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

"Family members, the ancestral tablets in the shrine are in place, the historical compilation project of the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Gongmu Xian' is under our control, and even the great famine in Jiangnan that attempted to force the emperor to issue an edict of self-reproach was forcefully thwarted by Jiajing's reverse moral blackmail!"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the live broadcast booth, his red laser pointer drawing circles wildly on the big screen, completely encircling the four characters "[Jiajing Third Year]".

"The climax of the Great Rites Controversy has now temporarily entered a period of calm. The eighteen-year-old Daoist priest Zhu Houcong has finally gained a foothold in this leaky Forbidden City. But!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his gavel down, producing a deafening bang.

"You think it's over once you've gained a foothold? You've been bullied and humiliated for three whole years. The civil service even colluded with the Mongol Tatars beyond the Great Wall, using border wars and lives to force him to admit defeat. Can Jiajing tolerate such a deep-seated hatred?!"

He grabbed a black marker and drew a sharp, slashing mark in the center of the whiteboard.

"Now that the Great Rites Controversy is over, it's time to settle the blood debts of the Datong Mutiny and the Mongol invasion! Today, let's see how Zhu Houcong wielded his cold-blooded and ruthless counter-attack sword in this mess that was thoroughly infiltrated by the civil service and wealthy smugglers!"

The image on the big screen instantly switched to a defense map of the nine major border towns of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Dijun's finger was poking directly at the coordinates of "Datong" and "Xuanfu".

"The first blow! A political purge! Under the pretext of border troubles, they uprooted the entire opposition to the Great Rites Controversy!"

"As we mentioned earlier, in the third year of the Jiajing reign, the Mongol Khan's youngest son and his general Altan Khan frequently raided Datong. There was definitely the involvement of civil officials and border smuggling rings. Was Jiajing some kind of fool in the deep palace cultivating immortality? He knew better than anyone!"

Zhu Dijun spread his hands with a cold smile.

"Faced with the desperate situation of Datong's fall, the governor's assassination, and the border defenses in complete disarray, a weaker emperor would probably have issued an edict of self-reproach, reflecting on whether he had angered Heaven. But how did Jiajing characterize it?"

Four large, blood-red characters were displayed on the public screen: 【Forming cliques and engaging in favoritism】!

"Jiajing Emperor issued an edict directly in court: This is not a natural disaster or external threat at all! This is a man-made disaster caused by your factionalism, deceiving the Emperor, and shirking responsibility among your officials!"

A list of Ming Dynasty officials marked with red crosses by cinnabar appeared on the large screen.

"He used the border setbacks as a perfectly legitimate pretext to launch an extremely frenzied purge of frontline generals and local officials!"

"Weren't those mutinous soldiers in Datong causing trouble? Jiajing didn't waste any words with them! He directly dispatched a large army to forcibly suppress them, massacring the soldiers who led the mutiny in droves! And what about those civil officials who were causing trouble in the rear in Datong, and who were shouting every day in the capital that they didn't recognize their fathers? Arrest them!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly kicked the edge of the live broadcast platform.

"Dereliction of duty? Imprisonment! Embezzlement? Flogging in court! Opposition to the Great Rites Controversy? Using the pretext of inadequate border defense, they were all demoted and exiled! In just a few months, the entire bureaucratic system of the northern border of the Ming Dynasty was stripped bare! Those opposition officials who once followed Yang Tinghe in cheering were swept out of the court like garbage by Jiajing using this 'thunderous might'!"

The era of the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang sat on the dragon throne, looking at the long list of demoted officials on the sky, and couldn't help but clap his hands and laugh.

"Good! Well done! Well done!"

A bloodthirsty glint shone in Old Zhu's eyes.

"These pedantic scholars dare to use the lives of border soldiers to force the emperor's abdication; let them taste the swords of the border themselves! Using their opponent's strength against them—this kid's imperial tactics are increasingly reminiscent of our Zhu family!"

Inside the modern live stream room, the chat was equally buzzing.

[“Taoist Master: You dare to use the Mongols to disgust me, so I'll use the Mongols as an excuse to ransack your homes!”]

"This is a masterful use of a borrowed knife to kill! The pretext of the Great Rites Controversy is not good for killing, but once the blame for the border defense failure is placed on him, who dares to talk back?"

"This is a political maneuver that can be used to achieve a devastating victory! This 18-year-old's actions are more ruthless than those of an 80-year-old fox!"

As Zhu Dijun watched the comments, the cold glint in his eyes did not diminish in the slightest. He picked up the blackboard eraser and wiped the list off.

"Fellow family members, purging the court is only the first step! Faced with the Mongols eyeing the border with predatory intent, Jiajing has unleashed his second move, which is also the most controversial national policy in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty and the one most harshly criticized by civil officials!"

Two bold, powerful characters were written heavily on the whiteboard: 【Absolutely No Tribute】!

Faced with the requests from the young prince and Altan Khan for so-called "tribute and trade," which meant the Mongols hoped to exchange ironware, grain, and cloth through official trade, the Jiajing Emperor's response was only four words—a stern refusal!

A portrait of a Mongol envoy is split in two on the screen.

"The imperial court directly declared: the Mongols are 'deceitful and cunning'! The so-called tribute and trade were nothing but a trick to swindle the Ming Dynasty out of its resources! Jiajing not only completely closed the horse markets on the border, but later even ordered the on-the-spot execution of any Mongol envoys who came to demand tribute!"

"And what about the specific tactics?"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and lashed it hard onto the city wall map on the border defense map.

"Jiajing Emperor issued several extremely strict imperial edicts, ordering border generals to immediately repair the border walls and fortify the fortresses! He completely established a tactical principle—[to fortify the walls and not engage in battle]!"

"No matter how the Mongol cavalry taunts us from the outside, no matter how they clamor beyond the Great Wall! The main force of the Ming Dynasty must all retreat into the fortresses to defend! We absolutely will not allow a decisive battle between our main forces and the Mongol cavalry in the open field!"

The live stream chat immediately split into different opinions.

"Isn't this just cowardice? Where has the spirit of the Ming Dynasty gone?"

"Killing the envoy and then implementing a scorched-earth policy—isn't this just pushing the Mongols too far and making them plunder even more fiercely?"

["According to historical records, it was Jiajing's disapproval of trade that led to the Gengxu Incident, which resulted in the siege of Beijing!"]

Seeing these questioning comments, Zhu Dijun suddenly burst into an extremely arrogant and mocking laugh!

"A cowardly turtle? Pushing the Mongols too far? Leading to the Gengxu Incident?!"

He slammed the pointer to the ground and stomped on it.

"This is a huge, infamous stain that those civil officials who controlled the interpretation of history books, along with those pedantic Confucian scholars who compiled the History of Ming during the Qing Dynasty, forcibly pinned on the Jiajing Emperor, a stain that has been smeared on him for over a hundred years!"

The background of the large screen instantly turned blood red, and four lines of shocking words slammed into everyone's faces.

【Prepare for Autumn Every Year】!

[Robbed every year!]

Without trade, there is no way to survive!

[Jiajing Emperor's Faults]!

Zhu Dijun pointed to these lines of text, his eyes like a sharp blade that had seen through all the hypocrisy in the world.

"Traditional historians, and the summaries written in textbooks, always like to blame the decades-long mess in the northern border of the Ming Dynasty entirely on Jiajing's 'severance of tribute' policy. They say that because Jiajing was narrow-minded, because he brutally killed envoys, and because he refused the possibility of peaceful trade, the Mongol tribes had no way to survive if they didn't rob, which led to the vicious cycle of the Ming Dynasty's northern border being raided every year during the autumn harvest."

Zhu Dijun's face appeared extremely ferocious under the cold light of the screen.

"Pah! It's all political blame-shifting! It's all utter nonsense and illogical nonsense designed to confuse the public!"

"Family members! Open your eyes and look at the history of this land of China! Even without Jiajing's ban on tribute, even if the Ming Dynasty had opened its doors wide, would these nomadic tribes have refrained from robbing?!"

He suddenly turned around and quickly wrote two dazzling names on the whiteboard—[Emperor Wu of Han] and [Emperor Chengzu of Ming]!

Inside the Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty, Liu Che, who had been frowning, suddenly raised his head upon hearing his name.

In the Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di also perked up, staring intently at the sky.

"The agrarian civilization of China and the nomadic civilization of the north fought for over two thousand years for resources and living space! Only with the overwhelming power of modern industrial revolution weapons did a brief period of peace emerge!"

Zhu Dijun's roar echoed in the live broadcast room.

"Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, fought the Xiongnu for forty-four years! Was it because the Han Dynasty wouldn't allow trade with the Xiongnu?! Wrong! It was because even if you made peace through marriage, even if you paid tribute, even if you opened border trade, as soon as a snowstorm on the grasslands froze the cattle and sheep to death, those people on horseback would immediately turn their backs on you, brandishing their scimitars to plunder the grain and women of the Central Plains!"

Liu Che slapped his thigh and roared, "That's right! These steppe wolves can't be tamed! Giving them trade is giving them an opportunity to amass weapons!"

"And then look at Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di!"

Zhu Dijun pointed his finger directly at the screen, "Five campaigns against the northern deserts! He utterly crushed the Tatars and Oirats! Why did Zhu Di wage war? Was it because he was petty?! It's because those nomadic peoples are inherently plunderers! The moment the Central Plains show the slightest sign of weakness, they'll pounce like wolves and tear at your throat!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes filled with a violent and aggressive aura.

"To pin a two-thousand-year-old civilizational and geopolitical conflict, and the inherent aggression of nomadic peoples for survival, all on a Ming emperor who refused to compromise! What is this if not political scapegoating?!"

"Why did these civil officials and historians write it this way?"

As Zhu Dijun's fingers tapped on the keyboard, a massive network of interests unfolded on the screen.

"Because of Jiajing's ban on tribute, the ultimate source of wealth for these Jiangnan compradors and Shanxi merchants in the north was severed! The so-called 'tribute trade' was just the government paying for peace. Where did all those large quantities of iron pots, grain, and silk come from? They all came from the workshops of these smuggling tycoons, sold at inflated prices through the government's accounts!"

"Once the trade market opens, civil officials can embezzle silver in the imperial court, border generals can accept bribes, and smuggling merchants can openly sell the Ming Dynasty's strategic resources to the Mongols! Everyone makes a fortune in this so-called 'peaceful trade market'! The only loser is the Ming Dynasty's imperial court, whose treasury has been drained!"

"Jiajing saw right through this utterly disgusting cycle of self-interest! He wasn't stupid; he knew how rotten the Ming army was now, and fighting the Mongols in open battle would be suicide. So he preferred a scorched-earth policy, even letting the Mongols plunder a few villages outside the city, rather than using the Ming treasury's silver to feed these treacherous smugglers and steppe wolves!"

The millions of viewers in the live stream were shocked by this extremely grand and bloody dissection of interests, leaving them scalp tingling.

The doubts on the screen vanished instantly, replaced by an overwhelming wave of amazement and sudden realization.

"Incredible! Border trade is actually a form of legal smuggling and money laundering!"

"The conflict between nomadic and agricultural societies that has lasted for thousands of years is all because Jiajing Emperor refused to provide anything. Those historians are so damn greedy!"

"This Taoist priest has overturned the table of the entire interest group!"

Zhu Dijun straightened up with a cold smile and adjusted his collar.

"Bearing this infamous burden for all time was just one of the prices Jiajing paid for rebelling against the civil service. Now that the foreign trade route had been cut off, in order to plug the loopholes in the Ming Dynasty's border defenses, Jiajing had to turn his attention back to the military."

The image on the large screen slowly dimmed, revealing only a portrait of a Ming Dynasty military general with a cold expression.

"The third year of Jiajing's reign was just the prelude to the purge. By the fourth year of Jiajing's reign, a ruthless figure, dedicated to carrying out the emperor's will, was about to be pushed by Jiajing to the highest command position of the nine border defense lines."

Zhu Dijun's voice was like a chilling wind.

"An ultimate covert war for control of the Ming Dynasty's military has only just begun."