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

"Family members, we just discussed the Li Yangfeng case and the dispute over the imperial edict. Do you think this was just Jiajing and Lin Jun vying for power?"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the whiteboard, and with a heavy stroke of his black marker, violently extended the timeline he had written earlier to the left.

"In the meat grinder of politics, conflicts never erupt in isolation! Behind this case lies another extremely brutal and terrifying disaster that directly pushed the Ming Dynasty court to the brink of collapse!"

The large screen was instantly shrouded in a suffocating, deathly gray. Four blood-red characters were slammed onto the screen—【Nanjing Epidemic】.

"In the second year of the Jiajing reign, at the turn of spring and summer! Just as Yang Tinghe and his civil official group were putting the Jiajing Emperor under immense pressure during the Great Rites Controversy, an extremely terrifying plague broke out in Nanjing, the southern capital and secondary capital of the Ming Dynasty!"

The timeline is frozen between April and July.

"How did the historical records describe it at the time? In six words: 'The number of soldiers and civilians who died was enormous!' Because it was summer, the high temperature and humidity caused the plague to spread like wildfire, turning the entire city of Nanjing into a veritable living hell!"

The large screen displays a faded portrait of an ancient official.

"There is one person we must remember during this great epidemic: Lü Yan! He was the Tongpan of Yingtian Prefecture at the time, which is equivalent to the current deputy mayor of Nanjing."

A hint of heaviness flashed in Zhu Dijun's eyes.

"What did the central government of the Ming Dynasty do in the face of this apocalyptic plague?"

Zhu Dijun let out an extremely grating sneer. "Jiajing has just ascended the throne, and the cabinet and the Six Ministries are busy vying with him for the title of his biological father. Faced with the great epidemic in the Southern Capital, the court's solution was to issue a flimsy edict ordering local officials to 'provide extra care and comfort.' Not a single tael of silver was allocated for disaster relief! Not a single dedicated medical rescue team was dispatched! The immense burden of disaster relief and epidemic control has fallen squarely on the shoulders of local officials like Lü Yan!"

"What did Lü Yan do? He didn't hide in the government office! He personally pushed a cart, distributing food and water to the disaster victims and refugees in the city. Every day, he walked among those patients with festering sores and vomiting blood! He managed to snatch three-tenths of the refugees back from the clutches of death with extremely limited resources!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the table, his voice hoarse.

"And what was the outcome? Lü Yan himself contracted the plague and died on the spot! A dutiful local official of the Ming Dynasty was worn down and died on the front line of the fight against the epidemic!"

The era of the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang gripped the armrests of the dragon throne tightly, his knuckles cracking. He looked at the minor prefect named Lü Yan on the sky, his eyes reddening.

"Well done, a good official."

Old Zhu gritted his teeth, his murderous aura uncontrollably radiating outwards.

"But those Grand Secretaries and Ministers of the Six Ministries in the central government, who argue endlessly in court over titles every day, just stand by and watch the people of Nandu die?! Watch our good officials of the Ming Dynasty lose their lives?!"

Inside the modern live-streaming studio, Zhu Dijun's gaze instantly shifted from somber to extremely violent and ruthless.

"Family members, do you really think that Yang Tinghe and his group of civil officials are so preoccupied with the Great Rites Controversy that they don't care about the fate of Nanjing?"

He suddenly grabbed a red marker and wrote three large characters on the whiteboard in a flamboyant style: "[Edict of Self-Reproach]!"

"This is the civil service's favorite, most practiced, and most insidious political tactic when facing natural disasters!"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back and frantically drew circles on the three characters "Edict of Self-Reproach" with a laser pointer.

"In China's more than two thousand years of feudal history, the Confucian civil service group had long ago turned the concept of 'interaction between Heaven and humanity' into the ultimate noose around the neck of imperial power! Whenever drought, flood, or especially plague occurred, the civil officials would immediately jump out and point their fingers at the emperor, scolding him: 'This is your misconduct! This is punishment from Heaven! You must issue an edict to admit your mistake!'"

Records of self-reproach edicts from various dynasties flashed rapidly across the screen.

"The Han Dynasty was the peak period for edicts of self-reproach! In 163 BC, Emperor Wen of Han encountered a solar eclipse and a plague, and was forced to issue an edict of self-reflection. In 48 BC, there was a great flood and plague in Guandong, and Emperor Yuan of Han issued an edict of self-blame, even reducing the emperor's food rations! By the time of Emperor Cheng of Han, tens of thousands of people had died of disease, and the emperor was forced not only to issue an edict of self-reproach, but also to directly dismiss Chancellor Xue Xuan!"

Zhu Dijun spoke at an extremely fast pace, like a barrage of machine gun fire.

"The Song Dynasty was even more amazing! The civil officials of the Song Dynasty perfected this system! When Emperor Taizong of Song encountered floods and epidemics in Henan, he led the way by wearing washed old clothes. When Emperor Renzong of Song encountered locust plagues and epidemics, he went even further, removing four characters from his imperial title and changing the reign title to appease the wrath of heaven!"

"This man-eating tactic of forcing abdication through natural disasters became a death sentence by the end of the Ming Dynasty! Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, issued six edicts of self-reproach during his seventeen-year reign! In the sixteenth year of his reign, a great plague struck the capital, while Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong expanded their influence wildly outside. Chongzhen was forced by his officials to issue repeated edicts of self-reproach. In the seventeenth year of his reign, when Li Zicheng's army was at the gates of the city, the edict Chongzhen left before hanging himself on Coal Hill was the last blood-stained and tearful self-reproach of the Ming Dynasty!"

In a parallel universe, in the first year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Youjian, who was busy reviewing memorials, was struck dumb when he heard from the sky that he had hanged himself on Coal Hill. The vermilion pen in his hand fell to the ground with a "crack" and shattered into pieces.

"I... hanged myself?"

Zhu Youjian's eyes widened, and cold sweat poured down his body. He turned to look at the cabinet ministers who spouted benevolence and morality but only knew how to make him issue an edict to admit his mistakes when things went wrong, and an uncontrollable murderous intent surged in his eyes.

In the live broadcast room, Zhu Dijun slammed his pointer on the whiteboard, striking the timeline loudly!

"The logic of history all makes sense now!"

"Family members, take a look at this fatal timeline from the second year of the Jiajing reign!"

The red laser dots flickered wildly on the screen. "The Nanjing Massacre broke out in the spring and summer, from April to July! And when did the 'Imperial Edict Dispute' sparked by the Li Yangfeng case erupt?"

Zhu Dijun stared intently at the camera and roared, "A leap April! That is, from the end of May to the beginning of June! It happens right at the peak of the Nanjing epidemic, when the number of deaths was at its highest and the news caused a huge upheaval in Beijing!"

The timelines on the big screen overlapped instantly, like two bloody guillotines held tightly to the neck of the fifteen-year-old boy!

The live chat exploded.

"Holy crap! The timing is perfect!"

"This is no coincidence! This is clearly a series of deadly attacks launched by Yang Tinghe's group at a precise time!"

"So many people died in Nanjing, and the civil officials didn't care. Were they waiting to use the dead as bargaining chips to force the emperor to abdicate?!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hands on the podium, leaning forward like a hungry wolf that had seen through all pretense.

"Within this Forbidden City, the Jiajing Emperor displayed an extraordinary political acumen that would have left even his ancestors in awe!"

"The moment Jiajing received the reports of the Nanjing plague and Lü Yan's death in battle, this fifteen-year-old boy didn't hesitate for a second; he immediately saw through Yang Tinghe's next deadly move!"

Zhu Dijun's finger jabbed heavily between the "Edict of Self-Reproach" and the "Great Rites Controversy".

"The civil service group had already written their script! They planned to use the Nanjing plague as a ready-made 'divine punishment' to launch a full-scale attack in the court! As long as they insisted that the plague was caused by the emperor violating etiquette and angering Heaven during the 'Great Rites Controversy,' Jiajing would have to issue an edict of self-reproach!"

"As long as Jiajing admits his mistake, the Great Rites Controversy will be a complete failure! His own father will never be allowed to enter the Imperial Ancestral Temple!"

A huge X was drawn on the whiteboard with a black marker!

"But! Yang Tinghe had planned everything perfectly, but he hadn't anticipated that this young Taoist priest wouldn't play by the rules at all!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly kicked over the wastepaper basket next to him.

How did Jiajing break the deadlock? He simply flipped the table!

"He deliberately stirred up trouble over the Li Yangfeng case, using the pardon of a death row inmate to ignite the 'Imperial Edict Law Dispute'! He wanted to seize the power to interpret the highest laws of the Ming Dynasty in an extremely forceful manner before the civil service group could use the Nanjing epidemic to launch an attack!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes were filled with fanaticism and ferocity, and his roars echoed in the live broadcast room.

"You think you can use the will of Heaven to suppress me? I'll use imperial power to trample your laws underfoot first! I can even overturn a death sentence in the Ministry of Justice with an imperial edict. I'm the living ancestor of the Ming Dynasty! Who dares to use the dead in Nanjing to force me to issue an edict of self-reproach? Whoever dares to force me, I'll send them directly to the Imperial Guard prison with an imperial decree!"

In a parallel Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao took a big gulp of strong liquor and laughed until tears streamed down his face.

"Good lad! What a damn bastard to turn the tables!" He slapped his thigh.

"These old fogies wanted to use the plague as a trap, but Zhu Houcong directly used death row inmates to break it! He caught them completely off guard! That's what you call true imperial strategy!"

In the modern live broadcast room, millions of viewers were stunned by this intricately linked and deadly political scheme.

Judy stood up straight and straightened her collar, which was slightly disheveled from excitement.

He stared coldly at the illusory image of Xiyuan Abode on the big screen, his voice suddenly turning cold.

"Family members, in the summer of the second year of the Jiajing reign, the Li Yangfeng case was merely a pretext; the Nanjing plague was a powder keg. The fifteen-year-old Jiajing Emperor, with extreme power and ruthless political maneuvering, stifled the carefully prepared 'edict of self-reproach' by the civil service group before it even reached its nascent stage!"

"He won the debate over the imperial edict. He preserved his ground in the Great Rites Controversy."

Zhu Dijun threw the two markers, one red and one black, directly into the trash can.

"But this is only defense. This Taoist Emperor has never been one to simply take a beating without fighting back."

The image on the big screen suddenly changed.

Inside the West Garden Abode, wisps of smoke curled. Fifteen-year-old Zhu Houcong sat cross-legged on a futon, flipping through a register in his hands.

Zhu Dijun's tone became as soft as a ghost, yet it carried a chilling murderous intent.

"He survived the Great Rites Controversy, seized power, suppressed local mutinies, and stabilized the famine in the north. He even used imperial power to resist the ultimate weapon, the divine plague, that the civil official group had unleashed."

"Since your civil service group has played all its cards."

An extremely abrupt countdown lit up in the center of the screen.

"Then, it's Jiajing's turn to retaliate."

Zhu Dijun gets close to the camera.

"Family members, do you know what the most violent, unreasonable, and destructive tool for purging power in the Ming Dynasty was?"

The screen went completely black instantly.

Only a scarlet line of blood remained, like the tongue of a venomous snake slowly slithering across the screen.

"Third year of Jiajing reign. Zuoshun Gate."

"That was the most desperate day for the civil service group in the two-hundred-year history of the Ming Dynasty."