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

The oppressive silence in the live stream lasted for a full ten seconds.

"Family members."

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands on the table, the bloodshot veins in his eyes were alarmingly red.

"After reading this, don't you all feel that Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao was extremely aggrieved? Don't you think that the killings committed by these civil officials and nobles in the capital have reached the extreme of madness?"

He shook his head violently, a chilling, even somewhat eerie, smile curving his lips.

"wrong!"

"Completely wrong!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the whiteboard eraser and wiped the entire route map of the coup in Beijing clean!

"The coup in the capital, the purge of the emperor's faction, and the seizure of the four major privileges of the inner court—for this group of civil officials who had already woven an intricate web, this was merely the first step in controlling their minds!"

"The real, super-lucrative piece of meat they want to carve out during the Zhengde reign isn't in the north, but in the Ming Dynasty's treasury—the southeastern coast!"

On the big screen, a map of the southeastern coastal defenses of the Ming Dynasty was suddenly displayed!

Three blood-red time points are firmly fixed in the center of the map!

[October of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign!]

"Just two months after the coup in August, the civil service, which had seized control of the court, immediately presented Zhu Houzhao, who had become a puppet ruler, with a memorial that could change the fate of the Ming Dynasty!"

"They demanded revisions to the eighteen articles of Liu Jin's reformist policies!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly pressed the Enter key, and a yellowed photocopy of the "Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming" instantly enlarged and filled the entire public screen!

He picked up the red laser pointer and circled the most inconspicuous yet most deadly line of traditional Chinese characters!

"Family members, everyone, open your eyes wide and look carefully at this line of text!"

"[The eunuch in charge of the Zhejiang Maritime Trade Office has also been dismissed and will be put in charge of supervising the coastal defense authorities!]"

In countless worlds and timelines, numerous history novices stared at this classical Chinese text, their faces filled with confusion.

During the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

The moment Zhu Yuanzhang, who was sitting on the dragon throne, saw the words, his withered fingers suddenly pierced his palm, and blood dripped down.

"Beasts... how dare they touch the military power of the coastal defense!" The founding emperor's voice trembled uncontrollably.

On the screen above, Zhu Dijun's roar shattered the tranquility of the live broadcast room like a thunderclap!

"These sixteen characters were the ultimate trigger that led to the rampant Japanese pirates during the Jiajing reign, the Donglin Party's growing military power at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and even directly resulted in the downfall of the Ming Dynasty!"

"I'll translate this word for word for my family, so they can see what utterly heinous things these civil officials have done!"

On the whiteboard, the words "Maritime Trade Office" and "Japanese Pirate Defense Army" were written heavily.

"What is the Maritime Trade Office? It's the customs service of the Ming Dynasty! It was responsible for managing maritime trade and collecting taxes, and it was full of local civil officials and powerful local families!"

"What is meant by 'coastal garrison troops'? These are special anti-smuggling police and regular field troops established by the Ming Dynasty along the southeastern coast to guard against Japanese pirates and, more importantly, to prevent corrupt officials in the Maritime Trade Office from engaging in illegal smuggling!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his finger heavily on the whiteboard and roared.

"In the original system of the Ming Dynasty, in order to check and balance these customs officials, the emperor specifically sent eunuchs to supervise the Maritime Trade Office! At the same time, the Anti-Japanese Pirate Army only answered to the Ministry of War and the Regional Military Commission, specifically used to keep a close eye on this group of civil officials who might be involved in smuggling!"

"but!"

"In this memorial submitted in October of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign, the civil service group made two demands!"

"First, remove all the eunuchs from the Maritime Trade Office who represent the Emperor in oversight! Get out of here!"

"Secondly, and most shamelessly and absurdly, they demanded that the civil officials of the Zhejiang Maritime Trade Office have the power to directly command the coastal garrisons defending against Japanese pirates!"

boom!

The live stream chat exploded into a white blur!

Zhu Dijun crushed the chalk in his hand, and dust fell in a flurry.

"Did you understand?!"

"Let the local civil officials who were originally in charge of customs and smuggling directly command the anti-Japanese war forces that were originally used to crack down on smuggling!"

"This is blatant blatant manipulation—a thief managing the constables! A criminal directing the constables!"

Four large, scarlet characters slammed onto the center of the screen!

[Upside down! Rebel! Heaven! Gang!]

September of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty, at the Leopard Chamber.

Zhu Houzhao, who was now completely under house arrest, stared intently at the sky and spat a mouthful of blood directly onto the gold brick in front of him.

"My army to defend against Japanese pirates... my southeastern coastal defenses..."

He closed his eyes in anguish, his gaze filled with the ashen resignation of humiliation. Coastal defense had been so easily and casually ceded away by these civil officials!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel has cut open the deepest festering wound in history.

"The memorial was submitted, and the puppet emperor Zhu Houzhao could only stamp it in approval. Subsequently, a bloody purge targeting imperialist officers along the southeastern coast was launched in earnest!"

Three portraits of military generals were pinned to the screen one after another.

"Liu Chang, Commander-in-Chief of Zhejiang! Wei Wenli, Zhejiang Anti-Japanese Pirate Officer! Yuan Jie, Yangzhou Anti-Japanese Pirate Officer!"

"These military generals, who were originally loyal to the imperial power and held a tight grip on the smuggling trade in the southeast, were all dismissed and investigated by the civil official group on various trumped-up charges after October of the fifth year of Zhengde's reign, or were completely sidelined!"

"Military power has completely fallen into the hands of the Jiangnan gentry and civil officials!"

As Zhu Dijun approached the camera, a chilling aura emanated from his eyes.

"Family members, do you know what a terrifying monster the southeastern coast became in the years that followed, after it lost the supervision of imperial power and held military power?"

"From that day forward, the southeastern coastal region, which later became the stronghold of the renowned Donglin Party, achieved complete independence—economically, politically, and militarily!"

"The central government of the Ming Dynasty can no longer collect a single tael of silver in actual taxes from the wealthy Jiangnan region!"

The scroll of history is accelerating wildly at this moment!

On the big screen, two starkly contrasting images of apocalyptic ruins appeared.

One scene depicts coastal towns being burned, looted, and littered with corpses; the other shows countless wagons loaded with grain continuously driving into the camps of the Jianzhou Jurchens on the Liaodong plain!

Why did the dreaded "Japanese pirates" emerge during the Jiajing reign, decades later, striking fear into the hearts of the entire world?!

Zhu Dijun slammed his gavel down, his eyes wide open!

"Because the so-called Wokou (Japanese pirates) are not entirely Japanese! The vast majority of them are pirates and private soldiers raised by the powerful civil officials and wealthy families in the southeast who control the Maritime Trade Office and the Wokou Defense Army!"

"If the imperial court doesn't enforce the maritime ban, they go out to sea to smuggle and make a fortune! But once the court sends people to inspect the taxes, they simply have these private soldiers dress up as Japanese ronin and go ashore to burn, kill, and loot!"

In the myriad realms and timelines of the Ming Dynasty, during the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing Emperor's reign

Emperor Jiajing, Zhu Houcong, who was meditating in the West Garden, suddenly crushed the jade ruyi in his hand.

"Traitors and rebels...all traitors and rebels!" The Jiajing Emperor broke out in a cold sweat. The analysis in the sky was like a lightning bolt, cleaving through the knot that had plagued him since the early years of his reign. The root of the problem had been sown in October of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's speech grew faster and faster, carrying a suffocating sense of oppression.

"Not just during the Jiajing reign!"

"By the late Ming Dynasty, during the Tianqi and Chongzhen reigns!"

"The Ming army in Liaodong is starving and freezing to death! What is the Donglin Party, which controls absolute power along the southeast coast, doing?!"

Zhu Dijun pointed at the long convoy of grain trucks on the screen and roared fiercely!

"They not only violently resisted taxes, refusing to pay a single penny to the state! They even smuggled grain, ironware, and gunpowder produced in Jiangnan to the Buryat people outside the Great Wall via sea routes, all for the sake of a fortune!"

"They are using the blood of the Ming Dynasty to feed its mortal enemies!"

In the live stream, millions of netizens were trembling with anger, and the barrage of comments was filled with the word "kill"!

During the Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Beneath the crooked tree on Coal Hill, Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, with disheveled hair, looked at the sky and let out a grotesque laugh that sounded like that of a vengeful ghost.

"The Donglin Party... the Donglin Party that fills the court with righteous indignation!" He clutched his neck tightly, his eyes filled with tears of blood.

"I believed until my death that it was the bandits who ruined the country, but it turns out that the heart of the Ming Dynasty had long been hollowed out by these smugglers!"

Zhu Dijun picked up the water glass, but instead of drinking it, he slammed it heavily on the table, splashing water everywhere.

"Family members, history is never just a rigid pile of old papers."

"This kind of scheme, where smuggling rings collude with official regulators to completely overthrow the established order, continues to be played out in secret, even in modern times!"

"Go and see the massive smuggling case in Guangdong, known as 'Hurricane 236,' which broke out in 2020! Go and see the Dongguan 'red diesel' smuggling network that shocked the whole country!"

"How did those smugglers grow so powerful? It's exactly the same as the Jiangnan gentry of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign! They bribed regulators, they wove a protective umbrella, and in the end, they not only evaded taxes but also turned around and controlled the local market's lifeline!"

"There's nothing new under the sun, past or present, in any country!"

The image on the big screen instantly switched to a solemn and majestic royal ancestral temple.

Zhu Dijun's eyes became extremely deep, like an ancient well.

"Now, family."

"Now you can finally understand why, during the later Great Rites Controversy, the exceptionally intelligent Jiajing Emperor Zhu Houcong insisted on defying the desperate remonstrances of the entire court and forcefully threw the memorial tablet of Emperor Renzong Zhu Gaochi—that fat emperor known as the 'Fat Emperor of Ming'—directly off the main seat in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, right?!"

In the vast universe, both the Hongwu Emperor and the Yongle Emperor held their breath at this moment.

"Because the Jiajing Emperor saw through the true nature of these civil officials!"

"From the Hongxi reign of Emperor Feizong of Ming, Zhu Gaochi, defying Zhu Di's dying wish, abolishing Zheng He's voyages to the Western Ocean, and transferring all power to civil officials! To the Tumu Crisis during the Zhengtong reign, in which the Wu Xun clique was completely crippled! And then to the Zhengde reign, when these civil officials seized control of the coastal defense forces through a military coup!"

A timeline spanning a century unfolds dramatically on the screen!

"This is a terrifying political scheme that has lasted for a full 127 years, passed down from generation to generation, intermittently, yet absolutely uninterrupted!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly turned around and wrote four large, blood-red characters heavily on the whiteboard!

"[Shadow! Sub! Government! Government!]"

He stared directly into the camera, speaking slowly and deliberately, his voice like the judgment of death.

"To call these civil officials the courtiers of the Ming Dynasty? No!"

"Through their 127 years of planning, they have long since put the Ming imperial power on the brink of collapse! They are the true shadow government of the Ming Dynasty!"

The screen was plunged into a chilling darkness.

"Imperial power was lost, military power was seized, trusted confidants were slaughtered, and the treasury was robbed."

"Zhu Houzhao, at the age of twenty, sat on the drafty dragon throne, seemingly destined only to be executed."

A phantom image of an Emperor's Sword burning with raging flames suddenly appeared slowly in the center of the dark screen!

"But do you really think this young emperor, whose blood runs with the warlike spirit of Emperor Chengzu (Zhu Di), has simply resigned himself to his fate?"

"The answer is no. Emperor Wuzong was neither his father Zhu Youcheng nor that fat Zhu Gaochi. He waited for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity later on and regained some military power. Before we talk about that, let's tell a few anecdotal jokes to relax, otherwise it will be very unfriendly to people with high blood pressure."