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

"Family members, we've now exposed the true nature of this absurd uprising."

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the big screen and tapped the whiteboard.

"The civil service and military general Xun Gui colluded to condone this rebellion. However, halfway through the story, a colossal farce unfolded!"

He gave a mocking, cold laugh.

"The military commanders of the Five Military Commissions, who controlled the capital's military power, were utterly humiliated by rebels in Bazhou, Hebei, right under their noses! Their ineffective suppression is an undeniable fact!"

"What will the civil service group that's pulling the strings behind the scenes think?"

Zhu Dijun spread his hands.

"While they were relieved that they had successfully used someone else to do their dirty work, they also utterly despised these good-for-nothing military men. The civil officials thought: 'You bunch of useless trash, do you think you're worthy to be on equal footing with us in the court? You're only fit to eat our leftovers!'"

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

The capital city, the Five Military Commissions.

"Clang!"

Duke Zhang Mao of England smashed a fine official kiln blue-and-white porcelain teacup to pieces. The faces of his trusted generals in the room turned ashen, and they didn't dare to even breathe loudly.

On the Mid-Autumn Festival night of August 11th, it was the elite troops of their Fifth Army Battalion who stormed into the Inner Court, helped the civil officials take down Liu Jin, and sidelined the current emperor.

And now?

Those civil officials dressed in beastly clothes pointed at them in the court and cursed them as good-for-nothings!

Zhang Mao gritted his teeth, his eyes surging with extreme regret and resentment. Had betraying Zhu Houzhao earned him nothing more than serving as a dog to these ruthless, cannibalistic scholars?

Once Zhu Houzhao has the opportunity to seize power, he will definitely not let these traitors go! But if they do not resist, the civil official group will sooner or later strip them of their military power as well!

They were caught in a dilemma, with no way out but a dead end.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice was like a cold wind, dispelling the oppressive atmosphere in the Five Armies Commandery.

"Because of the incompetence of the Beijing army, Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao, who was under house arrest, finally seized his first opening for respite in his desperate situation!"

On the whiteboard, three place names were written heavily.

Xuanfu, Datong, Liaodong!

"Zhu Houzhao directly proposed in court: Since the capital garrison can't win, let's mobilize the elite border troops from the northern border towns to go south and quell the rebellion!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly pressed the Enter key.

"To make matters worse, Li Dongyang and his group of civil servants tacitly approved and cooperated with this proposal! Why?"

"First, they saw that Zhang Mao and his group of nobles in the capital were just a bunch of paper tigers, all bark and no bite. They could use the foreign troops to suppress the arrogance of the capital's military officers."

"Secondly, and most importantly! By this time, Liu Liu and Liu Qi's 'knife' had almost completely purged the local officials who were part of the imperial faction! The civil officials are afraid! They are deeply worried that the fire they started will get out of control and eventually burn down their own mansions and properties in Jiangnan!"

Zhu Dijun's laser pointer swept across the screen.

"Thus, with each side harboring their own ulterior motives, Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao immediately appointed Qiu Yue, the General Commander of Ningxia and Earl of Xianning, and Lu Wan, the Right Vice Censor-in-Chief in charge of military affairs, as the commanders-in-chief in suppressing the rebellion!"

"The border troops enter the fray, delivering a devastating blow!"

A blood-red timeline crashed onto the screen.

[August of the seventh year of Zhengde!]

"This Ming Dynasty field army, which had been fighting the Mongols to the death for years, utterly routed the bandits! The rebel leaders Liu Qi and Qi Yanming, with nowhere to run, attempted to escape by boat from Jiangyin. However, they were ambushed and annihilated by Qiu Yue and Lu Wan!"

"By September of the seventh year of the Zhengde reign, a total of thirty-seven rebel leaders from various provinces had been bound hand and foot and escorted to the capital like dead dogs!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands on the table, a terrifying ferocity emanating from his eyes.

"Family members, the time for revenge has come!"

"For three years, Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao watched from within the Forbidden City as his trusted confidants were killed and the archives of his new policies were burned. He harbored this resentment for a full three years!"

"Zhu Houzhao unleashed extremely cruel physical retribution against these so-called 'rebellion leaders' who were actually lackeys of the civil service!"

"Thirty-seven people, all executed! And that's not all!"

Zhu Dijun abruptly pulled out a portrait of someone dressed in scholar's robes, next to which were three glaring characters: 【Zhao! Sui!】

"Regarding Zhao Sui and his six core followers, Zhu Houzhao issued the most chilling punishment order since the founding of the Ming Dynasty—"

"Not only will they be beheaded, but they'll also skin them alive and stuff them with grass!"

Across countless worlds and timelines, everyone gasped in shock.

Skinning and stuffing with straw? Wasn't that a special routine used by Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang to deal with corrupt officials?

In the live broadcast room, Zhu Dijun grabbed the gavel and slammed it down!

boom!

"Many people will surely ask, with so many rebels, why did Zhu Houzhao hate Zhao Sui to the point of wanting to skin him alive? Let me expose to you the heinous crimes Zhao Sui committed!"

On the whiteboard, two lines were drawn next to Zhao Sui's name.

"First, his identity! This guy isn't some destitute vagrant at all! He's a student from Wen'an County, Hebei! In modern terms, he's a regular civil servant with official rank!"

"After Liu Liu and Liu Qi's uprising, he was the first to jump out and respond, bringing his younger brothers Zhao Fan and Zhao Hao, along with 500 fully armed men, directly joining the rebellion with his own resources! He not only became the second largest force in the uprising, but at its peak, he had as many as 28 battalions under his command, commanding 130,000 troops!"

Zhu Dijun sneered repeatedly.

"A scholar receiving a salary from the Ming Dynasty actively rebelled and caused havoc in the local area, which already made Zhu Houzhao grit his teeth in hatred. But what he shouldn't have done, he shouldn't have done something else that completely touched the emperor's sore spot—an act that would wipe out his entire family line!"

On the big screen appeared a portrait of an elderly minister with white hair—Grand Secretary Jiao Fang!

"Do family members still remember Jiao Fang? He was Zhu Houzhao's mentor when he was the crown prince! He was the only top civil official in the entire Ming Dynasty civil service who wholeheartedly followed Zhu Houzhao in implementing the new policies! After the coup in August of the fifth year of Zhengde, he was forcibly expelled from the cabinet by Li Dongyang and others and returned to his hometown of Nanyang, Henan."

Zhu Dijun's finger jabbed heavily into Jiao Fang's portrait, his voice hoarse.

"After Zhao Sui raised his army, he received secret instructions directly from high-ranking civil officials such as Li Dongyang and Yang Yiqing. They wanted to use the bandits as a tool to exterminate Jiao Fang and his entire family in Nanyang!"

"But these people underestimated Jiao Fang. After all, he was a Grand Secretary of the Cabinet, and he had spies in the capital. The spies risked their lives to send out intelligence, and Jiao Fang managed to escape before they died."

"Since he didn't kill anyone, guess what this scholar Zhao Sui, who had received the teachings of a sage, did?"

A burning torch and a rusty shovel crashed into the center of the screen!

"Having missed his target, he burned down Jiao Fang's ancestral home! Not satisfied with that, he led his gang of thugs to dig up Jiao Fang's ancestral graves!"

"He dug up all the remains of Jiao Fang's ancestors and, in front of everyone—[crushed the bones! Scattered the ashes!]"

boom!

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang felt a chill run down his spine upon hearing this, and he smashed the dragon head on the dragon throne with a sudden slap.

"You beast! You beast who has wasted your time studying the classics!"

Old Zhu was so angry that his eyes were bloodshot. The other young Zhus also looked extremely pale, as did the other civil officials. They were also afraid that after their death, their bones would be crushed and their ashes scattered. It was true that Zhu Yuanzhang killed people, but he would at least let them rest in peace. Their colleagues in later generations would not even let them rest in peace. Suddenly, they felt that Zhu Yuanzhang was not so scary. On the contrary, their colleagues who studied the classics like themselves were more terrifying!

The Leopard Chamber in the seventh year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao stood in the main hall, his eyes gleaming with a mad, predatory murderous intent. Jiao Fang was his mentor, a loyal minister who had shouldered the infamy of the entire court to implement his new policies!

"The suppression of the imperial faction and the purging of political enemies by the civil service group is nothing more than a political life-or-death struggle."

Judy Jun's voice echoed in the hall like a tolling death knell.

"But this kind of utter destruction has completely crossed the line of humanity!"

"Whose face is Zhao Sui slapping? He's slapping Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao's face!"

"His extremely extreme behavior was, in effect, announcing one thing to all officials in the land—[Look! Your Emperor Zhu Houzhao is a useless piece of trash who can't even protect his own people! He couldn't protect the Prince of Anhua, nor could he protect his personal eunuch Liu Jin. Now, even if you are a Grand Secretary of the Cabinet, as long as you are not a dog of our Jiangnan civil official group, we will still grind you to dust!]"

Zhu Dijun ripped off his tie and roared at the camera.

"This is a blatant act of making an example of someone to deter others; it's severing any future thoughts of loyalty to the imperial power from all officials!"

"Therefore, Zhu Houzhao had to order the skinning and stuffing of the dead! He had to use the most cruel methods to show the whole world the consequences of angering the emperor!"

The screen switched to the Ming Dynasty court in the seventh year of the Zhengde reign.

"As soon as the imperial edict was issued, Li Dongyang and his group of civil officials panicked! They jumped out like cats whose tails had been stepped on, even invoking the ancestral precepts of Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, desperately trying to stop this brutal execution by slow slicing!"

"Why are you against it?"

Zhu Dijun gave a cold, knowing laugh.

"Because Zhao Sui was their 'black glove' for doing dirty work outside! If this black glove was skinned alive and died such a gruesome death, who the hell would dare to risk their lives for these scholars doing dirty work in the future?!"

However, this time, Zhu Houzhao, sitting on the dragon throne, did not back down.

On the big screen, the young emperor's face, contorted with extreme rage, was frozen in time.

Faced with the pressure from the entire court, Zhu Houzhao looked down at these hypocrites and uttered a famous line that silenced the entire audience!

The blood-red characters almost burst the screen!

You think I'm wrong? Then you all can be emperor! Let's all tear off the mask and see who comes out on top!

"In short, it ripped apart all political procedures and hypocritical masks!"

Zhu Dijun burst into laughter.

"The meaning is clear: Today I'm going to skin him alive! Who dares to stop me? If you have the guts, then rebel right now, drag me off the dragon throne and sit on it yourselves! If you don't, then shut up!"

"Now that things have come to this, the civil service group has chickened out. They dare not completely break ties at this time. After all, it is obvious to everyone that the so-called Liu Liu and Liu Qi uprising is just the civil service group eliminating members of the imperial party. Once Zhu Houzhao dies in the palace in the capital, then the world will truly be in chaos. The newly born dynasty will spare no effort to completely kill the civil officials in the southeastern coastal areas, led by Jiangsu and Zhejiang. So they can only watch helplessly as the cannon fodder they have raised is dragged down."

"Zhao Sui was skinned alive. Even more outrageous, Zhu Houzhao ordered that the skin be sewn into his own custom-made saddle and stirrups!"

A chilling image of horse harness wrapped in human skin appeared on the public screen.

"From then on, every time Zhu Houzhao went out of the palace to ride and shoot arrows, and every time he inspected the army, he would step on the stirrups made of the rebel's human skin and sit on the saddle made of human skin! He would even go out of his way to praise to everyone he met—this saddle is so comfortable to sit on!"

Inside the modern live stream room, the barrage of comments scrolled wildly, and the cheers filled the screen, drowning out all the horror.

"Holy crap! That was so satisfying! This is the ruthlessness a great emperor should have!"

"To deal with this kind of beast who desecrates people's ancestral graves, you have to skin him alive! I don't support the Holy Mother!"

"Chinese people value the dead above all else, they don't even spare the dead, this black-gloved person deserves to die a thousand times over!"

"The civil service is nothing but a bunch of cowards who bully the weak and fear the strong. If the emperor really wants to overturn the table, they'll all cower!"

Zhu Dijun picked up his water glass and took a big gulp.

He watched the jubilant comments on the screen, but his gaze gradually tightened.

"Family members, killing Zhao Sui vented our anger. But this is far from enough to reverse the power structure of the Ming Dynasty, which has been completely undermined."

He turned around abruptly and drew a huge arrow heavily on the whiteboard, pointing from "Border Army" to "Capital".

"Although the uprising has been quelled, but..."

"Did this formidable border army, led by Qiu Yue and Lu Wan, who had seen blood and killed many, return to Xuanfu and Datong after the rebellion was quelled?"

A chilling, eerie smile curved at the corners of Zhu Dijun's lips.

"I'm sorry, but due to Zhu Houzhao's insistence on keeping us here, this field army has rightfully stopped at the foot of the city walls of the Ming capital."

The live stream room became so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

"Those powerful civil officials who control the court in the Fengtian Hall, and those like Zhang Mao who outwardly comply but inwardly defy the orders in the Five Military Commands."

"They finally discovered it in horror."

"A knife that truly doesn't belong to them has been silently placed against their necks!"