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

As soon as Zhu Dijun finished speaking, the screen in the modern live broadcast room fell silent for a second.

Immediately afterwards, as if a volcano that had been suppressed for millions of years had finally erupted, a barrage of blood-red bullets completely engulfed the entire screen with an overwhelming force.

In a state of extreme horror and anger, millions of netizens typed out four remarkably similar words on their keyboards!

[The civil service!]

Then, a chilling comment from a later generation, which sent shivers down the spines and made the scalps tingle for all viewers familiar with the history of the Ming Dynasty, went viral on the public chat—

[Starting from this small pond in Qingjiangpu in the fifteenth year of the Zhengde reign, the Ming emperors officially awakened to their hidden constitution of being "easily soluble in water"!]

As Zhu Dijun looked at the screen full of comments, he slammed his hands heavily on the podium, making a deafening bang.

"That's right! Our family's summary is spot on! It's definitely these civil servants!"

"What do you mean by falling into the water! What do you mean by an accidental capsizing! This is nothing short of a blatant political murder that treats the whole world like fools!"

Zhu Dijun loosened his tie, pointed at the red-marked "Leaping Dragon Pool" on the whiteboard, and roared fiercely.

"Everyone, think about it with common sense! Who was Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao? He was the fierce emperor who, in the twelfth year of Zhengde's reign, personally donned armor and went into battle, engaging in close combat with the ancestors of the Buryat wild boar skin—the Mongol cavalry—in the great victory at Yingzhou, and personally beheaded a Tatar soldier!"

"How could a strong, robust, adult military general, raised on horseback, possibly capsize without cause in a eunuch's backyard reservoir where the water was less than 1.5 meters deep—enough to submerge just above the thighs?!"

"How could he possibly have struggled to the point of near death in that small puddle, only to have his attendants 'fight to get him out of the water' and drag him ashore?!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes flashing with an extremely cold killing intent.

There is only one answer!

"There are people underwater! And it's a group of civil officials who have been lying in wait at the bottom of the pool in the eunuch Zhang Yang's residence, holding their breath and carrying sharp blades, specifically waiting for the Ming emperor to board the ship!"

"In this absolutely private backyard, away from the army's guards, they forcibly dragged an emperor into the water, held his head down in the mud until he was half-dead, and then allowed their bribed attendants to feign jumping in to 'rescue' him!"

In a parallel timeline of the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang kicked over the bronze imperial desk in front of him, scattering the mountain of memorials all over the floor.

The founding emperor, who had fought his way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, now had bloodshot eyes and the fleshy muscles on his face twitching violently.

"An underwater assassination... to assassinate the emperor of our Great Ming Dynasty in a pool less than five feet deep!"

Zhu Yuanzhang drew his Emperor's Sword from his waist and slashed through the golden scales on the dragon pillar, sparks flying everywhere.

"Those beasts in human skin from Jiangnan! To protect their own ill-gotten gains, they dared to lay a hand on the emperor! And they even dared to write in the history books that they drowned while boating! Do they think the whole world is blind?!"

This is the timeline of the fifteenth year of the Zhengde reign.

Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao, who was stationed in Huai'an and had not yet stepped into the residence of the eunuch Zhang Yang, stared intently at the sky in mid-air.

The cup of hot tea he was holding had been crushed by his hand, the scalding tea mixed with ceramic shards piercing his palm, and blood dripping onto the carpet of the imperial carriage, yet he seemed to feel no pain whatsoever.

"Good...very good."

Zhu Houzhao let out an extremely eerie low laugh, a laugh that seemed to come from the deepest hell.

The civil service group, in their eagerness to take his life, didn't even bother with pretense, choosing a shallow puddle less than waist-deep as the assassination site. How audacious and fearless they were!

Inside a modern live streaming studio.

Zhu Dijun instantly suppressed his previous violent emotions, replacing them with an extremely cold and analytical approach, like a scalpel.

"But the most outrageous thing is not this extremely arrogant waterhole assassination."

He typed rapidly on the keyboard with his backhand, and several yellowed photocopies of ancient books crashed onto the big screen.

"In the unofficial histories later compiled by the Jiangnan civil official group, and in the general public's perception, after Zhu Houzhao fell into the water, he immediately became terminally ill, paralyzed in bed, and was carried back to Beijing by eunuchs and border soldiers, groaning all the way, and finally died miserably, right?"

Zhu Dijun kicked the chair next to him away.

That's utter nonsense!

"Come on! Today we'll use the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming,' compiled by the civil service themselves, to slap these liars in the face!"

The red laser pointer rapidly circled two top-secret time points on the screen.

"Volume 191 of the Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming! Open your eyes wide and look carefully at these lines!"

"[On the 22nd day of the ninth month of the year Guiwei, the Emperor himself departed from Huai'an.]"

"[On the third day of the tenth month of the Jiawu year, I went up to Linqing.]"

Zhu Dijun suddenly raised two fingers.

"On September 15th, Zhu Houzhao was assassinated after falling into the water at Qingjiangpu. And what happened? He only rested for seven days in the eunuch's residence!"

"On September 22nd, Zhu Houzhao broke camp directly from Huai'an! Then, on October 3rd, he marched at full speed and arrived at Linqing!"

"By October, the journey was still ongoing! This is clearly recorded in Volume 192 of the Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming!"

"[On the sixth day of the tenth month of the year Gui Mao, I went to Tianjin.]"

"[On the 16th day of the tenth month of the year Gui Chou, the Emperor was in Tianjin.]"

Zhu Dijun gripped the live-streaming table tightly with both hands, his eyes fixed sharply on the camera.

"Family members! Did you understand this extremely terrifying schedule?"

"After Zhu Houzhao fell into the water, he did not collapse and become paralyzed on the spot! Nor did he immediately stop in Jiangnan to recuperate! He only announced to the public that he was 'unwell,' meaning he was slightly unwell, and he never publicly revealed that he was seriously ill!"

"A man who was supposedly half-drowned in the water not only immediately resumed his normal northward journey, but also braved the autumn chill, marching for more than half a month straight until he reached Tianjin!"

Viewers across the internet were completely stunned.

The doubts on the screen vanished instantly, and all the logical chains began to be frantically reorganized in the face of the irrefutable evidence in the transcript.

Why did Zhu Houzhao do this?

Zhu Dijun's voice carried a suffocating sense of sorrow and coldness.

"Because he dares not fall! He cannot fall!"

"He knew all too well what a hellish place Jiangnan was back then! The supplies for the hundreds of thousands of border troops who followed him south had been cut off by Yang Tinghe and his group of civil officials. They were surrounded by Jiangnan gentry who were ready to overturn the table and rebel at any moment!"

"If Zhu Houzhao were to admit on the spot in Qingjiangpu that he had been assassinated and was critically ill, the entire Jiangnan region would immediately descend into chaos, without even waiting until the next day! The civil official group would immediately declare the emperor dead, and might even directly send troops to besiege this isolated army in dire straits!"

Zhu Dijun picked up a red pen and drew a heavy line on the whiteboard along the route back to Beijing.

"Therefore, this unyielding Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty chose the most tragic way to deal with the situation—to stubbornly hold on!"

"He endured the pain of water entering his lungs or the fatal internal injuries from an assassination attempt, forcing himself onto his warhorse or sitting upright in the open imperial carriage! He wanted to make a name for himself before hundreds of thousands of civil officials and common people along the way!"

"He wanted to use this extremely tough stance to intimidate the wolves and tigers of the entire Jiangnan region. He wanted to tell those who wanted him dead: I am not dead! This fierce tiger from the north can still bite! Anyone who dares to cut off my supplies, anyone who dares to obstruct the army, I will lead the border troops to slaughter Jiangnan until rivers of blood flow!"

Accompanied by Zhu Dijun's roar, an extremely tragic scene appeared on the big screen.

The canal bank is desolate in the autumn wind.

Zhu Houzhao, his face deathly pale, forced back the blood in his throat, sat upright in the very center of the army, clad in cold iron armor. Surrounding him were tens of thousands of fully armed elite border guards.

He used his willpower to drag his already collapsing body and safely led hundreds of thousands of soldiers out of the deadly predicament in Jiangnan.

In the myriad worlds and timelines of the Ming Dynasty, countless generals and emperors who had experienced the clash of swords and the shadows of war saw this scene and their eyes instantly reddened.

Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, suddenly stood up, his eyes filled with extreme respect and fury.

"What a hero! This is the invincible emperor! The civil official's assassination attempt failed to kill him on the spot; he gritted his teeth and walked out of the lion's den!"

However, Judy Jun's eyes in the sky grew increasingly dark.

"With astonishing perseverance, Zhu Houzhao led his army out of the meat grinder of Jiangnan and successfully arrived at Tianjin, which was very close to the capital."

"But in Tianjin, Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty made an extremely unusual move."

Zhu Dijun's finger was pressed firmly on the line of text in the transcript.

"He arrived in Tianjin on the sixth day of the tenth lunar month and was still in Tianjin on the sixteenth day of the tenth lunar month. He stayed here for a full ten days! This is an extremely rare long stay."

"Not only that."

Judy Jun's voice was lowered to an extreme, like a whisper on the edge of an abyss.

"Jiang Bin, Zhu Houzhao's trusted confidant and commander of the border troops, made an extremely alarming suggestion at this time."

Jiang Bin clung tightly to Zhu Houzhao's warhorse, desperately urging the emperor: "Don't return to Beijing! Turn around immediately and head north to inspect Xuanfu! Go back to our border army's main camp!"

The image on the big screen instantly froze on the towering city wall of Tianjin.

On one side was the Ming capital, so close at hand, and on the other side was the Xuanfu military camp, far beyond the Great Wall.

"Family members."

Zhu Dijun stared intently at the camera, his eyes filled with a chilling coldness.

"What exactly did Jiang Bin realize? Why was he trying to stop the emperor from returning to his palace?"

"And during those long ten days in Tianjin, looking at the magnificent city of Beijing, what exactly was Zhu Houzhao afraid of?!"