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

On the large screen in the live stream, the crimson battle damage data continued to flash wildly. Zhu Dijun turned around, grabbed a blackboard eraser, and slammed it against the table, causing chalk dust to fall in a shower.

"Family members, before we expose this deception, we must first see clearly just how low the bottom line can be for the civil officials and the traitors within the Five Military Commands during the border invasion in August of the eleventh year of the Zhengde reign!"

Zhu Dijun slammed the laser pointer in his hand onto the map on the whiteboard, and the light spot moved back and forth between [Xuanfu] and [Juyongguan].

"While 60,000 Mongol cavalry swept through the Ming border like a raging inferno, slaughtering over 3,000 civilians, what were the Ming border guards doing? They were just watching! The Xuanfu General, Pan Hao, as a military commander, faced with the enemy's advance, he simply deserted! He ran away!"

"Look at Juyong Pass! The commander in charge of defending Juyong Pass, Sun Xi, and that damned eunuch, Li Song, seeing the flames of war raging ahead, directly ordered the pass to remain completely closed off! Not a single soldier will be sent to provide support!"

Judy slammed the gavel down, her eyes slightly reddening, her voice hoarse with extreme anger:

"But the Ming Dynasty has never lacked courageous men! Since these high-ranking officials are avoiding war to save their lives, someone has to fill the hole that they're risking their lives to fill!"

On the big screen, two lines of black and white names crashed down like tombstones!

[Commander of Xuanfu: Zhu Chun!]

[Commander of Xuanfu: Wang Tang!]

"Who are these two men? They are the adopted sons of Emperor Wuzong (Zhu Houzhao)! They are staunch members of the emperor's faction! When everyone else retreated, they led their only personal guards and faced the slaughter of 60,000 Mongol cavalry!"

Zhu Dijun gripped the table tightly with both hands, gritting his teeth as he spoke each word slowly and deliberately.

"They knew that going out meant certain death, but they still went! Why? Because they couldn't stand by and watch this land be betrayed by traitors! They couldn't bear to see their people suffer the same fate as before, being slaughtered by foreign tribes and enslaved!"

"In the end, Zhu Chun and Wang Tang fought valiantly to the death, their bodies never to be found!"

In the modern live streaming room, after a brief silence, the barrage of comments exploded like a powder keg!

"You beasts!! Your own people betrayed you, forcing loyal subjects to their deaths!"

"These traitors deserve to die! Their entire families should be burned alive!"

"The general fled, the eunuch went into seclusion, and the emperor's adopted son was worn down and died on the front lines. This is blatant murder by using someone else to do the dirty work!"

"I'm devastated! The Ming Dynasty never lacked backbone, but it was all broken by these corrupt officials!"

In the myriad realms and timelines of the Ming Dynasty during the Hongwu era.

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes throbbed with bulging veins. He pulled out his belt and lashed it across the faces of several of his most boastful civil officials.

"Our soldiers! Our Ming Dynasty's border troops! They've been betrayed by you bastards!"

Zhu Yuanzhang roared like a raging tiger.

"Deserting in the face of battle? Staying in seclusion? Biao'er! Second Brother! Third Brother! Fourth Brother! Issue the decree! From now on, any military commander or eunuch who avoids battle or is afraid of the enemy, without asking why, have them skinned alive, stuffed with straw, and hung on the city gate tower to dry in the wind!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun wiped the corner of his eye, his gaze returning to its cold, iron-like intensity.

"When Zhu Houzhao received the battle report, his heart bled. His adopted son had died fighting for him; he would never let this go!"

"In the autumn of the eleventh year of the Zhengde reign, Zhu Houzhao, using the pretext of the border's deterioration, raised the butcher's knife. He not only imprisoned and punished Pan Hao, the Xuanfu commander who deserted in the face of battle, but also followed the trail to uproot and punish all 160 high-ranking border officials, including the deputy commanders of Ningxia, Yansui, and Shaanxi, and the prefect of Yan'an, stripping them of their salaries!"

A list of 160 names scrolled rapidly across the screen, exuding a chilling, bloody atmosphere.

"But even if someone is killed, someone still has to clean up the mess in Xuanfu and the border. Zhu Houzhao was extremely clear-headed at this time, and he absolutely dared not send Jiang Bin or any other trusted military officers to be the commander-in-chief. Because going there would be a pointless death, and those traitors who colluded with the Mongols would definitely stab him in the back."

"Thus, Zhu Houzhao devised an ultimate, overtly cunning strategy: to kill someone by destroying their spirit!"

Zhu Dijun wrote two large characters heavily on the whiteboard: 【Pengze】!

"Remember this old Deng? He's Peng Ze, the Left Censor-in-Chief of the Censorate, whom the cabinet was vehemently advocating for, wanting him to succeed as Minister of War, but Zhu Houzhao forcibly replaced him with Wang Qiong!"

"This Peng Ze, who previously served as the Commander-in-Chief of the Three Border Regions, had long been deeply involved in the smuggling networks of the border troops and the Mongols, and was an absolute core figure of the civil official group in the military. Zhu Houzhao directly issued an edict appointing Peng Ze as the commander of the eastern and western borders, leading two adjutant generals and a mere six thousand soldiers to repel the enemy!"

Zhu Dijun sneered repeatedly as he approached the camera.

"Family members, what's this called? This is called fighting poison with poison! Zhu Houzhao chose him for only two reasons!"

"First, if Peng Ze goes there and then slacks off, leading to another defeat, Zhu Houzhao can immediately and openly behead him according to military law, and even the cabinet won't be able to protect him!"

"Secondly, Zhu Houzhao wants to see whether this invasion of 60,000 troops on the border is a charade orchestrated by these civil officials and the Mongols, or whether the Mongols genuinely intend to wage a full-scale war! Letting Peng Ze, the smuggling boss, confront his Mongol trading partners is the best litmus test!"

In the eleventh year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Houzhao, inside the Leopard Chamber, looked at the sky and a mocking smile appeared on his lips.

That's what he was thinking at the time. He wanted to bring this dog-eat-dog drama to the forefront and see how these hypocrites, spouting all sorts of benevolence and morality, would handle it.

"Upon receiving this deadly imperial edict, Peng Ze, that old fox, was so terrified he wet himself on the spot."

Judy Jun slammed her hand on the whiteboard.

He immediately submitted a memorial declining the offer, the entire document filled with grievances. He said that he was too old, and the emperor had only given him six thousand soldiers, which was insufficient to defend the thousand-mile-long border. This old minister could not do it!

"Not only did he decline, but to save his own life, this old man went and pulled an extremely vicious trick of shifting the blame! He actually went so far as to frantically recommend someone to the emperor—[Xu Tai]! He wanted Xu Tai to be the general!"

A character relationship diagram popped up instantly.

"Who is Xu Tai? He's the newly appointed Commander of the Western Office by Zhu Houzhao, one of the emperor's few remaining absolute confidants! Peng Ze's move is utterly insidious; he wants to lure the emperor's last trump card to the border, then coordinate with the Mongols for a coordinated attack from within and without, completely crippling the emperor's arm!"

"But Zhu Houzhao wasn't fooled at all. He sent back the memorial with four big words—'No refusal allowed!' He used the imperial edict to force Peng Ze onto the carriage heading to the border!"

The image on the big screen suddenly flashed, and the background music abruptly changed from the intense sound of war drums to an extremely absurd and comical suona sound.

"Right after Old Deng was forced to go to the border, a miracle happened! Or rather, the most fucking magical scene in the history of human warfare unfolded!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red pen and drew a giant duck egg on the whiteboard!

"September of the eleventh year of Zhengde's reign! The second month after Peng Ze took office! Battle reports arrived from the front. The main force of the Mongol army, which had been burning, killing, and looting on the border and treating the Great Wall of Ming as its backyard—vanished into thin air!"

"There was no fighting, no conflict, and the two armies didn't even exchange a glance. It was as if the Tatars had made a pact; they tacitly packed their belongings and withdrew beyond the pass!"

The official reports and memorials filled with traditional Chinese characters filled the entire screen like snowflakes.

"Immediately afterward, Peng Ze, upon returning to the capital to report his findings, joined forces with the civil officials at court to launch a massive campaign to glorify Peng Ze! In their memorials, they wildly praised Peng Ze as a brilliant strategist and commander-in-chief! They claimed that the Mongols were terrified by Peng Ze's reputation and fled at the mere mention of his name!"

"This is what the civilian government at the time touted as a monumental border victory!"

"In modern terms, it was a subspace victory achieved by combining the traditional skills of the civil service with reporting victories from the void!"

The moment the words "great victory at the border" were uttered, viewers in the live stream couldn't contain themselves any longer, and the barrage of comments turned into a storm of verbal attacks.

"I threw up! I threw up my dinner from last night!"

"Are they treating the entire world like idiots? Running away at the first sign of trouble? It's like they've finished dividing the spoils and are all going home!"

"Even if you killed a few innocent civilians and faked a beheading, I'd consider it an effort on your part. But 60,000 men just went back like that? What kind of great victory did you have?!"

"What about the spoils of war? How many people were beheaded? Where are the captured warhorses? Where are the cattle and sheep? You call it a great victory if you didn't even capture a single horseshoe?"

"It's confirmed! This is a bunch of traitors signaling a withdrawal to their masters while simultaneously boosting their own military achievements!"

This so-called "great victory" not only disgusts modern people, but also makes emperors throughout history feel that their intelligence has been utterly insulted when they see such a feat.

The Great Tang Taiji Hall.

Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, held a horizontal sword in his hand, looking down at the trembling civil officials such as Fang Xuanling and Wei Zheng. He stepped down from the dragon throne with a cold smile and kicked over a table next to him.

"What a swift and decisive victory at the border!"

Li Shimin's voice was filled with a chilling murderous intent. "I've fought wars my whole life, pacifying the world, how come I never learned this kind of military strategy that claims a great victory without firing a single shot or taking any spoils? How much of the memorials from later generations is true, and how much is false?!"

The Yongle Era of the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di) rushed down the imperial steps, grabbed Grand Secretary Yang Shiqi by the collar, and kicked him hard in the buttocks.

"You're all blind!"

Zhu Di pointed at the sky and cursed loudly.

"Sixty thousand men moved in and out freely, slaughtering civilians—this is a great victory? This is a national disgrace! From now on, if any memorials submitted by your cabinet dare to contain even a single word of this nonsense about exaggerating war achievements, I will exterminate your entire clan!"

Yang Shiqi was kicked so hard that he rolled twice on the ground, then kowtowed repeatedly, saying he dared not.

On the screen above, Zhu Dijun watched the frantically scrolling comments and a mocking sneer curled at the corner of his mouth.

"This kind of illusory victory, which didn't even involve prisoners of war or heads, fooled the unsuspecting people in the capital and became a fig leaf for some people in later generations to whitewash the achievements of the civil service group."

"but!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the table, the sound like a thunderclap.

"Civil officials can deceive the world with forgery, but they can never fool Emperor Wuzong, who had had enough of being humiliated, grabbed a long sword, and forcibly escaped from the Forbidden City!"

The image on the big screen completely shattered the ridiculous victory report. A panoramic view of a blood-stained battlefield beyond the Great Wall, accompanied by the deafening sound of war drums, crushed the entire live broadcast screen.

Amidst the swirling sand and dust, countless heavily armored cavalrymen in black could be vaguely seen gathering at the foot of the Great Wall.

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands on the table, a raging fire burning in his eyes.

"This childish game of deception came to a complete end in October of the twelfth year of the Zhengde reign!"