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

"Gulp."

In front of the live stream screen, Zhu Dijun picked up the thermos on the podium, tilted his head back, and took a big gulp of warm water. After slightly moistening his throat, which was a little hoarse from shouting, he slammed the thermos heavily onto the table, making a dull thud.

He picked up the mouse and clicked twice quickly.

The images on the large screen instantly changed. The yellowed Ming Dynasty books disappeared, replaced by two enlarged black-and-white portraits. On the left was Wang Yangming, dressed in the crimson official robes of the Ming Dynasty; on the right was an old man with a Manchu-style queue and a sinister face.

Two names, like two heavy mountains, pressed down heavily on the live stream's chat screen—[Wang Yangming]! [Zeng Guofan]!

"Family members, we just uncovered the bloody inside story of the great reshuffling in Jiangnan in the fourteenth year of the Zhengde reign. Let's set aside for now the story of Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao's southward campaign to quell the rebellion, which was later thoroughly smeared by these Jiangnan civil officials. Now, let's pull the timeline of history back a mile!"

Zhu Dijun's gaze was as cold as an unyielding block of ice, piercing straight into the lens.

"Drag on to the Qing Dynasty, drag on to that land of China where Chinese culture was utterly corrupted and completely overrun by Buryat wild boar hides!"

"Perhaps many of our ancestors were unaware of just how devastating the Manchu conquest of China was. I will only cite one utterly disheartening statistic here!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly raised two fingers.

"From the time Nurhaci, this barbarian with no moral compass, established the Later Jin dynasty, until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, it was a full 296 years!"

"In those 296 years, the Manchu Qing dynasty perpetrated literary inquisitions that shocked the world! They launched massive campaigns to ban and destroy books! The Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) was, in effect, a grand book-burning ceremony that destroyed the essence of Han Chinese thought! Any ancient book that showed even a hint of national integrity, or even just contained the words 'Ming' or 'Yi' (barbarians), was burned to the ground! Even Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica was censored!"

Zhu Dijun gripped the live broadcast console tightly with both hands, leaning forward like a beast eyeing its prey.

"And so, here comes the extremely terrifying and fatal paradox!"

Four large, blood-red characters with huge question marks flashed wildly on the screen: 【How did you survive?!】

"Those fanatical fans who constantly invoke Wang Yangming's name, use your brains! Under such a brutal literary inquisition that seemed intent on tearing the spines out of all Han Chinese, how the hell did Wang Yangming's 'philosophy of mind,' a prominent school of thought that swept across the country in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, manage to escape the Qing Dynasty's 296 years of frenzied suppression?!"

"Would the Manchu Qing dynasty be so merciful as to preserve your Yangming philosophy as a family heirloom?!"

In the modern live broadcast room, the hearts of all viewers on the internet suddenly skipped a beat, and the barrage of comments instantly fell into an eerie silence.

"I'll just tell you the answer directly!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and forcefully drew a glaring red line on the whiteboard.

"The Wang Yangming philosophy we see on the market today, which is regarded as a life guide by countless people, is not the original version from the Ming Dynasty at all! Those theories were all drastically modified and frantically rewritten for extremely sinister political purposes during the late Qing Dynasty—that is, between 1890 and 1900!"

"The original, genuine edition of Wang Wencheng's calligraphy published during the Ming Dynasty, especially the original dragon-stained edition published during the Longqing era, is virtually impossible to find in its entirety today, not even in the National Library! Perhaps some of these blood-stained copies still exist in the underground vaults of certain prominent families in Jiangnan. But for ordinary people, it has long been extinct!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer from the podium and pointed it sharply at the black-and-white portrait on the right side of the big screen.

"Since the Ming Dynasty version can't be found, who released the so-called 'Yangming Philosophy' that suddenly flooded the market again in the late Qing Dynasty? Who drastically altered it?!"

"It's him! The Xiang Army commander, Zeng Guofan, who has been hailed as 'the most perfect man of all time' by countless toxic motivational quotes throughout history!"

A phantom image of a Manchu family genealogy suddenly exploded on the screen!

"You think Zeng Guofan represented the Han Chinese landlord class? That's utterly ridiculous!" Zhu Dijun burst into wild laughter, his laughter filled with extreme absurdity and mockery.

"This old bastard is a complete traitor! His true identity is a direct descendant of the long-lost Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty! He has the blood of Buryat wild boar skin flowing in his veins!"

boom!

It was like tens of thousands of tons of TNT detonating in the live stream. The barrage of comments instantly and violently covered the screen.

"Holy crap!!! A descendant of Emperor Yongzheng? What kind of hellish conspiracy theory is this?!"

[“This is chilling to think about! No wonder Zeng Guofan was ten thousand times more ruthless to his own people than the Eight Banners soldiers when he killed the Taiping rebels and massacred Nanjing!”]

"He used the lives of Han people to protect the Qing dynasty, but it turns out he was actually protecting his own family's empire!"

Beneath the celestial canopy, the emperors of the various Ming dynasties wore expressions of horror, followed by chilling smiles. Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, even crushed the jade pendant in his hand to pieces, his eyes revealing murderous intent. What barbarians! What a vicious trick of using knowledge to kill and destroy the spirit!

"In the late Qing Dynasty court, there was an extremely disgusting saying that was widely circulated. Even today, many people still firmly believe it."

Zhu Dijun's speech became faster and faster, like a rapid-fire war drumbeat.

"They say that in the two thousand years of Confucianism in China since Confucius, only one 'perfect man' and one 'half-sage' have emerged! The perfect man refers to Wang Shouren, who ruthlessly exploited his own people for personal gain; the half-sage refers to Zeng Guofan, who slaughtered his own compatriots without batting an eye!"

"Why are they both so famous? Because their paths to 'sanctification' are practically identical! They both built their reputations by killing their own people and trampling on the flesh and bones of their compatriots! Then, they used their pens to whitewash the bloodshed and carnage into so-called 'righteous indignation' and 'the pursuit of conscience'!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the whiteboard, shaking off a layer of white dust.

"Therefore, I, Zhu Dijun, am revealing my hand here! I am extremely opposed to and utterly disgusted by the so-called Yangming philosophy of mind as it exists today!"

"Anyone familiar with even a little Qing Dynasty history knows that during that era, Wang Yangming's philosophy was absolutely forbidden from being discussed within the mainstream court circles. This is because the emperor didn't need officials to have 'hearts' (ideas), only 'lackeys' (servants). But strangely, this ideology spread wildly among the lower classes of Qing Dynasty intellectuals!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, speaking slowly and deliberately.

"Why? Because it's an extremely potent spiritual poison! A kind of ideological opium used to erode the spirit of the Han people, used for self-castration!"

"How terrifying are these people who have drunk poison? Just like some of today's fanatical fans. If you dare to use historical materials to expose the true nature of Wang Yangming, that fake saint, if you dare to point out his despicable deeds of causing Liu Yangzheng's death and betraying Ji Yuanheng, these people will immediately pounce on you like mad dogs! Their extreme loyalty is a hundred times more frenzied than if their parents had been killed!"

"Alright, since these fans want to talk to me about academics, then let's strip the naked truth off Yangming's philosophy of mind!"

On the big screen, two lines of large, gold-plated characters appeared.

[Introverted Turn]!

【Unity of Knowledge and Action】!

"This is the core idea of ​​Wang Yangming's philosophy of mind!" Zhu Dijun pointed to these two words, as if a judge were reading out a charge.

"What is introverted turning? It means stripping the foundation of morality from external principles of heaven, national laws, and national righteousness, and forcibly pulling it back to one's own 'inner self'! He advocates that everyone has a conscience and does not need to follow any rigid worldly rules. As long as one practices 'unity of knowledge and action' and follows one's own heart, one can become a saint or a sage!"

"Doesn't that sound incredibly sophisticated? Doesn't it feel like a sudden epiphany?"

A sarcastic grin spread across Zhu Dijun's lips.

"But what about reality?! Family! If the civil officials of Jiangnan in the Ming Dynasty, if those scholar-officials who spouted nonsense about Neo-Confucianism really had any 'conscience' or moral bottom line!"

"Even if the Ming Dynasty was utterly corrupt in its later years, and even if Beijing fell to Li Zicheng's peasant army, given the sheer size and cultural foundation of the Han people at the time, the worst that could happen was a change of dynasty, with another Han person sitting on the throne! The Han tradition would never be severed!"

"But it is precisely because of these scholars who have no external bottom line and only talk about so-called 'personal conscience' that when faced with the barbarian's butcher's knife, they can shave their heads and change their clothes without any psychological pressure, and they can kneel on the ground and call him their master! They can even use the philosophy of mind to comfort themselves: 'I am doing this to protect the people of my hometown. I am following the will of Heaven. This is the conscience of knowing and doing in harmony!'"

"This is the moral collapse caused by the philosophy of mind! There are no bottom lines! As long as my 'heart' thinks it's right, even betraying my country for personal gain is right!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly kicked over the trash can next to him, and the loud noise exploded in the live broadcast room.

"Let's look back at its founder! Our great master of Neo-Confucianism, Wang Shouren!"

"How did he practice his conscience during the Prince of Ning's rebellion in the fourteenth year of the Zhengde reign? His conscience was demonstrated by spending the entire night on the boat talking with his close friend Liu Yangzheng, persuading him to join the rebellion! His conscience was demonstrated by leading troops into Nanchang Prefecture and burning the smuggling ledgers that could have wiped out the entire civil service of Jiangnan! His practice of knowledge and action was demonstrated by silencing his trusted disciple Ji Yuanheng, who had been running errands for him, in a death row cell!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was like a chilling wind from the coldest hell, sweeping through everyone's eardrums.

"They betrayed their brothers, sold out their apprentices, and shielded corrupt officials through their actions. Then they turned around and wrote two pretentious eulogies, standing on their moral high ground and calling themselves saints. My friends, is this what you call 'saintly scholarship'?! This is nothing short of a hypocritical, monstrous demon!"

The story takes place in the fifth year of the Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall.

As the imperial court listened to the ultimate exposé of Wang Yangming's philosophy on the broadcast, everyone exchanged bewildered glances. Just now, Prince Zhao, Zhu Houyu, had kicked Wang Shouren, sending him spewing blood to the ground. At this moment, the officials who had previously harbored a sliver of hope for this school of thought completely lost their composure.

Several cabinet members openly and unabashedly let out a sneer.

"What utter nonsense about introversion and the unity of knowledge and action."

A censor from the Ministry of War coldly stared at Wang Shouren, who was lying on the ground.

"So the essence of your knowledge is just to find a plausible excuse for your despicable acts of adultery and prostitution? Bah!"

"Exactly! To betray one's closest friend and then claim it's in accordance with one's conscience? I've lived for sixty years and have never seen such a shameless person!"

In the imperial court, shouts of curses and disdain filled the air.

Wang Yangming's philosophy, once revered as a god by countless students in Jiangnan, was, on this day, like a pile of dog excrement stripped of its gold leaf, emitting a nauseating stench, under the gaze of the Jiajing Emperor and all the officials.

Wang Shouren lay sprawled on the cold gold bricks, listening to the undisguised mockery around him, his eyes fixed on the cracks between the tiles. The name of a sage he had pursued all his life, the edifice of his philosophy of mind he had painstakingly built, collapsed with a crash under the unreasonable and brutal deconstruction of the heavens, shattering into nothingness.

Sitting high on his dragon throne, Zhu Houcong toyed with the paperweight in his hand, his smile growing ever wider. It turned out that this sage, lauded by the Jiangnan officials, was actually so corrupt at heart; now, it would be perfectly justifiable for him to purge this group of scholar-officials.