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

Judy flipped the whiteboard over, roughly pulling the red timeline backward.

"Family members, the political drama of the first year of the Jiajing reign is over. Now, let's move on to the second year of the Jiajing reign, 1523 AD!"

He grabbed a black marker and wrote six large characters heavily in the center of the whiteboard: "[The Battle of Ningbo for Tribute]".

"If the first year of the Jiajing reign was the peak of the internal political reshuffle, then the second year of the Jiajing reign was the absolute watershed moment when the Ming Dynasty's coastal defense policy completely collapsed, directly triggering the 'Jiajing Great Wokou Raid' that followed for decades!"

On the big screen, a map of the Zhejiang coast during the Ming Dynasty was suddenly unfurled, and two family crests with strong Japanese Sengoku period influences were affixed to the port of Ningbo.

"It was customary for neighboring countries of the Ming Dynasty to pay tribute. However, in the second year of the Jiajing reign, two great lords of the Sengoku period in Japan—the Ōuchi clan and the Hosokawa clan—each sent envoys to the Maritime Trade Office in Ningbo, Zhejiang, to pay tribute and trade."

Judy Jun pointed to the badge on the left with a cold smile.

"The representative of the Ōuchi clan was named Sōsetsu Kendō, and he arrived first. According to the Ming Dynasty's rules of first come, first served, he should have inspected the goods first and been seated in the proper place."

The red laser pointer suddenly moved to the right.

"The Hosokawa clan's representative arrived later. But their deputy was an extremely surreal figure—Song Suqing! This bastard isn't Japanese at all; his original name was Zhu Gao, a pure-blooded native of Ningbo! Because he was in debt in his early years, he went to Japan, changed his appearance, and now he's transformed into a representative of the Japanese, coming back to his hometown to demand tribute!"

"This fake foreigner knows all too well the corrupt inner workings of the Ming Dynasty's officialdom! Without saying a word, he directly pulled out a large sum of money and bribed Lai En, the eunuch in charge of the Ningbo Maritime Trade Office at the time!"

A bribery ledger reeking of money flashed across the screen.

"Ryan took the money and completely turned black into white! He gave the Hosokawa clan, who arrived later, priority in inspecting the goods, and even at the welcoming banquet held by the Maritime Trade Office, he arranged for the Hosokawa clan's representative to sit in the head seat, while the Ōuchi clan, who arrived earlier, were relegated to the lower seat!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the table, making a dull thud.

"Who was Zongshe Kendo? He was a samurai who had crawled out of piles of corpses during Japan's Warring States period! When he saw this, he felt utterly humiliated and went berserk on the spot!"

The sounds of fierce melee combat echoed from the bottom of the live stream room.

"Zongshe Kendo, along with his men, drew their samurai swords directly in the port of Ningbo, on Ming Dynasty soil! They launched an armed attack, killing Hosokawa clan representative Zuiza on the spot and burning Hosokawa clan ships!"

"That's not all! Zong Sheqian, blinded by rage, led his men on a frantic chase, relentlessly pursuing the instigator, Song Suqing, all the way to the outskirts of Shaoxing!"

A bloody pursuit route unfolds on the map.

"The Japanese were burning, killing, and looting in the heart of Zhejiang, the richest province in the Ming Dynasty, as if they were in an empty land! The Ming troops who came to suppress them along the way were routed, and even Liu Jin, the commander of the anti-Japanese forces, was killed on the spot in this extremely absurd battle!"

The myriad worlds and timelines, the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Di drew his long sword from his waist and cleaved the imperial desk in two with a single stroke.

"Outrageous! This is utterly ridiculous!" The Yongle Emperor, a war-torn man, was furious. "These barbarians from beyond the Great Wall dare to lay hands on our Ming territory and kill people?! They even murdered the imperial commander in charge of defending against Japanese pirates?! Are these local officials in Zhejiang and the maritime trade officials dead?!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's eyes were extremely sarcastic.

"The face of the Ming Dynasty was brutally rubbed into the ground by these wild monkeys wielding samurai swords. Afterwards, the court and the public were shaken, and the cabinet and the Six Ministries were in complete uproar."

A familiar name was written on the whiteboard—[Xia Yan].

"Xia Yan, a censor who had just made a great contribution in the first year of the Jiajing reign, submitted another fatal memorial! He drew an extremely crude conclusion about the riot—'The Japanese pirate problem originated from maritime trade!'"

"The imperial court immediately adopted his suggestion. The fifteen-year-old Jiajing Emperor, with a stroke of his pen, abolished the Maritime Trade Offices in Fujian and Zhejiang, retaining only Guangdong! And completely severed official trade agreements with Japan!"

Zhu Dijun abruptly took two steps back, staring coldly at the camera.

"Family members, Xia Yan's memorial appears on the surface to be swift and decisive, directly cutting off the source of the Japanese pirate raids. But what is the reality?"

"This was a brainless, ruthless plan that destroyed the very foundation of the Ming Dynasty's coastal defenses!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers furiously tapped on the keyboard, slamming the crucial historical document onto the big screen once again.

"Let's rewind the timeline! Back to August of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign! Who still remembers those sixteen characters written by that shadow government of the Ming Dynasty after they forced Emperor Wuzong to abdicate?!"

Four red circles tightly enclosed the line of text: "[The eunuch of the Zhejiang Maritime Trade Office is also dismissed and will be in charge of supervising the coastal defense authorities.]" (Chapter 428)

"Do you understand this extremely terrifying logical loop?"

Zhu Dijun shouted at the top of his lungs.

"In the fifth year of the Zhengde reign, the gentry and civil officials of Jiangnan had already seized control of the Maritime Trade Office from Emperor Wuzong, and placed it in direct command of the anti-Japanese pirate army! From that time on, the customs and anti-smuggling troops became the private armies of the powerful families of Jiangnan!"

"And now, in the second year of the Jiajing reign! The Maritime Trade Office has been abolished!"

"This means that the official administrative institutions and military units responsible for defending against Japanese pirates along the southeastern coast of the Ming Dynasty were rendered ineffective! Legitimate official trade channels were completely shut down! Those coastal merchants who had relied on the sea for their livelihood for hundreds of years, and those Japanese merchants who needed large quantities of silk and porcelain, were all driven to the brink of despair!"

"If the authorities aren't doing anything, who will? The smuggling rings!"

Zhu Dijun slammed the gavel down heavily.

"From this day forward, the maritime trade controlled by the powerful clans of Jiangnan went completely underground! They completed the ultimate evolution from 'collusion between officials and merchants' to 'armed pirates'!"

The live stream chat instantly fell silent. The logical chain clicked perfectly at that moment, and this political conspiracy, which had been going on for over a decade, sent chills down everyone's spine.

But Judy Jun's scalpel didn't stop. He grabbed the blackboard eraser and wiped out both Mr. Ouchi's and Mr. Hosokawa's names.

"If you think that the tragedy of the second year of Jiajing's reign was merely a policy mistake, then I'll reveal to you a shocking secret that even the history books dare not delve into."

In the center of the whiteboard, a name worthy of reverence by all scholars was written out by Zhu Dijun, stroke by stroke.

[Wang Yangming].

The live stream chat immediately came alive, filled with praise for this grandmaster of the philosophy of mind.

As Zhu Dijun looked at the comments, a cold, extremely malicious smile appeared on his lips.

"Wang Yangming, the great synthesizer of the philosophy of mind in the Ming Dynasty, was a military genius of the Ming Dynasty. In the fourteenth year of Zhengde, he used a mere tens of thousands of cobbled-together ragtag troops to annihilate the 100,000 elite troops of Prince Ning, Zhu Chenhao, at Poyang Lake."

"His military talent is beyond question, isn't it?"

Zhu Dijun gets close to the camera.

"But let's look at where this military genius of the Ming Dynasty was when the Ningbo Tribute Dispute broke out in the second year of the Jiajing reign, a time when the Ming Dynasty lost face."

A chronology of Wang Yangming's life and career popped up on the big screen.

The red dot of light remained firmly fixed in February of the first year of the Jiajing reign.

"In February of the first year of the Jiajing reign (1522), Wang Yangming's father, Wang Hua, passed away. He resigned from all his official posts and returned to his hometown to observe the mourning period. But where was his hometown?"

Zhu Dijun suddenly pointed to the map of Zhejiang.

"In damn Shaoxing!"

boom.

In the myriad worlds of the Ming Dynasty, the civil officials who held Wang Yangming in the highest esteem turned deathly pale.

Zhu Dijun continued his sarcasm:

"Zong Sheqian fought his way from Ningbo all the way to the walls of Shaoxing! While the Japanese were burning, killing, looting, and murdering the Ming Dynasty's commander of the anti-Japanese forces outside Shaoxing, this grandmaster of Neo-Confucianism, who could annihilate an army of 100,000 with a wave of his hand, was staying in Shaoxing!"

"He didn't have any troops under his command; he was in mourning for his father. But just a few years ago, when he was suppressing a rebellion in Jiangxi, he didn't have any regular troops either! He relied solely on his so-called personal prestige to gather local militias and prefects from all sides within a few days and directly quelled the rebellion of Prince Ning!"

A barely concealed ferocity churned in Zhu Dijun's eyes.

"But what did Wang Yangming do in the face of these mere few hundred Japanese samurai going berserk outside Shaoxing? He did nothing!"

"He was like a deaf and blind man, sitting in his house in Shaoxing, meditating and seeking enlightenment, while the Ming soldiers outside bled and died!"

"Is he too old to lift a knife? Or is it some absurd excuse about not being able to shed blood during mourning?!"

Zhu Dijun gripped the podium tightly with both hands and let out a cold laugh like that of a night owl.

"Neither!"

"Because this grandmaster was extremely clear-headed! He knew better than anyone that these Japanese daimyo who came to pay tribute were not involved in any diplomatic disputes at all, but rather in the ultimate interests of the powerful Jiangnan gentry and maritime merchant groups in Zhejiang and Fujian!"

"By killing Prince Ning in Jiangxi, he was eliminating a spy planted by Zhu Houzhao in Jiangxi for the civil service, erasing the most unstable element within the civil service and the ledger of corruption. But if he were to lead his men to slaughter all these Japanese under the walls of Shaoxing, he would be directly destroying the core livelihood of the entire Jiangnan smuggling network!"

"Even sages are human, and their families are part of the Jiangnan gentry class!"

In modern live-streaming rooms, millions of netizens were stunned by this incisive statement.

[“Holy crap…this is terrifying to think about! Wang Yangming was in Shaoxing?! Wait, wasn’t he from Yuyao, Zhejiang?”]

"That logic is too toxic. Yes, he wasn't afraid of Prince Ning Zhu Chenhao's army of over 100,000, so how could he not handle a few hundred ronin? It's just that he doesn't want to get involved!"

"So these Jiangnan gentry just stood by and watched the Japanese kill Ming soldiers and civilians, while they themselves hid behind the scenes and counted their money?!"

Seeing the boiling barrage of comments, Zhu Dijun casually threw several official archive copies of "History of Ming Dynasty: Japan" and "Veritable Records of the Jiajing Emperor" directly onto the screen.

"This is not a conspiracy theory; this is raw historical data!"

"Starting with the abolition of the Maritime Trade Office in the second year of the Jiajing reign, the Ming Dynasty ushered in the darkest era in its history: the 'Great Japanese Pirate Era.' But do you really think that those 'Japanese pirates' who massacred cities and villages along the southeastern coast were all Japanese who crossed the sea?"

Four bright red data points were displayed directly in the center of the screen.

[Three out of ten are genuine Japanese, seven out of ten are fake!]

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and slammed it hard onto the whiteboard.

"Governor-General Hu Zongxian, who was in charge of suppressing the Japanese pirates, reported that the so-called Japanese pirate uprising was mainly caused by Chinese traitors! The Japanese ronin were at best hired henchmen and suicide squads!"

"Let's examine who the truly powerful pirate leaders were, commanding vast armies, during this decades-long pirate raid that drained the Ming Dynasty's treasury!"

One after another, menacing wanted posters appeared on the screen.

"Wang Zhi, who calls himself the 'King of the Pure Sea,' commands tens of thousands of men and hundreds of warships! He's from Huizhou!"

"Xu Hai, a ruthless killer who roamed the Jiangnan region! A native of Huizhou!"

"Wang Zhi's adopted son, Mao Haifeng! He's also a Chinese from the coastal region of the Ming Dynasty!"

Zhu Dijun abruptly put away his pointer, stared directly at the camera, and his eyes revealed a deathly stillness that seemed to have seen through all the filth in the world.

"They occupy Shuangyu Port on Liuhang Island in Zhoushan, colluding with officials and gentry on the mainland. In times of war, they are ruthless Japanese pirates; in times of peace, they are honored guests in the homes of those civil officials who spout empty rhetoric of benevolence and morality!"

"Family members, in a narrow sense: the true peak of the 'Great Japanese Pirates' (mainstream academic view)"

• Beginning: In the 31st year of the Jiajing reign (1552, the year of Renzi), Wang Zhi led hundreds of ships, covering the sea, and captured Huangyan. The coastal areas of Zhejiang, Zhili, Fujian, and Guangdong, spanning thousands of miles, were simultaneously alerted, an event known in history as the "Renzi Incident". From then on, the Japanese pirates changed from smuggling and harassment to large-scale attacks on cities and territories, and raids on the inland areas.

• End: In the 45th year of Jiajing (1566), Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou basically wiped out the remaining bandits in Fujian and Guangdong, and the coastal areas returned to peace.

Duration: Approximately 15 years

"But if we speak in a broader sense, from its origin to its end (the entire Jiajing reign's Japanese pirate raids)..."

• Beginning: 2nd year of Jiajing (1523) - Ningbo Tribute Dispute: The Ming Dynasty abolished the maritime trade and strictly prohibited maritime trade, cutting off legal trade and turning maritime merchants into armed smugglers.

Climax: 1552–1558 (31st to 37th year of Jiajing reign) The Japanese pirates were at their most rampant, with dozens of cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces falling and hundreds of thousands killed.

End: 45th year of Jiajing (1566)

Duration: Approximately 44 years (nearly half a century)