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

The furious outcry that had lasted for several minutes in the live stream gradually subsided.

Zhu Dijun picked up the blackboard eraser and wiped away the glaring "Forty-Four Years" little by little.

"Family members, I understand you all, especially our compatriots from Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Jiangsu and other places. Seeing our ancestors being slaughtered and harmed by those ruthless civil officials and smuggling merchants from Jiangnan for nearly half a century, it is only natural to feel anger and want to tear the history books apart."

Judy Jun tossed the blackboard eraser onto the table and patted the chalk dust off his hands.

"But the catastrophic mess these high-ranking officials created along the southeastern coast was merely the tip of the iceberg of the hellish spectacle of the Ming Dynasty in the second year of the Jiajing Emperor's reign! In the same year, within this Forbidden City, another bloodless earthquake erupted, one that was enough to completely annihilate the Ming Dynasty's judicial system!"

The red marker was drawn again.

In the very center of the whiteboard, six large characters were written heavily.

The Li Yangfeng Case and the Dispute Over Imperial Edicts!

Zhu Dijun's pen tip touched the three characters "Li Yangfeng". "Family members, this case is extremely simple, not even a cold case. The protagonist, Li Yangfeng, is from Jiangxi and is a commander of a thousand men in the Ming Dynasty's Embroidered Uniform Guard."

A file from the Ministry of Justice bearing bloody handprints appeared on the large screen.

"This arrogant and domineering man beat someone to death in the streets of the capital! According to the Great Ming Code, murder is punishable by death; this is a clear capital offense and he should be sentenced to hanging!"

"Minister of Justice Lin Jun received this case and directly approved: execution by strangulation according to the law! Perfectly reasonable, right?"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the table, making a loud thud.

"But! Just as the Ministry of Justice was preparing to execute him, a top-level order flew out from the Xiyuan Academy and struck Lin Jun directly on the head!"

A yellow scroll image suddenly unfolded on the screen—[Imperial Decree]!

"The fifteen-year-old Jiajing Emperor bypassed the Grand Secretariat's draft resolutions and the joint trial by the Ministry of Justice and the three judicial departments. He issued an imperial edict in his own name: Li Yangfeng was pardoned from death! His sentence was commuted to exile to the frontier!"

A moment of surprise appeared in the live stream chat.

"Holy crap? The murderer isn't being sentenced to death? Is Jiajing protecting the killer?"

"Bypassing the law and taking back channels? This fifteen-year-old Taoist priest is also ignorant of the law!"

["Oh no, one second they were criticizing the civil officials, and the next second is the emperor going to become the villain?"]

As Zhu Dijun looked at the comments, a cold, extremely mocking light flashed in his eyes.

"Shocked, aren't you? You think Jiajing is messing around, right? The civil officials in the Ming court were even more shocked and furious than you were!"

A crimson phantom image of an official's robe was smashed onto the left side of the screen.

"Lin Jun, the Minister of Justice and a staunch loyalist of the cabinet who was personally promoted by Yang Tinghe, was furious! He submitted several extremely strong memorials, firmly rejecting the emperor's pardon and refusing to release the man!"

Zhu Dijun imitated the tone of the ancients, shouting and reciting in a loud voice:

"The law is for all under heaven, and its importance is not determined by personal feelings! Your Majesty's decision to pardon this one person is an act of breaking the law!"

"Lin Jun even threw his official hat on the ground, threatening to resign: 'If you release him, I'll quit being the Minister of Justice!'"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back, spreading his hands with a cold smile.

"Have you understood this apparent conflict between good and evil? Lin Jun and his group of civil officials, waving the noble banner of 'law is above imperial edict' and 'law is above power,' demand that the judiciary follow the procedures of the Ministry of Justice, the Court of Judicial Review, and the Censorate. If the emperor were to change a verdict based on his personal will, it would be an abuse of power, and the legal system of the Ming Dynasty would be utterly destroyed!"

"Doesn't that sound incredibly virtuous and righteous? Don't you feel like these civil officials are reincarnations of upright officials, guardians of the rule of law?"

Zhu Dijun kicked over the chair next to him.

"Bullshit! It's all an excuse! It's all a fig leaf for power!"

He picked up a red pen and drew two knives on the left and right sides of the "Dispute over the Imperial Edict".

"You think this is a clash between the rule of law and dictatorship? Wrong! This is a naked power struggle, a fight for control of the country!"

Why did Lin Jun insist on the principle of "law is above power"? Because at that time, the Ming Dynasty's legal system, the executive and judicial powers of the Three Judicial Offices, were all firmly in the hands of Yang Tinghe and his group of cabinet and Six Ministries officials!

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his gaze so sharp it seemed he wanted to slice through the screen.

"What they're protecting isn't the Great Ming Code at all! What they're protecting is their ability to use legal provisions to legitimately suppress dissent, control the country, and even blackmail the emperor's exclusive right of interpretation!"

"If Jiajing can release Li Yangfeng with an imperial edict today, can he then send all those disobedient civil officials to prison with another imperial edict tomorrow?!"

The Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Sitting in the Leopard Chamber, Zhu Houzhao took a big gulp of strong liquor and let out a shrill, maniacal laugh.

"Well said! Absolutely brilliant!"

Zhu Houzhao's eyes were bloodshot as he pointed at the sky and roared.

"These old dogs shout about the laws of our ancestors, yet behind my back they can beat the people around me to death one by one under the guise of the Great Ming Law! The law they want is a dog collar around the emperor's neck!"

In the modern live broadcast room, Zhu Dijun's scalpel pierced deeper and deeper, each cut reaching the bone.

"Now let's look back at Jiajing's actions. Did Jiajing really care about the life of Li Yangfeng, a mere commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard? He even dared to kill Empress Dowager Zhang, Zhu Houzhao's nominal mother. Would he care about a low-ranking military officer?"

On the whiteboard, the four characters "[Li Yangfeng Case]" were crossed out and replaced with "[Imperial Power]"!

"Fifteen-year-old Zhu Houcong is using the Li Yangfeng case to declare war on Yang Tinghe and the entire civil service!"

"He was proclaiming an extremely crude logic: I am the state! The emperor is the supreme legislator and judge of this land! The laws of the Ming Dynasty are meant to serve imperial power, not to bind it!"

"Jiajing had only one bottom line: if I say release someone, they must be released! I am the rule itself!"

Two huge entries appeared on the screen: "The Great Rites Controversy" and "The Debate on Imperial Edicts," which were then tightly bound together by a blood-red chain.

"Family members, have you grasped the grand scheme behind this? The Great Rites Controversy and the Imperial Edict are essentially two sides of the same coin—a meat grinder!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers frantically tapped on the two entries.

"What was Jiajing fighting for during the Great Rites Controversy? It was the system of rites! It was the patriarchal clan system! It was about legitimacy! This was about taking away the 'pen' from the hands of you civil officials!"

"What was Jiajing fighting for in the dispute over imperial edicts? It was the judiciary! It was the rules! It was the immunity from death! This was about taking the 'knife handle' from the hands of civil officials!"

"Yang Tinghe's group wanted to use the cabinet, the six ministries, and ancestral rituals as an ironclad formation to lock this fifteen-year-old boy firmly on the dragon throne and make him a puppet."

Zhu Dijun slammed his hands on the table. "And Jiajing's answer was: Since your rules require cannibalism, I'll smash this dilapidated temple, along with you bunch of cannibalistic clay idols, to pieces!"

Upon hearing the words "a double blow to both propriety and law," the entire official ranks of the Ming Dynasty felt an extreme despair seeping from the depths of their bones.

The fifteen-year-old boy, without ever stepping out of the West Garden, actually managed to see through the core code of civil officials ruling the country, and without hesitation, he swung his sword and cut off the server's power!

"And the result?"

Zhu Dijun slammed the gavel down.

"Jiajing has won a resounding victory! Minister of Justice Lin Jun, in despair, resigned and returned to his hometown. Li Yangfeng was forcibly pardoned and exiled to the border. The Ministry of Justice's resistance was utterly crushed by the imperial power in an extremely unreasonable and violent manner!"

"Then came the third year of the Jiajing reign, when seventeen officials were flogged to death at Zuoshun Gate, completely breaking the backbone of the civil service. The Great Rites Controversy was won! The 'recognition of a father' was a success!"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back, looking at the increasingly gloomy figure of the young emperor on the big screen.

His voice suddenly turned extremely cold.

"Imperial power completely crushed the cabinet, the six ministries, and the judiciary. But my family, by breaking the checks and balances and unleashing this behemoth of power called 'dictatorship,' what will be the price?"

Three names dripping with black blood appeared on the very edge of the whiteboard like vengeful ghosts.

The Western Depot, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and the Eastern Depot.

"The victory in this debate over the imperial edicts completely cloaked the dark years of the mid-to-late Jiajing period in the guise of legal imperial edicts. From then on, it became the norm to substitute imperial edicts for the law. Powerful officials could no longer bother with the Ministry of Justice to commit murder or confiscate property; as long as they obtained a note from the emperor, they could bring ruin to the entire court."

Zhu Dijun took a deep breath and gave a cold smile to the camera.

"Some viewers in the live chat were asking, since the civil officials are so bad, can't the emperor just reason with them?"

"Reasoning?"

Judy shook her head.

"Like his cousin Zhu Houzhao, who died tragically in the Leopard Chamber, Zhu Houcong understood a bloody truth better than anyone else. A young emperor ascending the throne—if he didn't want to be misled like Emperor Xiaozong, if he didn't want to be sold out like Emperor Jianwen, if he didn't want to become a pawn used and discarded on the officials' desks!"

His eyes instantly became more ferocious than those of a demon.

"We must use the most extreme form of dictatorship and the most brutal killings to wage a desperate and brutal life-or-death struggle against this group of civil servants who control the nation's resources and the power of discourse!"

The entire live stream room fell into dead silence, except for the phrase "fight to the death" echoing in the hall.