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

"Family members, at the end of the last chapter, I mentioned a word." Judy Jun drew a huge question mark on the whiteboard with a black marker, and then wrote three large characters heavily—[Shrine of the Gods].

"You might be completely baffled by this term. But it was actually the most crucial and disgusting fatal move by the civil officials in the second half of the Great Rites Controversy!"

Zhu Dijun tossed aside his pen, a cold smile playing on his lips as he approached the camera. "Those 180-plus lashes at Zuoshun Gate certainly broke the bones of those civil officials. But what are these scholars best at? Complaining! They even secretly believe that the emperor's use of violence to subdue us makes him a tyrant! In terms of law and propriety, we civil officials haven't lost at all!"

A floor plan of the Forbidden City instantly appeared on the large screen.

"But in the third year of Jiajing's reign, the eighteen-year-old Zhu Houcong directly used a physical-level level of mental pollution to drown the Ah Q spirit of these civil officials in a latrine!" A red laser dot suddenly nailed to a palace on the drawing—[Guande Hall].

"Jiajing ordered a grand royal procession to welcome the ancestral tablet of his biological father, Prince Xingxian, into the Forbidden City in a grand and imposing manner! Not only was it brought in, but the tablet was also to be enshrined in the Guande Hall with the utmost solemnity!" Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium.

"What does this mean?! It means that Jiajing Emperor directly transformed his biological father's legitimacy into a tangible, visible entity!"

He straightened up and spread his hands with a mocking expression.

"These cabinet ministers and ministers of the Six Ministries who constantly shout 'The patriarchal clan system must not be abolished,' have to stare blankly at the building enshrining Prince Xingxian through the red wall every day on their way to court. This is the emperor telling them in practice: My father is sitting in the Forbidden City enjoying the incense offerings! You bunch of bastards who have been flogged, even if your hearts are bleeding, you still have to kneel and pay your respects to my father every day! This is a double rape, both physical and spiritual!"

The Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao sat on the carpet in the Leopard Chamber, slapping his thigh and laughing wildly until tears streamed down his face.

"Wonderful! Absolutely amazing!"

Zhu Houzhao picked up his wine cup and drank it all in one gulp.

"These pedantic literati care nothing more than out of sight, out of mind. Hou Cong has simply shoved the memorial tablets right in their faces! From now on, anyone who dares to utter a single word that violates etiquette will be considered utterly disrespectful! This move is practically peeling off the faces of these civil officials and using them as insoles to stomp on!"

In modern live streaming rooms, viewers were equally thrilled by this kind of direct and aggressive approach.

"Extremely damaging and highly insulting! I give the Taoist priest full marks for this move!"

"After beating you, you'll still have to kowtow to my father's memorial tablet. Civil officials probably wish they were dead every time they went to court."

As Zhu Dijun watched the comments section, the cold glint in his eyes grew ever stronger.

"Feeling good? Think that's all? Naïve! This is merely physical occupation at best! What truly chilled the civil service group to the bone, making them feel as if their ancestral graves had been dug up, was the ultimate, devastating move that Jiajing was about to unleash!"

The large screen suddenly changed color, and a yellowed ancient book appeared as a blurry image crashed heavily in the center, with four large characters that stung the eyes—【Compilation Records】!

Throughout China's two-thousand-year history of feudal imperial power, there has always been an extremely strange tacit understanding between emperors and civil officials. The emperor held the sword, controlling life and death; while the civil officials held the pen, controlling the interpretation of history!

Judy Jun yelled at the top of her lungs.

"You killed me while I was alive, so after I die I'll write you in history books as a tyrannical ruler like Jie and Zhou! That's the ultimate confidence of civil officials in defying imperial power!"

He slammed his hand on the whiteboard.

"But Jiajing refused to believe it! Since the Great Rites Controversy had been won, I not only wanted my father to be enshrined in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, but I also wanted to give him a separate 'Veritable Record' in the official history of the country! He immediately issued an edict to start the compilation of the 'Veritable Record of Emperor Gongmu Xian'!"

"Not only that! Emperor Jiajing was wary of civil officials to the core! He knew all too well that if these scribes from the Hanlin Academy were to compile history, they might secretly use subtle and indirect methods to disgust his father. So he skipped the traditional selection of historians and specially approved Wang Jin, the Vice Minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices, to immediately go to the Imperial Historiography Office to specifically oversee the compilation of this Veritable Record!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers furiously typed on the keyboard, enlarging Wang Jin's name in bold.

"An official from the Court of Imperial Sacrifices directly interfered in the nation's most crucial historical compilation project! Jiajing used this extremely brutal method of seizing power to forcibly break the 'pen' upon which the civil service group depended for survival in two! He wanted to use official, black-and-white, irrefutable evidence to nail his father's legitimacy to the history books of the Ming Dynasty! Any civil official who wanted to overturn this verdict would be guilty of a capital offense of attempting to subvert the official history of the nation!"

The Yongle Era of the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Chengzu Zhu Di, who was originally furious because of the deaths of his soldiers, now looked at the sky and his eyes narrowed into an extremely dangerous slit.

He understood the value of this operation all too well. After he captured Nanjing through the Jingnan Campaign and ousted Emperor Jianwen, Qianlong's first act was to revise the "Veritable Records of Emperor Taizu," erasing all traces of Emperor Jianwen's existence and legally proving himself to be the rightful heir.

"What a ruthless kid..."

Zhu Di's lips curled into a cold smile tinged with admiration.

"Not only have they taken away the law and lives from their hands, but now they've even taken away their livelihood—their pen. These intellectuals, stripped of their right to compile history, are now suffering even more than if they'd been castrated!"

In the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel pierced deeper and deeper, drawing blood with each cut.

"Seizing power, establishing authority, and compiling history. After these three fires were ignited, the eighteen-year-old Jiajing Emperor had thoroughly fortified the bastion of imperial power. But were the external crises he faced resolved?"

Zhu Dijun pointed to the location of the southern map that he had just drawn on the whiteboard.

"It's not over! Family members, do you remember the great famine in the southern region I mentioned in the last chapter?! The severe drought of the third year of the Jiajing reign wasn't just limited to the southern region; it also affected Sichuan, Huguang, Guizhou, and other places, causing widespread suffering! The refugees of the Ming Dynasty are still struggling on the brink of life and death!"

"Although the civil service group was defeated and lost its right to compile history, their accomplices and interest groups hiding in Jiangnan are now lurking in the shadows, sharpening their knives! They are just waiting for the emperor to make a mistake, waiting for him to be extravagant, and then they will jump out again to use the excuse of 'divine retribution' to force the emperor to bow his head, firmly pinning the blame for the starvation of the people on Jiajing's head!"

A construction drawing of a Ming Dynasty palace was displayed on the screen.

"At that time, there was an extremely large royal project being prepared in the Forbidden City—the construction of Renshou Palace! A palace for Empress Dowager Zhang! This was a massive project that consumed an enormous amount of timber, bricks, and silver!" Zhu Dijun's eyes flashed with a terrifying light. "The south of the Yangtze River is in a state of famine, yet the emperor is still undertaking massive construction projects! This is practically handing the civil officials a handle to use against us! As soon as the first piece of Phoebe zhennan wood is transported into the capital, the very next day, a memorial demanding the emperor issue an edict of self-reproach could flood the Western Garden Academy!"

"But what did Jiajing do?!"

Judy Jun suddenly kicked over the chair next to him.

"He's even more cunning and shameless than these civil officials! He didn't give them a chance to draw their swords at all, instead employing a highly sophisticated form of reverse moral blackmail!"

A memorial from the Ministry of Works appeared on the large screen.

"After a secret meeting, the Ministry of Works and court officials proactively submitted a memorial to the Emperor: 'Your Majesty, Sichuan, Huguang, and Guizhou are currently suffering from famine, and the southern capital is experiencing a severe drought, leaving the people without food. Moreover, timber prices have skyrocketed, making it difficult to procure materials. We suggest that the construction of Renshou Palace be postponed or scaled back!'"

Judy Jun grabbed the gavel and slammed it down!

boom!

"Jiajing immediately approved: Granted! The construction of Renshou Palace is hereby halted entirely!"

"Family members! Did you understand how vicious this combo was?!"

Zhu Dijun's voice echoed in the live broadcast room, revealing a violent intensity that pierced through all hypocrisy.

"Was Jiajing truly concerned for the common people? He was using extremely forceful political tactics to seize the moral high ground that originally belonged to the civil officials!"

"Through the Ministry of Works, he told the whole world: I am a good emperor who puts the people first! Now that the south is suffering from disaster, I will not even repair the palace, and will give all the saved timber and materials to the people! I will lead the way in frugality!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera and poked his finger straight at the screen.

"This is tantamount to smashing a red-hot iron hammer right in the face of those Jiangnan gentry who are trying to exploit the drought! I've even halted the imperial projects, and what about you bunch of self-righteous officials?! Are your granaries open?! How much silver have you donated to the court?! If anyone dares to force me to issue an edict of self-reproach now, I'll send the Embroidered Uniform Guard to confiscate your property to fund the disaster relief!"

The era of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Youjian stared intently at the sky, his eyes bloodshot as if they were about to bleed. His hands gripped the armrests of the dragon throne tightly, and his whole body trembled.

Why didn't I think of such a tactic! Back then, when the Central Plains suffered a severe drought, the Donglin Party in Jiangnan pressured me daily in court to shut down the Eastern Depot and issue an edict of self-reproach. Not only did I foolishly comply, but I also completely cut back on the palace's expenses. And what did I get in return? The civil officials' demands only intensified!

"Magic defeats magic...the people come first..." Zhu Youjian's voice was hoarse, like that of a drowning man.

"He silenced the officials by making concessions, forcefully shifting the responsibility for the famine onto the local authorities! This is true imperial strategy!"

In the modern live broadcast room, millions of viewers were completely captivated by this extremely smooth and ruthless political game, and the barrage was filled with comments such as "Taoist Master is awesome" and "Political prodigy".

Zhu Dijun straightened up, adjusted his shirt collar, and his gaze gradually shifted from fervor to extreme coldness.

"Physical suppression, the crushing force of etiquette, the seizure of power through law and reason, and moral blackmail. In just three years, an eighteen-year-old boy, in this dilapidated house that had been exploited by civil officials and warlords, forged a path to absolute dictatorship."

He picked up the remote control on the table and pressed the power button. The large screen instantly plunged into a deathly darkness.