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

"Family members, do you believe this matter has nothing to do with the civil service?"

Zhu Dijun's extremely sarcastic question instantly ignited the entire live stream. The chat didn't even need any deliberate attempts to stir things up; millions of viewers formed a united front with raw, primal anger.

Even if a few haters were still making sarcastic remarks about Zhu Dijun being biased towards Jiajing, such attempts to whitewash the situation were instantly crushed by a tsunami of comments.

"I don't believe it! Only people with brainstem defects would believe this is a coincidence!"

[“Stop trying to defend them, haters! A few dozen miners snowballed their numbers to tens of thousands in a few months, they even know how to conduct cross-province operations and field battles, and they know exactly where the government troops' supply lines and defensive weaknesses are. If there weren't local tycoons and civil officials providing intelligence and logistical support behind the scenes, I'd eat my keyboard!”]

["The same old formula! As long as the emperor disobeys, a large-scale rebellion will inevitably break out around the capital of the Ming Dynasty! The timing is more accurate than an alarm clock!"]

As Zhu Dijun watched the barrage of comments flooding the screen, he slammed the yellowed historical document in his hand onto the live broadcast stage with a loud bang.

"That's right! The eyes of the masses are discerning! But my family, if you think the Wangtang uprising is the limit of these people's coup attempt, then you have underestimated the madness of those power-hungry beasts in the Ming Dynasty court!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a black marker and forcefully drew a shocking timeline on the right side of the whiteboard, writing four large characters heavily: "[Ganzhou Mutiny]!"

"Besides the Wangtang Uprising, a devastating mutiny broke out on the northwesternmost border of the Ming Dynasty, one that directly altered the course of the entire Ming Dynasty's military system!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his pen against the whiteboard. "The timing is equally bizarre! It falls right between the sixteenth year of the Zhengde reign and the first year of the Jiajing reign, a period of transition when the Ming Wuzong Emperor had just died, the fifteen-year-old Jiajing Emperor had just ascended the throne, and the Great Rites Controversy was raging at court!"

A map of the northwestern border defenses of the Ming Dynasty was suddenly displayed on the big screen.

Historians generally believe that the Ganzhou Mutiny marked the beginning of the nightmarish "era of frequent mutinies" in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty. This was a watershed moment in the complete collapse of the Ming Empire's border defense system!

Two strikingly contrasting portraits were photographed on either side of the map.

"The core conflict of this mutiny was extremely simple!"

Zhu Dijun pointed to the grotesque figure of a warrior with a face full of scars on the left.

"The villainous protagonist, General Li Long, is the top military commander of Gansu Town! This man is a typical warlord and scoundrel. During his tenure, he ruthlessly embezzled military pay, treated his soldiers like slaves to do personal chores, and even killed innocent people to claim credit for suppressing uprisings in the interior, using the heads of ordinary people to embellish his own official hat!"

Then, the red laser pointer swept towards the civil official on the right, who was wearing a scarlet robe.

"The main protagonist is Xu Ming, the top civil official sent by the imperial court to take over Gansu Town! This man is upright and incorruptible. On his first day in office, he was determined to clean up the mess in Gansu Town and strictly prohibit military officers from exploiting soldiers. This grand drama is the ultimate life-or-death struggle between an honest official and a warlord!"

In a parallel universe, during the fourteenth year of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Having just led the border troops to cleanse the capital, Zhu Houzhao stared intently at the sky, a cold, bloodthirsty smile creeping onto his lips.

"If scum like Li Long fell into my hands, even being torn to pieces wouldn't be lenient!"

Zhu Houzhao gripped his blood-stained sword tightly. The reason he had relied on trusted confidants like Jiang Bin was because the warlords in the border towns were utterly corrupt, and he needed his own people to control the border troops. Now that he was dead, these warlords had instantly become like wild dogs running rampant!

Inside the modern live-streaming studio, Zhu Dijun's speech grew increasingly rapid, exuding a palpable sense of pressure.

What sparked the conflict? It was a seemingly perfectly legal and reasonable salary adjustment!

A table showing the conversion of rice prices in the Ming Dynasty popped up on the big screen.

"In the sixteenth year of the Zhengde reign, there was a bumper harvest, and the price of rice at the border plummeted! The Ming Dynasty's military pay was calculated in silver and rice, and Xu Ming, following the strict rules of the court, reduced the monthly rations that soldiers received. Legally speaking, there was nothing wrong with that, right? But the soldiers were already impoverished by warlords like Li Long, and now that they were receiving less money, the soldiers were completely desperate!"

"Li Long saw a golden opportunity!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the table, his eyes revealing an extreme chill.

"He had long hated Xu Ming for blocking his path to wealth, so he secretly spread rumors and even directly instructed his trusted subordinates to infiltrate the soldiers and lead a mutiny, pinning all the blame for the pay cut on Xu Ming!"

The background sound effects suddenly changed to extremely violent shouts and screams.

"In the first month of the first year of the Jiajing reign! Enraged rioters directly besieged the governor's office! Xu Ming, a civil official, still tried to reason with them, even ordering several troublemakers to be flogged. This beating completely ignited the powder keg!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly kicked over the live broadcast chair.

"Hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers swarmed forward! The dignified second-rank governor and censor-in-chief of the Ming Dynasty, a high-ranking official in charge of a region, was beaten to death on the spot by these soldiers! Not only were they beaten to death, but these people also went so far as to publicly burn the body of this first-rank official and scatter the ashes! Finally, they ransacked the entire governor's yamen's treasury and armory!"

The Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang kicked over the imperial desk in front of him, and the imperial seal rolled to the ground.

"It's outrageous!! It's all fucking outrageous!!"

The founding emperor, Hongwu, was so angry that he trembled all over, and his eyes turned bloodshot.

"We established these garrisons to protect our homes and country! And now these scoundrels in the border towns dare to kill an official of the imperial court and even burn his body?! This is no army of the Ming Dynasty; this is clearly a bunch of lawless bandits!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's cold laughter echoed throughout the hall.

"What did Li Long do afterward? He staged the most classic example of double-dealing in the Ming Dynasty officialdom!"

Li Long's three-step finishing move was listed directly on the whiteboard.

"The first step was appeasement! He feigned concern by stepping forward to clean up the mess, opening granaries to distribute food and money, and calming the disorganized troops!"

"The second step is to shift the blame! Send an urgent report to the capital, insisting that Xu Ming embezzled military pay and incited unrest. Since the dead can't speak, pin the whole blame on Xu Ming's ashes!"

"The third step: silencing them! To cover up his instigation of the mutiny, Li Long promptly arrested and beheaded his close associates who had led the rebellion! A perfect case of dead men tell no tales!"

Zhu Dijun stared at the camera with an extremely sarcastic look.

"Li Long's calculations were very shrewd. Logically speaking, with the new emperor having just ascended the throne and the court in a state of chaos over the Great Rites Controversy, the central government simply didn't have the energy to deal with the mess in the Northwest. As long as he could suppress the matter, he could continue to be the local tyrant of the Northwest."

The image on the big screen flashed suddenly, showing a portrait of a fifteen-year-old emperor and a portrait of a white-bearded prime minister side by side in an extremely bizarre pose.

"But he never dreamed that at this extremely sensitive juncture, in the court where the Great Rites Controversy was raging, the Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe and the fifteen-year-old Taoist Emperor Jiajing would actually reach an unprecedented and unparalleled tacit agreement on this matter!"

Two large, blood-red characters crashed down on the public screen: 【Military Power】!

"Family members, do you understand the political logic behind this?!"

Judy Jun roared at the top of her lungs.

"Why was Yang Tinghe in such a hurry to kill Li Long? Because he absolutely could not allow Jiajing to use the pretext of suppressing the rebellion to legitimately contact the army and install his faction generals in the border troops! The civil officials had gone to such great lengths to kill a Wuzong who liked to lead troops into battle, and they absolutely could not allow a second emperor to hold real power! Moreover, Zhu Houcong was a hundred times more difficult to deal with than Zhu Houzhao. If he were to gain military power, these civil officials would have to sleep with one eye open."

"Why was Jiajing also in such a hurry to kill Li Long? Because this Taoist priest, who had grown up immersed in political intrigue, simply did not believe that this was a simple mutiny! He strongly suspected that this was a conspiracy by the civil official group to use the collapse of the border defenses to force him to abdicate and compromise in the Great Rites Controversy!"

"Under this extremely abnormal level of mutual defensiveness, both factions are frighteningly efficient!"

A phantom image of an imperial edict descended from the sky.

"The Embroidered Uniform Guard was mobilized at full speed! Heading straight for Gansu! At the same time, they found Dong Wenzhong, the eunuch who had tried to protect Xu Ming during the mutiny, to testify! The witnesses and evidence were instantly sealed! Without uttering a single word, Jiajing issued an edict to arrest General Li Long on the spot and execute him on the spot!"

The live stream chat was flooded with comments like "Well done" and "Great job!", but Zhu Dijun's face was completely gloomy, like a stagnant pool.

He picked up the blackboard eraser and very slowly erased Li Long's name from the whiteboard, bit by bit.

"Family members, do you think killing Li Long would perfectly resolve this mutiny?"

"No. This is precisely opening a door to hell."

The background sound effects in the entire live stream became extremely oppressive, like the still sea before a storm.

"The Ganzhou Mutiny set an extremely terrible and egregious precedent for the entire border military system of the Ming Dynasty."

Judy Jun's hands gripped the blackboard eraser tightly, his knuckles turning white.

"In the past, mutinies were at most about demanding pay or protesting treatment. But this time, these border thugs discovered a bloody truth that drove them mad!"

The large screen instantly plunged into absolute darkness, leaving only four stark white characters: "The law does not punish the masses."

"They discovered that, in order to maintain stability, the imperial court dared not execute everyone involved in beating a high-ranking official of the second rank to death and burning and looting his government office!"

As Zhu Dijun approached the camera, his eyes were filled with sorrow and violence.

"In the end, the imperial court only killed a few ringleaders! The soldiers who followed them in looting and killing were not only spared, but were even given silver and grain by Li Long as a form of appeasement!"

"Kill the officials! Rebel! Distribute according to who makes the most noise! ​​There's money to be made!"

"These four concepts, like a supervirus, spread overnight throughout the nine border towns of the Ming Dynasty! All the lowly soldiers, exploited to the point of starvation by civil officials and warlords, were filled with rage. Since reasoning was useless, and since starving to death was inevitable, they might as well just kill officials and rob for money—that might be a way to survive!"

The Xuande reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji leaned back on his dragon throne, his inner robes soaked with cold sweat. Looking at the four characters on the sky, he felt as if the very backbone of the Ming Empire was cracking under the unbearable weight. Once the morale of the army was devoured by such blatant greed and the侥幸心理 (a gambler's mentality) that the law could not punish the masses, then this army would no longer be the bulwark of the Ming Dynasty, but a pack of hungry wolves ready to turn on their master at any moment.

In the skylight, Zhu Dijun casually tossed the blackboard eraser onto the table.

"From this day forward, the Ming Dynasty officially entered an extremely terrifying period of frequent mutinies."

He raised his eyelids and looked at the camera with a cold gaze.

"The Ganzhou Mutiny was just an appetizer. In the following years, from the third year of the Jiajing reign to the twelfth, the Datong Mutiny, a crucial northern town closer to the capital and with even more formidable defenses, erupted with even more brutal methods and on a larger scale!"

A chilling smirk curled at the corner of Zhu Dijun's mouth.

"And those mutinous soldiers in Datong not only killed the governor and the general, they even held a knife to the neck of the Ming Dynasty court. It was an ultimate gamble that forced the Jiajing Emperor to almost overturn the entire chessboard."