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

Inside the live stream, the barrage of comments paused briefly due to the sheer shock.

Immediately afterwards, like a volcanic eruption, dense text completely flooded the screen.

On this night filled with bloodshed and scheming, modern netizens have once again witnessed firsthand just how crazy the feudal landlord class and corrupt officials of ancient times could be!

A deliberate mutiny! A deliberate uprising!

To protect their smuggling profits and cover up their embezzled land, they could directly execute the imperial envoy, who represented the highest public authority of the state, on the river and then brazenly frame the bandits!

"My entire worldview has been shattered! These beasts dressed in bright red and green are more ruthless than the mafia!"

"This isn't officialdom; it's a bunch of parasites sucking the life out of the nation! Anyone who dares to treat the country's problems will be killed by them!"

"Zhu Houzhao was so pitiful... His trusted confidants were killed, his account books were burned, and he still had to bear the blame for being a tyrannical ruler. Who wouldn't despair in that situation?"

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

Inside the empty Leopard Chamber, Zhu Houzhao looked up at the barrage of comments on the screen, a single, blood-red tear welling up from the corner of his eye.

He slammed his fist into the jade pillar beside him.

It's not hard to imagine the despair and sorrow he felt when news of Ma Bingran's death reached the capital and the flawed memorial from the local government was placed on his desk, having lost all power.

Even if he knew it was a civil official who did the killing, so what?

He didn't even have the power to investigate or seek justice for Ma Bingran. Because those standing in the court were all accomplices of the murderer!

"Family members."

Zhu Dijun's voice rang out again, forcibly pulling everyone's thoughts back.

He stood in front of the whiteboard, his marker tapping away.

"If you think killing the imperial envoy is outrageous enough, then I'm going to add one last, and most irrefutable piece of evidence, to this so-called Liu Liu and Liu Qi uprising!"

The image on the big screen flashed for a moment.

A tattered military flag embroidered with a flying bear pattern crashed onto the center of the public screen!

"Remember this flag, remember these four words!" Zhu Dijun said, each word distinct and his voice as cold as ice.

[Yan! Shan! Zuo! Wei!]

In the imperial court of the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty, across countless worlds and timelines.

Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di), who had been sitting calmly on the dragon throne, suddenly widened his eyes upon seeing these four words, as if struck by lightning, and froze on the spot.

"Yanshan Left Guard..."

Zhu Di's lips trembled violently.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's cold laughter was like a series of heavy slaps to Zhu Di's face.

"This is one of the twenty-six imperial guards of the Ming Dynasty capital! Those familiar with the history of the early Ming Dynasty know what the Yanshan Left Guard represents!"

"This was the foundation upon which Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di) built his power base in Beiping! It consisted of the elite of the elite forces during the Jingnan Campaign, and the most trusted confidants of the Yongle Emperor!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly waved his hand, and a red-letter photocopy of the "Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming" appeared on the big screen.

"But! This very same elite force that once fought alongside the Ming emperors to conquer the land, by the Zhengde reign, had completely degenerated into the private army of nobles and civil officials. Ironically, it became one of the ultimate culprits responsible for the deaths of Zhu Houzhao's trusted confidants and the subsequent chaos of the Ming Dynasty!"

The laser pointer circled several lines of text on the historical record, the red color glaringly bright.

"The Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming clearly state in the seventh year of the Zhengde reign that Wang Qin and other officers of the Yanshan Left Guard abused their positions to continuously resell and supply the superior weapons, even firearms, from the Beijing Garrison's armory to the rebel army of Liu Liu and Liu Qi!"

boom!

In the Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang smashed the teacup in front of him with a single blow, splashing scalding tea all over the floor.

"Outrageous! The Central Army is selling weapons to rebels?! Is the Ming army rotten to the core?!"

Old Zhu was so angry that his eyes turned black.

Zhu Di of the Yongle era even coughed up a mouthful of blood, staining his dragon robe red.

"My Yanshan Guard... my Yanshan Guard!" Zhu Di gripped the armrests of the dragon throne tightly, his eyes bloodshot. His proud, battle-hardened army, his precious darlings, had become, a century later, a tool for these corrupt officials to raise bandits and bolster their own power!

What a shame!

Inside the live stream, Zhu Dijun's analysis was like a steel scalpel, peeling away the chain of interests behind it piece by piece.

"Family members, the most magical part is yet to come!"

"After the Yanshan Left Guard's supply of weapons to the rebels was exposed, these officers were caught red-handed by the Embroidered Uniform Guard and immediately imprisoned in the Imperial Prison!"

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the table and stared sharply into the camera.

"Anyone familiar with the history of the Ming Dynasty knows what the Imperial Prison of the Embroidered Uniform Guard was like. It was a hellish place where you had to be skinned alive! Even an iron man would be skinned alive if he went in there!"

"However, this officer named Wang Qin not only survived unscathed while imprisoned in the imperial prison, but he was also able to bypass numerous guards and repeatedly submit memorials to the court, proclaiming his innocence!"

Zhu Dijun gave an extremely exaggerated, mocking smile.

"Think about it, everyone! A death row inmate convicted of arms trafficking and treason, in a secret service prison, could he possibly write a memorial and submit it to the central government? Without the powerful figures of the outer court protecting him, without those shadow government officials pulling strings at every level, could he even get this memorial through? He'd be dead in prison playing hide-and-seek by now!"

The viewers instantly understood, and the screen was filled with comments like "This is terrifying to think about."

"What does this mean? It means that sending weapons to Liu Liu and Liu Qi was not just a greedy act by a few officers!"

Judy Jun grabbed the gavel and slammed it down!

boom!

"This is an organized military aid operation, orchestrated by higher authorities, by the civil service and nobility groups to maintain the scale of the rebellion in Bazhou, Hebei, and to intensify this fire!"

On the whiteboard, Zhu Dijun drew two huge circles in red pen.

"Having read this far, family members should understand completely."

"This is not a peasant uprising at all."

"This was an unprecedented 'double physical purge' carried out by the civil official group and the nobility group against the imperial faction left behind by Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao in the provinces after the mutiny in August of the fifth year of Zhengde's reign!"

Zhu Dijun's finger slammed heavily on the first circle.

"The first purge! They hired Liu Liu and Liu Qi, these bandit peddlers, to storm into county offices across the country, kill the registrars loyal to the emperor, and burn all the land survey records! This is called using someone else to do the dirty work!"

Immediately afterwards, he poked his finger into the second circle.

"A second purge! Local officials reported a rebellion, and the civil service group had a legitimate reason to mobilize Zhang Mao's large army from the capital to 'suppress the bandits'!"

"These Beijing troops who participated in the coup attempt, once they arrived in the provinces, were no good at fighting, but they were absolutely first-rate at killing innocent people and fabricating crimes! Under the guise of suppressing the rebellion, they directly labeled the remaining disobedient local officials, or those who were still secretly investigating cases for the emperor, as 'colluding with the rebels,' and executed them on the spot!"

The entire northern territory of the Ming Dynasty on the big screen was completely submerged in this double crimson.

"The thieves killed off the records, the soldiers killed off the witnesses again! After this series of operations, the northern grassroots of the Ming Dynasty became an independent kingdom of the civil service. Zhu Houzhao had no one he could use in this land, and he could no longer find a single genuine land deed!"

Throughout the myriad realms and timelines, countless emperors felt a chill run through their bodies upon hearing this.

Such ruthless and manipulative tactics, capable of turning the tables at will, represent a complete and utter depravity in political maneuvering.

In the Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, gripped the hilt of his sword tightly, gritting his teeth and sneering:

"What a double purge! These pedantic scholars, always spouting righteousness and morality, are a hundred times more ruthless than the Huns when it comes to killing!"

"The civil service group played this game with undeniable brilliance and ruthlessness."

On the sky, Zhu Dijun picked up a water glass, but left it hanging in mid-air without drinking it.

Suddenly, a strange, even gloating smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

"These vested interests who forced their way to power originally thought they had the entire Ming Dynasty under their control. They felt that everything was going according to their script."

The water glass landed heavily on the table with a dull thud.

The blood-red map on the big screen instantly collapsed, replaced by countless disheveled portraits of the Ming Dynasty's capital garrison soldiers, routed and disarmed!

"But! They miscalculated one thing!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly raised his head, his eyes shooting out an extremely oppressive light.

"These useless mutiny soldiers who only know how to form cliques and eliminate dissidents in the court and embezzle soldiers' pay in the capital garrison! They overestimated the fighting power of their pampered troops!"

"They underestimated just how terrifying the destructive power of Liu Liu and Liu Qi, these stable hands who had lived on the edge of death for years, would be if they were released!"

One tragic battle report after another rained down on the screen like snowflakes!

"The script is completely out of control!"

Zhu Dijun's voice reverberated throughout the hall and across time and space, carrying endless mockery.

"These disgraceful elite troops from the capital, armed with the finest weapons, went to quell the rebellion, only to be utterly routed on the Hebei Plain by 20,000 mounted bandits! They couldn't even suppress the rebellion in Bazhou, right under their noses!"

"The fire has gotten out of control; it can't be contained!"

Suddenly, a pair of eyes, as untamed as a lone wolf, lit up in the darkness of the screen. They belonged to Zhu Houzhao, the Zhengde Emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly lowered, like a powder keg about to explode.

"The Ming Empire's northern defenses have completely collapsed. And this, precisely, became the only weakness that allowed the young emperor, imprisoned in the Forbidden City, to turn the tide in a desperate situation!"