"On the very night that Yang Yiqing and Zhang Yong returned to Beijing ahead of schedule, Zhang Mao immediately mobilized five military battalions, formally launching a mutiny and imposing martial law on the capital!"

"August 12th! The main force of the Five Armies surrounded the Inner Factory, and after a fierce and bloody battle, captured Liu Jin and his cronies on the spot!"

"This is the most authentic and bloodiest history!"

The entire room fell silent.

"But, family members."

Zhu Dijun suddenly lowered his voice, and the chilling tone in his voice sent shivers down everyone's spines.

"From the mutiny launched on August 11th to the emperor's so-called 'night raid to arrest people' on August 15th."

"There was a gap of several days in between!"

"During these most crucial days, the Ming Dynasty's Veritable Records made no mention of it! The historians went mad, erasing all historical records of this period!"

The screen instantly plunged into an extremely deep, deathly black.

Only Judy Jun's chilling voice exploded like thunder in the darkness!

Why did they want to erase it?

"Because during those days of secrecy, a shocking event occurred that even the civil officials themselves found extremely terrifying, and which absolutely must not be known to posterity!"

A blazing sword cleaved through the darkness with a deafening roar!

"The mutinous troops mobilized by Zhang Maohe and the civil service group."

"After eliminating Liu Jin's peripheral forces, they didn't stop!"

"This elite Beijing army, blinded by rage, stormed through the gates of the Forbidden City, stormed the palace, and finally reached the very heart of the Ming Empire's power—"

Three large, blood-red characters were frozen in place before the eyes of countless worlds and timelines!

[By the Heavenly Court!]