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 broadcast room, the towering city walls of Tianjin looked extremely desolate in the autumn wind.

"Family, let's go back to the most deadly suspense!" Judy slammed his hands on the podium, leaned forward, and stared intently at the camera.

"Zhu Houzhao stayed in Tianjin for a full ten days! Why did Jiang Bin desperately pull on the emperor's horse, crying and begging him not to return to Beijing, but instead order him to turn back to the Xuanfu border army headquarters?"

"Because arriving here marks the most terrifying moment in the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming,' where we must rely on our own logic to unravel the mysteries layer by layer!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and wrote the names "Yang Tinghe" and "Mao Cheng" on the whiteboard with great force. Then, he wrote "Lu Wan" and "Wang Qiong" next to them.

Four names were tightly enclosed by a blood-stained box.

"After Yang Tinghe, Mao Cheng, and their ilk, the core leaders of the civil service, orchestrated the heinous 'small puddle drowning incident' at Qingjiangpu, they were shocked to discover that Zhu Houzhao was not dead! Not only was he alive, but he had also managed to hold out all the way to Tianjin Wei, fueled by his rage and with hundreds of thousands of border troops!"

"If Zhu Houzhao were to return to the capital and uncover the truth behind the food shortages and assassination attempts in Jiangnan, none of the officials in the court would survive!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was like a chilling, biting wind.

"Thus, Yang Tinghe made the most insidious and deadly move in the history of the Ming Dynasty's officialdom! They used the smuggling ledger that Wang Yangming had burned in Nanchang Prefecture to directly approach the core of the Emperor's faction who remained in the capital at the time, Emperor Wuzong's most trusted right-hand men—former Provincial Surveillance Commissioner Lu Wan, and Minister of War Wang Qiong!"

Two portraits of Ming Dynasty officials, their faces pale with fear, instantly appeared on the screen.

"Lu Wan, the former Minister of War, was dismissed from his post due to the Prince of Ning incident, but as long as he continues to be loyal to Zhu Houzhao, his reinstatement is only a matter of time. Wang Qiong, on the other hand, is the current Minister of War who holds the reins of the Ming Dynasty's military power! These two should have been the sharpest weapons to purge the civil service after the emperor returned to the capital!"

"But what did Yang Tinghe say to them?"

Judy Jun let out a chilling, extremely mocking laugh, as if a vengeful ghost were whispering in his ear.

Yang Tinghe held a knife to their necks! He told the two men, "The majority of the account books that Wang Shouren burned are indeed gone. But I'm sorry, our civil service group has a backup of the details in those account books!"

Four large, blood-red characters exploded on the public screen: "[Two Million Taels]!"

"Yang Tinghe presented irrefutable evidence! Lu Wan and Wang Qiong are not only involved in Prince Ning's smuggling network, but the amount of embezzled funds they are involved in is as high as two million taels of silver!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the chair next to him away and roared.

"Family members, what does two million taels mean? That's enough to have these two core members of the Emperor's faction exterminated and their families wiped out ten thousand times over!" Yang Tinghe pressed them, "Given Zhu Houzhao's volatile temper—intolerant of even the slightest imperfection, quick to confiscate property and kill—once the Emperor returns to the capital and finds out you've embezzled so much money behind his back, do you think he'll let you off the hook?!"

In the modern live broadcast room, viewers across the internet felt a chill run down their spines, a coldness shooting straight from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads.

Lu Wan and Wang Qiong, whose Achilles' heel had been completely exploited, exchanged a glance.

Judy Jun's eyes were extremely cold.

"Loyalty? In the face of family interests and lives in the Ming Dynasty's officialdom, loyalty is utterly worthless! They compromised. The Ming Emperor's last trump card has completely turned against him in the capital!"

The screen suddenly switched. An official record from the History of Ming Dynasty was singled out and magnified before everyone's eyes.

"But in the historical script later compiled by the civil service group, they wrote it like this: Lu Wan and Wang Qiong, in order to protect themselves, bribed Jiang Bin, the commander of the imperial guards around Zhu Houzhao. Jiang Bin then conspired with the eunuch Zhang Yong to murder the seriously ill emperor!"

"Pah!"

Zhu Dijun spat on the ground, grabbed the blackboard eraser, and wiped all the records on the screen.

"This is a complete and utter frame-up! It's a series of elaborate schemes by the entire court to make a fool of everyone else!"

"Let's first take a look at Jiang Bin, who has been labeled a traitor and regicide, and see who he really is."

A phantom image covered in scars and dressed in the armor of a Ming Dynasty general appeared in the center of the screen.

"Jiang Bin! A fierce and valiant general who rose from the ranks of the border army in the seventh year of the Zhengde reign! He was personally bestowed the imperial surname by Zhu Houzhao and renamed Zhu Bin! In the twelfth year of the Zhengde reign, he fought hand-to-hand with the Mongol Tatar soldiers in the great victory at Yingzhou, forging a bond that was forged amidst piles of dead bodies! After the battle, he was enfeoffed as the Earl of Pinglu for his merits, and all three of his biological sons were granted high-ranking positions in the Embroidered Uniform Guard!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes bloodshot with extreme anger.

"Everyone, use your brains! Jiang Bin's power, status, and family glory are all entirely dependent on Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao! The emperor is his god! As long as the emperor is alive, he is the Earl of Pinglu, second only to the emperor! If the emperor dies, he is just a powerless border soldier! Is he crazy? What would he want to do to murder an emperor who has been so kind to him?!"

The entire internet exploded with comments.

"That's right! Jiang Bin's power depends entirely on the emperor. What benefit would he gain from killing the emperor?"

"This script for the civil servant is so poorly written! It doesn't even have the most basic motive for the crime!"

"No motive? Civil servants have their pens!"

Judy Jun laughed maniacally.

"Let's look at how much appalling slander those Jiangnan literati poured on Jiang Bin in the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Wuzong of Ming'!"

One after another, bright green accusations rained down.

"First! It's said that during his southern tour, he suppressed Wang Yangming's victory report and encouraged Emperor Wuzong to release Prince Ning back to Poyang Lake and re-arrest him! It's said that he treated war like a game!"

"Secondly! It's said that he framed the former favorite minister Qian Ning, imprisoned and executed him, and then monopolized the emperor's favor!"

"Third! He said he obstructed ministers from offering advice. Before the southern tour, more than a hundred ministers knelt before the palace gates, weeping and pleading, but Jiang Bin deliberately angered Emperor Wuzong, leading to ministers being beaten to death or imprisoned!"

"Fourth! It is said that he extorted money along the way, condoned soldiers' looting, forced local officials to kneel and kowtow, and directly punished and persecuted those who did not comply!"

Judy Jun pointed at the four charges and roared furiously.

"Family members, translate these four charges into plain language; the truth is absolutely suffocating!"

"Suppressing good news? That's because Jiang Bin saw through Wang Yangming's long-standing collusion with Prince Ning! Killing Qian Ning? Because Qian Ning had already been bribed by Prince Ning's dirty money and turned into a traitor! Firing him in court? That's Jiang Bin purging those Jiangnan civil officials who attempted to force the emperor to abdicate! Extortion along the way? That's because the civil official group cut off the food supplies of hundreds of thousands of border troops, and Jiang Bin had no choice but to forcibly collect military supplies from local officials to prevent the soldiers from starving!"

"Jiang Bin is not a treacherous minister at all! He is Zhu Houzhao's fastest, most ruthless, and only obedient blade! He is doing all the dirty and tiring work for the Ming emperor, offending all the civil officials in the country!"

The setting is the sixteenth year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

In the capital, inside the Jinyiwei prison.

Jiang Bin, covered in blood and tortured beyond recognition, leaned against the cold, damp wall. He heard the words "the fastest, the most ruthless, the only obedient knife" appear on the screen.

This man, who had been slashed three times on the battlefield of Yingzhou without even flinching, suddenly burst into tears, which mingled with the blood on his face and splattered onto the withered grass.

"Your Majesty... I did not rebel. I really did not rebel..."

He gritted his teeth and let out a mournful wail like a lone wolf.

Inside the modern live broadcast room, Zhu Dijun's emotions were pushed to an extremely tragic climax.

"Since Jiang Bin is a loyal dog, and since Lu Wan and Wang Qiong have already betrayed us."

"Let's examine what kind of surreal and absurd end awaited these three individuals after Emperor Wuzong (Zhu Houzhao) died in the Leopard Chamber in March of the sixteenth year of the Zhengde reign!"

The background music suddenly became extremely heavy and oppressive, like a requiem for the dead.

"Emperor Wuzong has just died! His body is barely cold! Empress Dowager Zhang, in league with Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe, used the pretext of offering sacrifices at Kunning Palace to lure the unsuspecting Jiang Bin directly into the palace and arrest him!"

"The time was March 14th of the sixteenth year of Zhengde's reign. Emperor Wuzong died, and on March 15th, he was arrested by Yang Tinghe and the Empress Dowager."

What was Jiang Bin's fate after the Jiajing Emperor ascended the throne?

The four large characters, stained with blood, were like four sharp knives, piercing straight into everyone's hearts.

[To be executed by slow slicing!]

"The cruelest punishment under the Ming Dynasty law! His flesh was cut away piece by piece! Not only that, Jiang Bin's four sons were all beheaded! His young children, wife, and daughter were all enslaved and sent to the homes of so-called 'meritorious officials' to be slaves for generations, to be trampled upon at will!"

"To solidify the illusion that he was a super-corrupt official, the civil official wrote down a number on the confiscation list that would make even a god have a brain hemorrhage—'Seventy chests of gold! Two thousand two hundred chests of silver! Countless gold, silver and jewels!'"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the table, his knuckles turning white. "Two thousand two hundred cabinets of silver?! How much silver does the Ming Dynasty's treasury collect in a year? This kind of data, which even a pig wouldn't believe, is so brazenly written into the Records of the Ming Dynasty!"

"What about Lu Wan and Wang Qiong?! What about these two traitors who actually embezzled two million taels of black money and betrayed Emperor Wuzong?!"

The scene then shifts to two pictures of officials wearing bright red python robes, looking quite pleased with themselves.

"Lu Wan was originally sentenced to death. After Jiajing ascended the throne, he suddenly remembered his past merits in suppressing uprisings and spared his life! He was exiled to Jinghaiwei in Fujian. In the fifth year of Jiajing's reign, he died peacefully of illness in his place of exile at the age of sixty-nine!"

"Even more incredible is Wang Qiong! This Minister of War, who held immense military power! He was merely demoted to Suide for the crime of 'colluding with eunuchs.' Before he even died, in the sixth year of the Jiajing reign, he was reinstated! He became Minister of War, Governor-General of the Three Border Regions of Shaanxi, and Minister of Personnel again! He reached the pinnacle of power!"

"In the eleventh year of the Jiajing reign, Wang Qiong lived out his later years peacefully in his residence as a high-ranking official in Beijing, passing away peacefully in his sleep! After his death, the Ming court bestowed upon him the highest honors, posthumously granting him the title of Grand Tutor! His posthumous name was Gongxiang! He was given a grand and dignified burial in his hometown in Shanxi!"

A deathly silence fell over the live stream. All the viewers were so shocked by the stark contrast between black and white, and the extreme tragedy of the ending, that they couldn't utter a single word.

"Do you understand this utterly disgusting closed loop?"

Zhu Dijun's voice was filled with endless sorrow.

"What a perfect deal! Lu Wan is sent out to take the blame and be exiled, while Wang Qiong uses his influence in the court to protect Lu Wan's entire family! Then, together with Yang Tinghe, they pin all the blame for treason and regicide on Jiang Bin, that powerless, lowly border soldier who only knows how to fight!"

"In this scheme, Jiang Bin's entire family was wiped out, and he was utterly disgraced. Emperor Wuzong of Ming, Zhu Houzhao, died at the young age of thirty-one, caught in a trap woven by his own people."

"Those two are complete suckers!"

The large screen suddenly plunged into endless darkness.

Only Judy Jun's chilling voice remained, slowly flowing in the darkness.

"The 14th day of the third month of the 16th year of Zhengde's reign. Inside the Leopard House in the capital of the Ming Dynasty."

"The critically ill and dying Zhu Houzhao lay on his dragon bed, looking at the indifferent eunuchs and imperial physicians around him. He realized that his sharpest weapon, Jiang Bin, had been forever kept outside the palace gates by an imperial edict."

"In this desolate place where no one of our own is left, what exactly was added to the medicine that the once mighty Ming emperor, who rode across the borderlands, drank in his final moments?"