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

"Here, faced with this dire situation, I have to point my finger at Zhu Houzhao and criticize his indecisiveness!"

In front of the large screen in the live broadcast room, Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the table, his eyes revealing an extreme sense of disappointment and frustration.

"Family members, he was a peerless ruler on the battlefield, but back in the Forbidden City, facing these man-eating political monsters, he actually committed the most fatal act of his life—a moment of weakness!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the whiteboard eraser and erased half of the deadly net he had just drawn. Then, he wrote two names heavily in blood-red ink: [Zhang Yong] and [Empress Zhang]!

"Zhu Houzhao was forced to return to the capital for his father's funeral, but he was not alone! At that time, the Leopard House was occupied by his elite border troops, whom he had brought back from the frontier! The sword was in his hands!"

Judy Jun roared at the top of her lungs.

"And what was the result? Out of consideration for past relationships, he didn't take this opportunity to use the border troops to directly blockade the Forbidden City and kill Zhang Yong, the traitorous eunuch who had completely sided with the civil officials. Nor did he have the heart to eliminate his biological mother—Empress Dowager Zhang!"

"This political soft-heartedness not only ultimately killed him, but also pushed those he tried to protect into an abyss!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes reddened slightly with excitement, and his voice became extremely suppressed and sinister.

"After Zhu Houzhao's death, without the protection of imperial power, the favored concubine Liu Liangnu, who was the target of rampant slander by civil officials, and Lady Ma, who was far away in Xuanfu and pregnant with the emperor's child, both suffered unimaginable persecution!"

"During the political purges of the Ming Dynasty, even the historical records dared not explicitly state their fates, only lightly covering them up with 'accidents' and 'missing whereabouts'! Family members, those involved in the struggle for the crown prince's succession were never spared; they were never properly cared for! Whether they were repeatedly humiliated to death by a group of thugs, forced to drink poison and bleed from all seven orifices, or hacked to pieces and fed to wild dogs, we have no way of knowing! But their end was absolutely tragic!"

March of the thirteenth year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

A certain parallel universe.

Zhu Houzhao, who had just returned to the capital from Xuanfu to attend a funeral and was covered in snow, sat alone in the dimly lit Leopard Chamber Hall. He stared intently at the sky above, his blood seemingly frozen in that moment, then surging violently to the top of his head.

Liu Liangnu... and the child in Ma's belly.

Dead without a complete corpse?!

"Snapped!"

A sharp, resounding slap echoed through the empty hall. Zhu Houzhao abruptly raised his hand and delivered a resounding, brutal slap to his own face. Half of his cheek instantly swelled up, and a trickle of blood escaped from the corner of his mouth.

Yes.

Judy Jun, the descendant of the future, is right!

They've reached the point of life and death, with the entire court wanting him exterminated, and he's still clinging to some damned family ties? From the moment he ascended the throne, Empress Dowager Zhang has been colluding with civil officials to suppress him at every turn. Zhang Yong is a venomous snake, bribed by the officials and ready to turn on him at any moment! He holds a deadly border army in his hands, why should he be soft-hearted?!

Zhu Houzhao slowly stood up, his eyes filled with fury and indecisiveness, completely replaced by a chillingly violent rage.

"Someone come here!"

Outside the Leopard Chamber, two trusted eunuchs, Qian Ning and Gu Dayong, scrambled in, kneeling on the ground, trembling. They too had seen the sky, and they knew better than anyone that if the emperor fell, they, his henchmen, would be skinned alive by the civil official group.

"Qian Ning, Gu Dayong."

Zhu Houzhao drew the Emperor's Sword from his waist, the blade dragging on the gold bricks with a grating sound.

"Dispatch the elite troops from the Western Palace Guard to the inner palace! Kill that two-faced old dog Zhang Yong, and... the Empress Dowager, they're all dead!"

Qian Ning and Gu Dayong suddenly looked up and swallowed hard in alarm.

Zhu Houzhao turned his head, a blood-stained smile twisting his lips into a chilling, demonic grin: "After killing her, set fire to the Empress Dowager's palace! Report to the outside world... that the Empress Dowager, overwhelmed with grief at the passing of the Grand Empress Dowager, accidentally died in a fire in her palace!"

An eye for an eye! If the civil official would set fire to the Qianqing Palace, he would burn down the Empress Dowager's bedroom!

Qian Ning and Gu Dayong didn't dare to hesitate for a moment and immediately kowtowed to the ground:

"This servant obeys the decree!"

To avoid being held accountable in the future, even if God himself stands in their way, they will strangle the Empress Dowager and the three Zhang brothers to death in this deep palace!

In modern live streaming rooms...

As Zhu Dijun expressed his heartbreak over Zhu Houzhao's decision not to kill his own mother, the atmosphere in the live chat exploded instantly. Countless haters, their sore spots touched, swarmed out like locusts.

"This is utterly appalling! A livestreamer actually incited ancient people to commit matricide in public!"

"Killing one's own mother is inhuman, worse than an animal! Shut down this livestreaming channel that's spewing filth!"

"The ancients valued filial piety above all virtues. What kind of extreme and antisocial ideology are you promoting!"

However, Zhu Dijun didn't need to personally intervene; his die-hard fans, who had been thoroughly baptized by hardcore historical materials, launched an overwhelming counterattack.

"Hey haters, shut up! Are those just an ordinary mother and child? They're royalty! They're the meat grinder of supreme power!"

"You call her your biological mother? Empress Dowager Zhang colluded with civil officials in the outer court to suppress her own son. She even sabotaged the emperor's desire to have an heir. Is that what you call a biological mother?"

"In the game of thrones, there are only dead and winners. Trying to reason with your political enemies is just asking for trouble; you deserve to be wiped out by the civil service!"

Judy Jun glanced at the rapidly scrolling comments, sneered, and completely disdained to respond to the barking of those moral guardians. He picked up the eraser and wiped away those names.

"Alright, let's put aside the killing intent within the capital for now. Next, we need to turn our attention entirely to the south and see how the earth-shattering Rebellion of Prince Ning was forced into this situation!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the laser pointer, and the red light spot locked onto Jiangxi on the map.

"Before discussing the formal rebellion of Prince Ning, we must first examine the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming' to see what heinous crimes Prince Ning, Zhu Chenhao, committed in Nanchang on the eve of this rebellion!"

A photocopy of an official document filled with traditional Chinese characters was slammed onto the center of the screen.

"According to the historical records, before the fourteenth year of the Zhengde reign, Prince Ning was an incredibly powerful and influential schemer! The first thing he did was to cultivate relationships with high-ranking officials in the capital!"

Zhu Dijun tapped his fingers heavily on the whiteboard.

"Who did he associate with? Lu Wan, the Minister of War who later became the Minister of Personnel! Family members, do you remember Lu Wan? We talked about him when we were discussing border defense. He was a core member of the Emperor's faction! Because at that time, the power struggle between the Emperor's faction and the civil service group had reached a fever pitch. Lu Wan was still the Minister of War today, but he might be forced into becoming the Minister of Personnel by the civil service next week."

"The civil service was just looking for an excuse to remove the emperor, this thorn in their side. And what happened? Because of his association with Prince Ning, Lu Wan was relentlessly pursued by the civil service, impeached on the serious charge of 'colluding with a prince and plotting rebellion,' and was directly kicked out of the core circle of the Ming Dynasty's officialdom!"

Zhu Dijun sneered repeatedly, his voice filled with extremely sarcastic mockery.

"Not only did Prince Ning cultivate relationships with foreign officials, he also frantically cultivated relationships with the emperor's close advisors! For example, Qian Ning, and Zang Xian! It seems that the entire capital has fallen under Prince Ning's massive spending of silver."

The scene on the screen instantly shifted to a smoky and chaotic southern water town.

"Let's take a look at what Prince Ning has been doing in his Jiangxi base!"

Zhu Dijun pointed to the charges in the record and read them out quickly, as if he were reprimanding a criminal.

"In the ninth year of the Zhengde reign, which was the same year that Prince Ning was reinstated as a guard, the official records state that Prince Ning began a large-scale expansion of his army! How did he do it? He extensively recruited and subjugated the river pirates and local bandits entrenched in the Poyang Lake area! For example, the infamous bandit leaders Yang Qing and Qiu Ren!"

"He made these men take off their bandit robes and put on military uniforms. Not only that, he also privately manufactured a large number of armors and weapons, and trained the navy day and night on Poyang Lake. He even condoned his men forcibly seizing farmland from ordinary people and extorting and exploiting passing merchants!"

The timeline jumps across the whiteboard.

"By the tenth year of the Zhengde reign, Prince Ning had become utterly lawless! He actually executed a local military leader—Commander Dai Xuan—without authorization! Subsequently, when Hu Shining, the Vice Envoy of Jiangxi, saw through his rebellious nature and tried to report it, Prince Ning used his connections in the capital to directly impeach him, forcing this loyal minister, Hu Shining, to be imprisoned and sentenced to death!"

"The eleventh year of Zhengde's reign! It's even more shocking!" Zhu Dijun slammed his gavel.

"Prince Ning hosted a banquet for Wang Zhe, the then Governor of Jiangxi, at his residence. Not long after the meal, Wang Zhe, this high-ranking official, died mysteriously in his office! Rumors circulated that Prince Ning had secretly poisoned him!"

Two names with black borders appeared on the screen.

"To instigate rebellion, he also recruited an extremely prestigious think tank. The core advisors were the former Censor-in-Chief [Li Shishi] and the ambitious scholar [Liu Yangzheng]. They even participated in an ultimate conspiracy that could overthrow the imperial line—attempting to adopt the Prince of Ning's own son to the childless Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao as the crown prince, thus seizing the Ming Dynasty's throne without bloodshed!"

As these suffocating charges were laid out one by one, the atmosphere in the entire live broadcast room became extremely heavy.

"But by the end of the thirteenth year of Zhengde's reign..."

Zhu Dijun's speech suddenly slowed down, revealing a sense of impending doom and impending storm.

"Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao was inspecting the northern borders and was not in the capital at all. Qian Ning and Jiang Bin, who remained in the capital, were two vicious dogs kept by the emperor, and they engaged in an extremely fierce infighting for power. In the end, Qian Ning lost power in this political struggle."

"This directly led to a fatal consequence—Qian Ning, Prince Ning's biggest political backer in the capital, who had taken countless bribes from him and tipped him off, collapsed! Prince Ning's protective umbrella in the court was completely torn apart!"

The image finally settles on two portraits of civil officials with upright and righteous faces.

"The story moves to the fourteenth year of the Zhengde reign, on the eve of the Prince of Ning's rebellion. Two loyal ministers who would later shine in the annals of history appear on the scene."

"The newly appointed Governor of Jiangxi, Sun Sui, and the Right Vice Censor-in-Chief, the Great Sage Wang Shouren, who has been demoted to Jiangnan and is currently suppressing bandits in the surrounding area! They have keenly sensed the overwhelming murderous aura emanating from the Prince of Ning's residence and have begun secretly mobilizing troops in the region to prepare for a desperate defense!"

The large screen went completely black, leaving only a yellowed and tattered copy of the "Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming" silently suspended in mid-air.

Zhu Dijun didn't continue. He crossed his arms, his entire body disappearing into the dim light. He stared intently at the camera, then suddenly posed a question that caught everyone off guard and struck at the very depths of their souls.

"Family members."

Judy Jun's voice was like a whisper from the abyss, exuding an extremely dangerous allure.

"You've heard enough. This is an ironclad case officially approved by the Ming Dynasty, and an unquestionable truth recorded in the Qing Dynasty's History of Ming."

"However, please use your brains to think about all the yin-yang schemes and the 'calling a deer a horse' tactics that we exposed during the Zhengde reign."

Three large, blood-red characters slowly enlarged on the public screen.

"Excuse me... in this factual record that portrays Prince Ning as an all-powerful, arrogant, and even daring-to-poison governor-general."

"How much of what's true about his prelude to rebellion, and how much... is false?!"

After a brief silence in the modern live stream room, the chat exploded like never before! Netizens immediately split into three distinct factions and engaged in a fierce battle on the public screen.

"This is definitely fake! A prince confined to his fiefdom has to report even to leave the city. Where would he get the guts and power to kill the governor? Besides, the governor's death wouldn't go unnoticed for years. This is clearly a civil official shifting the blame!"

"No! I think it's true! Prince Ning is rich! He used silver to pave the way in the capital, bribed Qian Ning, so he's fearless!"

"That's all nonsense! Do you remember what happened with the Prince of Anhua's rebellion? It was definitely the work of these Jiangxi officials and smuggling rings! The Prince of Ning must have been coerced into rebellion by these underworld forces, just like the Prince of Anhua!"

Even more outrageous speculations have surfaced.

"Is it possible that this was all a charade orchestrated by Zhu Houzhao and the Prince of Ning to purge the Jiangxi civil officials?"

Watching the endless arguments and wildly imaginative comments on the screen, Zhu Dijun's cold smile grew stronger. He slowly straightened up and gripped the gavel firmly.

"Family members, no need to guess. The answer is a million times darker than any of you can imagine!"

"Bang!"

The gavel slammed down, shattering the transcript on the screen.

"In this farce that appears to be a rebellion by a prince, the real mastermind who held the knife to Prince Ning's neck and forced him to raise an army in rebellion was not Qian Ning's downfall, nor his own inflated ambition."

Zhu Dijun's finger suddenly pointed to the name he had just written on the whiteboard.

"But it was that person who shouted 'extend one's conscience' and laid out an extremely terrifying killing net across the Jiangnan region..."

"The only saint—Wang Shouren!"