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

"Family members, let's set aside the malicious smears concocted by the Ming Dynasty's civil officials and later the Manchu Qing Dynasty. What we're about to discuss is the most glorious and also the most distorted peak battle in Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao's life—the Great Victory of Yingzhou!"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the large screen, his laser pointer drawing four large, blood-red characters heavily on the whiteboard. He didn't immediately switch to the battle map, but instead suddenly sneered and opened a folder named "[Zhu Houzhao in TV Dramas]".

Before discussing the true battle achievements of the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who rose to power through military force, let's first examine how later generations, through mass media, solidified the smear campaign established by these civil officials!

On the big screen, an old TV series suddenly appeared. Next to it was a prominent label—"The Legend of Zhengde" (2005).

"Family members, open your eyes wide and take a good look at this actor's portrayal of Zhu Houzhao!"

Zhu Dijun pointed at the thin, frivolous male actor on the screen, his tone filled with undisguised disgust.

In the video, the actor playing Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty not only didn't wear the imposing standard armor of the Ming army, but instead wore an extremely incongruous Mongolian outfit! What's even more mind-boggling is that he even had a Mongolian braid on his head! He was riding a horse, limply waving a long spear in his hand, his movements like chasing chickens with a broom, and occasionally making comical noises.

"Look at what the hell this acting is!" Judy Jun slammed his gavel.

"Where is this the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty who dared to lead 150,000 border troops to fight the main Mongol force head-on? He's practically a courtesan who went to the frontier to experience rural life! Even in a life-or-death scene like the fierce battle with the Mongol prince, the entire crew was just filling space! The fight choreography was weak and feeble, and their eyes were full of the same affected and ridiculous mannerisms as those effeminate men with foundation on their clothes these days!"

Zhu Dijun immediately switched to another video. It was "Legend of Chu and Han" starring Peter Ho.

"If you want to see what real cold weapon cavalry combat looks like, and what true leadership qualities are, I recommend you watch this series featuring Xiang Yu, the Hegemon-King of Western Chu!"

The screen was split in two for comparative playback.

On the right side of the screen, Peter Ho, playing Xiang Yu, is clad in heavy armor, covered in blood, and wields the Heavenly Dragon City-Breaking Halberd with powerful, sweeping strokes. Each swing carries a heavy, oppressive tension, while the neighing of charging warhorses is deafening.

The scene shifts to Chen Daoming, who plays Emperor Gaozu of Han, standing on a high place. His shrewd and calculating face twitches slightly, perfectly conveying the fear and shock of the enemy's overwhelming military power, as well as the emperor's inherent cunning.

In contrast, the "Emperor Zhengde" on the left screen, dressed in Mongolian clothes, with a small braid, and swaying on horseback, looks like a clown playing house.

This stark ten-minute comparison video was played for a full ten minutes in the live stream.

After a brief period of silence, the comments section of a modern live stream was suddenly erupted with a violent backlash!

"Holy crap!! There's no harm in comparison! What the hell is that guy on the left playing Zhu Houzhao?!"

"Wearing Mongolian clothes to fight Mongolians? Is the director's brain filled with shit? The emperor of the Ming Dynasty wasn't even worthy of wearing a set of Ming armor?"

"This effeminate, foundation-like demeanor is actually used to play an emperor who fights tigers in the leopard enclosure every day? It's disgusting!"

"This is blatant cultural brainwashing! The civil service rewrote history, and later films and television dramas followed these unofficial accounts, turning a powerful and ruthless ruler into a mentally challenged and incompetent fool!"

[“That Peter Ho on the right is a real man! Chen Daoming’s eyes are full of emotion! That actor on the left should get off the screen right now!”]

It's not just modern netizens who are disgusted to the extreme.

Xuanfu, the twelfth year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty. Inside the Zhenguo Prefecture military camp.

"Bang!"

Twenty-six-year-old Zhu Houzhao kicked the sandalwood command desk in front of him, shattering it to pieces! The military treatises, wine cups, and command tokens on the desk were scattered all over the ground.

He stared intently at the video on the left side of the screen in mid-air, trembling violently with extreme rage. He drew his sword from his waist; if the screen were on the ground, he would have already rushed up and chopped the actor playing him into mincemeat!

"Damn the civil service... those bloodthirsty beasts!"

Zhu Houzhao's eyes were bloodshot, and a low, beast-like growl escaped his throat.

"I risked my life fighting the Mongols in this freezing cold, and they actually chose this useless actor to play me in the future! Look at him, so weak he can't even hold a spear properly. His horsemanship and archery are fake, his spear-wielding is fake, and he even made me wear the barbaric clothing of the Mongols!"

Zhu Houzhao ripped open his collar, pointed at the sky, and began to curse:

"This is an insult to me! It's trampling my dignity in a cesspool! Disgusting! Utterly disgusting!"

Wearing a sleek, gleaming suit of armor, Ma Lian'er strode forward. Ignoring the mess on the ground, she reached out and tightly grasped Zhu Houzhao's wrist, which was gripping a sword and had bulging veins on the back of his hand.

"Your Majesty, please calm down."

Ma Lian'er's voice conveyed the calmness and ruthlessness of a woman from the border region.

"That was nothing more than a smear campaign maliciously concocted by the civil service in later generations to consolidate their so-called orthodoxy."

Zhu Houzhao took a few deep breaths and abruptly turned to look at Ma Lian'er. The rage in his eyes gradually subsided, transforming into a chillingly clear-headedness.

"Lian'er."

Zhu Houzhao gritted his teeth and said, word by word,

"Don't you understand? If the history books of the Ming Dynasty really turn out as described on the sky, if future generations really record my story in such a disgusting way."

He took Ma Lian'er's hand in his own.

"This means that in this high-stakes gamble concerning the military power of the Ming Dynasty, I have lost. Not only have I lost, but I have also failed you and your brother, the Imperial Uncle Ma Ang! After I die, your fate in history will be completely obscured, without even a clear record of your deaths. They will erase all our achievements in Xuanfu and slap countless unfounded infamy upon us!"

Zhu Houzhao raised his head, his eyes like those of a lone wolf about to devour its prey.

"I absolutely cannot allow this to happen! Since the civil service is now determined to fight to the death, we must prepare for the worst! In this battle of Yingzhou, I will not only win, but I will also completely transform these 150,000 border troops into my private army that obeys only my orders!"

Ma Lian'er subconsciously reached up and touched her slightly protruding belly. A resolute glint flashed in her eyes as she calmly nodded to Zhu Houzhao. Anyone who dared to touch her child would be skinned alive!

The myriad worlds and timelines, the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, the atmosphere was so oppressive it felt like it was frozen solid.

Prince Zhu Gaochi of Han stood at the head of the military officers, watching the image of someone wielding a long spear from the novel "The Romance of Zhengde" projected onto the screen. He was so angry that he clenched his teeth, his face filled with undisguised disgust and rage.

"What the hell is this spineless coward!"

Zhu Gaoxu spat angrily onto the ground.

"Is this the behavior of the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty who dared to personally lead troops into battle? His spear-wielding is worse than a woman's! Is this meant to disgust Zhu Houzhao, or to insult all the military men of the Ming Dynasty who led armies into battle?!"

Standing to the side, the Crown Prince Zhu Zhanji's face was also deathly pale.

Zhu Houzhao was his direct descendant. Seeing his future generation being treated so cruelly, he knew better than anyone how vicious those civil officials wielding their pens were. He hadn't forgotten the title he'd been given in his later life, mentioned on the celestial screen—the "Cricket Emperor"! The "Ming Cricket Ancestor"!

They deliberately downplayed the emperor who ushered in the prosperous reign of Renxuan, portraying him as a good-for-nothing who indulged in pleasure and wasted his time. While the later Qing dynasty's efforts to weaken the legitimacy of the Ming dynasty certainly played a part, the Ming officials themselves were undoubtedly the masterminds who worked tirelessly to suppress imperial power and cover up their own mistakes!

"Grandpa Emperor!"

Zhu Zhanji suddenly knelt down before the imperial desk, his voice extremely urgent.

"We absolutely cannot allow these people to cover up the truth in the history books! We must make plans as soon as possible! Please, Your Majesty, issue an imperial decree immediately, ordering the Embroidered Uniform Guard under Third Uncle's command to be responsible for recording the true secret history of the Ming Dynasty! Every word spoken on the screen, every battle fought, must be recorded verbatim, and the true epitaphs must be hidden well!"

Zhu Gaosui nodded with a livid expression.

Zhu Zhanji raised his head, his eyes revealing extreme fear and anger at the prospect of his future being vilified.

"If we don't do this, all the future emperors of our Great Ming Dynasty will be utterly vilified by certain people with ulterior motives! Just like that useless actor on the sky who can't even ride a horse properly, they will be laughed at for all eternity!"

At the head of the civil officials' positions, the obese Crown Prince Zhu Gaochi's face alternated between pale and flushed.

He had always advocated for benevolent governance and had always valued and relied on the power of the civil service. When he heard his son suggest using intelligence agencies to prevent civil officials from rewriting history, he instinctively opened his mouth, wanting to dissuade him from such a move that would damage the harmony between the emperor and his officials.

But when Zhu Houzhao, dressed in Mongolian clothes, laughed comically again on the screen, Zhu Gaochi swallowed the words that were about to come out.

Those are his descendants! Smearing Zhu Houzhao and portraying him as a sissy and a good-for-nothing is slapping his ancestor in the face! These civil officials are willing to strip the royal family bare in their quest for power. If he speaks up for them again, he doesn't deserve the surname Zhu!

"Father!"

Zhu Gaochi suddenly took a step forward, lifted his robe, and knelt heavily beside Zhu Zhanji.

"Your Majesty, I agree with Zhanji's proposal! Immediately order the Third Prince to lead troops to compile an absolutely confidential royal history! Record all the ugly faces exposed in the heavens, prepare them, and hide them deep within the palace! To prevent those shameless villains of later generations from tampering with the bloodline and backbone of our Great Ming!"

On the dragon throne, Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di) swept his gaze across the assembled officials with eyes as sharp as blades. He didn't speak, only nodded coldly. His hand gripped the hilt of his imperial sword tightly, already plotting how to eliminate the most outspoken officials to curb this corrupt trend ahead of time.

A modern live broadcast studio is set up on the sky.

"Alright, let's leave this nauseating TV drama garbage here. The reason I showed this to my family is to make everyone understand one thing—a lie repeated a thousand times, even if it's made into a TV series and used to brainwash you every day, will never become the truth!"

Zhu Dijun snapped the comparison video shut.

The large screen instantly plunged into deathly darkness. Then, a violent sandstorm, accompanied by the heavy breathing of warhorses, roared from the darkness!

An extremely vast border military map from Datong to Xuanfu during the Ming Dynasty, exuding a strong sense of iron and blood, crashed heavily onto the center of the screen!

"We've returned to the true historical timeline! Back to the twelfth year of the Zhengde reign, to the northernmost point of the Ming Dynasty!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the laser pointer, and the red light drew a long arc along the northern edge of the map.

"In October of the twelfth year of the Zhengde reign! After countless reports and covert cooperation from within the civil service, Dayan Khan of the Mongol Tatar tribe, the 'Little Prince' who unified Mongolia, finally felt the time was ripe!"

Five blood-red numbers, like five heavy hammers, smashed onto the whiteboard!

[Five! Ten Thousand! Iron! Cavalry!]

"Dayan Khan personally led 50,000 elite Mongol troops, fully armed, and divided into multiple routes, breaking through the Great Wall defenses in the north of the Ming Dynasty with overwhelming force! They crossed Yulinwei and headed straight for Yingzhou, a key border town of the Ming Dynasty!"

Judy Jun slammed her hand on the whiteboard.

"Following the script of the past ten years, the civil service group preemptively shut down military intelligence, cutting off the Ming border troops' food supplies and forcing them to disperse and defend their posts. Ultimately, the Mongols concentrated their superior forces to defeat them one by one, and then the Mongols looted the smuggled goods and people and left triumphantly! This is a win-win game that the civil service and the Mongols have played countless times!"

He suddenly looked directly into the camera, a terrifying light flashing in his eyes, and his voice rose sharply.

"But this time! Dayan Khan and the Jiangnan civil officials and traitors behind him never dreamed that when 50,000 Mongol cavalry stormed into Yingzhou City, what stood before them were no longer those subservient, helpless low-ranking military households!"

A phantom of an emperor, clad in heavy armor and wielding a sharp blade, crashed down onto the city wall of Yingzhou!

"What awaits them is a Ming Emperor Wuzong who has completely broken free from the shackles of civil service and firmly grasps the sword! And his personally trained 150,000-strong Ming border field army, brimming with rage!"

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the table, a sinister smile twisting his lips.

"In the records of the Ming Wuzong Emperor, how did those shameless literati describe this five-day-long Battle of Yingzhou? They wrote, 'After several days of fierce fighting, 52 Ming soldiers and 16 Mongol soldiers were killed!' Sixteen men?! Was this a brawl or a battle for the fate of the nation involving 50,000 cavalry?!"

The screen flashed wildly, like the flames of war on a battlefield.

"Now! I will lead my family to tear apart this colossal lie of 'sixteen dead and wounded' word by word! Let the whole world see how the real Ming cavalry crushed 50,000 Mongol troops right under the walls of Yingzhou!"