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

"Family members, most of you probably have never even heard of Ma Fang, the general on the right side of the Ming Dynasty whose eyes are like those of a hungry wolf in the wilderness."

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the whiteboard, toying with a black marker in his hand. On the large screen, Ma Fang's cold and weathered portrait exuded a powerful sense of oppression.

"but!"

Judy Jun slammed the gavel down.

"If I were to take a peerless war god from the Han Dynasty and compare his resume with that of this Ming Dynasty border general, you would find that history is like a giant cycle!"

Four large, golden characters crashed onto the public screen—【General Wei Qing】!

The myriad realms and timelines, the Great Han Dynasty's Weiyang Palace.

Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, who was holding a wine cup and sulking, suddenly had his eyes flash with an extremely fanatical light when he heard this name!

"Wei Qing?!"

Liu Che suddenly stood up, the hem of his dragon robe flipping up the bamboo slips on the table.

"In this later Ming Dynasty, someone actually dares to compare himself to my Grand Marshal and General?!"

In Liu Che's eyes, Wei Qing was the soul of the Han army! A peerless hero who fought seven battles against the Xiongnu, stormed Longcheng, and recovered the Hetao region! How could such a figure emerge from the chaotic mess created by the civil officials of the Ming Dynasty?!

Inside the modern live broadcast studio, Zhu Dijun gripped the podium tightly with both hands, staring intently at the camera.

"Let's first look at Wei Qing's starting point! An illegitimate child! A stable boy in Princess Pingyang's household! He was at the very bottom of the Western Han society! It was only because his sister, Wei Zifu, entered the palace and was employed by Emperor Wu of Han that he was able to complete the ultimate reversal from slave to great general. With his absolute knowledge of the Xiongnu cavalry tactics, he forged the iron backbone of the Han Dynasty!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly pointed to the portrait of Ma Fang on the screen.

"And Ma Fang? This guy's start was ten thousand times more hellish than Wei Qing's!"

The large screen instantly went black, and accompanied by the howling of a biting wind, lines of bloody text appeared on the screen.

"Ma Fang, courtesy name Dexin, was from Weizhou! That is, today's Wei County, Hebei!"

Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly rose.

"Ten years old! An age when a modern child is still in elementary school! Ma Fang's hometown was razed to the ground by Mongol cavalry, and he was taken as war booty to the borderlands, becoming a slave of the Mongols!"

The chat in the live stream froze instantly.

"How could a ten-year-old Han Chinese slave survive on that grassland where people devoured each other? He slept with livestock every day and ate the leftovers from the Mongols! But this kid had the blood of a Ming Dynasty soldier flowing in his veins! Not only did he not die, but he also honed his unparalleled horsemanship and archery skills during those hellish years!"

A phantom image of the Mongol Khan in danger crashes onto the screen.

"And then something even more magical happened! During a hunt on the grasslands, the Mongol Khan Altan Khan was suddenly attacked by a tiger, and all his guards were terrified! At this critical moment, Ma Fang, who had been reduced to a slave, drew his bow and shot an arrow that pierced through the tiger, saving Altan Khan's life on the spot!"

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

"Anda Khan was overjoyed and immediately offered him extremely high treatment, wanting to keep him on the grasslands as a trusted confidant! But family, how did Ma Fang choose him?!"

"Faced with wealth and glory, this tough man, whose ancestral home was etched into his bones, seized an opportunity. Taking advantage of the Mongols' relaxed vigilance, he single-handedly raced hundreds of miles through the endless yellow sands of the borderlands, managing to escape back to the Great Wall defense line of the Ming Dynasty!"

The entire internet is absolutely in an uproar!

Millions of viewers were deeply moved by the similarity of this historical event and Ma Fang's extremely unyielding integrity.

"Holy crap!! This is even more outrageous than a protagonist in a wish-fulfillment novel!"

"Kidnapped at ten, he saved the enemy chieftain with an arrow, refusing wealth and status, and rode back home alone! This is truly the backbone of the Chinese nation!"

"The Ming Dynasty version of Wei Qing truly deserves the title! Both started as slaves, both were well-versed in nomadic warfare tactics; the gears of history have completely overlapped here!"

"After escaping back to the Ming Dynasty, Ma Fang didn't take the imperial examinations, nor did he associate with corrupt officials!" Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and drew a line of blood shooting straight up into the sky on the whiteboard. "He started directly from the lowest rank of a soldier on the border! Because he had been enslaved by the Mongols for over a decade, he understood the tactics and strategies of the Mongol cavalry better than any civil official in the Ming court, or even any Minister of War!"

A thick, yellowed book unfolds on the screen—the Biography of Ma Fang in the History of Ming.

Zhu Dijun read out the evaluation left by the Qing Dynasty historian, word by word.

"He fought against hundreds of enemies, large and small, sustaining dozens of wounds, yet he always achieved great victories against overwhelming odds... His fame resounded throughout the borderlands, making him the foremost general of his time!"

"Over a hundred brutal hand-to-hand battles! Dozens of deep, bone-revealing knife scars on his body! Unlike Peng Ze, who secluded himself to achieve some kind of subspace victory, he always led a small elite force out of seclusion to hunt down Mongol cavalry!"

Judy Jun suddenly kicked over the chair next to him, his eyes filled with fanatical light.

"In the end, even Altan Khan, whom he had saved years before, would turn tail and run the moment the main Mongol force heard Ma Fang's banner! The Mongols even used his name to frighten children on the grasslands, calling him—'Grand Tutor Ma'! The Left Commander-in-Chief of Xuanfu in the Ming Dynasty became the most impregnable flesh and blood barrier on the northern defense line throughout the Jiajing and Longqing periods!"

The era of the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes reddened, and he slammed his hand heavily on the imperial desk, making the imperial seal jump.

"What a fine Grand Tutor Ma! What a pillar of the Ming Dynasty!"

Old Zhu's voice was hoarse and excited.

"He became a slave at the age of ten, yet he never forgot his ancestors! He bore dozens of wounds while protecting our Great Ming Dynasty! This is what a soldier of our Great Ming should be like! Such a man of unwavering integrity deserves to be ennobled and appointed prime minister!"

Inside the Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty.

Liu Che clapped his hands and laughed heartily, then drank the strong wine in the cup with great relish.

"Excellent! I haven't tarnished the prestige of my former position as Grand Marshal! Slaves rise up, a bloody battle rages on the grasslands! Although the Ming Dynasty is full of corrupt and scheming officials, there are still men among the lower-ranking military officers!"

In modern live streaming rooms, the barrage comments have completely turned into one-sided worship of Ma Fang.

But Zhu Dijun stood in front of the whiteboard, crossed his arms, and abruptly posed a soul-searching question.

"Family members, after hearing about Ma Fang's illustrious achievements, don't you all think that since he's so amazing, the Jiajing Emperor must have rewarded him with an extremely cool imperial sword, allowing him to execute orders on the border without prior approval?"

He gave a cold laugh and uttered two words with extreme cruelty.

"No!"

A huge red X popped up on the screen instantly, directly erasing the phantom image of the Shangfang Sword.

"Why wasn't a war god of Ma Fang's caliber granted an imperial sword?"

Zhu Dijun's fingers tapped frantically on the whiteboard.

"First of all! Don't be fooled by TV dramas! The Ming Dynasty didn't actually begin granting Shangfang swords to generals on a large scale until the Wanli reign! In the Jiajing reign, the Shangfang sword was an extremely rare political favor!"

A picture of a civil official in his crimson robe was smashed onto the screen.

"Ever since the Tumu Crisis, the Ming Dynasty has been developing in a direction where civil officials are valued more than military officials. Even if the Jiajing Emperor were to issue the Imperial Sword, it would be given to a civil official like Wang Xian, who held the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Three Border Regions! Although Ma Fang was a fierce warrior, he was, after all, the Commander-in-Chief of Xuanfu, a pure military general on the front lines! Even if the entire civil official group of the Ming Dynasty were to die out, they would never agree to hand over the sword, which symbolized the emperor's supreme power of life and death, to a soldier who was born a slave!"

A wave of discontent immediately erupted in the live chat, with many criticizing the Ming Dynasty's prejudice.

"but!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly roared, suppressing the anger of the entire internet.

"Does Ma Fang need that piece of junk to prove herself?! Absolutely not!"

Four extremely imposing characters occupy the entire screen: 【Powerful Authorization】!

"As the commander-in-chief of Xuanfu, Ma Fang was in charge of guarding this region. Just how high was his prestige in the army? He could execute cowardly officers and punish unruly soldiers without needing to request permission from the court! With a single stroke of his blade, not a single person in Xuanfu would dare utter a sound!"

Zhu Dijun approached the camera, his eyes filled with arrogance.

"The Jiajing Emperor's trust in him didn't need a sword as decoration! What Jiajing gave him was the extremely rare power of discretion!"

"Ma Fang, with a very small force, fiercely attacked the main Mongol army at Malianbao. Afterwards, Jiajing Emperor not only did not listen to the slander of the censors and suspect him of abusing his power, but also praised him highly! The court gave him a great deal of autonomy in his strategy against the Mongols and never hindered him! This is a license to kill that is a hundred times more powerful than the imperial sword!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and pointed it heavily at Ma Fang's portrait.

"The imperial sword is merely a cloak of power bestowed by the system! But in the northern frontier during the Jiajing reign, Ma Fang himself, with his sword stained with the blood of Mongols, was a living, breathing, peerless imperial sword!"

The viewers in the live stream were completely ignited by this extremely hardcore analysis.

"Well said! Strength is the best weapon!"

"A true god of war like him doesn't need a cheap, decorative sword to intimidate people!"

"The Taoist priest is still clear-headed on this point; he knows who the real, formidable dog is."

As Zhu Dijun looked at the screen full of comments, the fervor on his face gradually subsided, replaced by an extreme coldness.

He picked up the blackboard eraser and gently circled Ma Fang's name.

"Family members, in the entire history of the Ming Dynasty, there was actually more than just Ma Fang as the Ming Dynasty version of Wei Qing."

On the blank space of the whiteboard, as Zhu Dijun wrote rapidly, one unfamiliar yet iron-blooded name after another appeared.

"Zhou Shangwen, Ma Yong, and Liang Zhen from the Zhengde to the Jiajing reigns! Chai Guozhu, Ma Gui, and Dong Yiyuan from the Wanli reign!"

These six names are like six boundary markers, firmly nailed to the screen.

"Like Ma Fang, they had no fancy civil service backgrounds, nor the intrigues and machinations of court politics. They were pure warriors, using their own flesh and blood to fill the gaping holes in the defenses created by the smuggling and corruption of the civil service!"

Zhu Dijun dropped the marker, pressed his hands firmly against the edge of the live broadcast console, and his eyes became extremely suppressed.

"The Ming Dynasty has never lacked tough guys, nor has it lacked unparalleled generals who can beat the brains out of foreign enemies. Emperor Jiajing did indeed hold two trump cards in his hands, one civil and one military, Wang Xian and Ma Fang."

The image on the big screen suddenly fell into a deathly gray silence.

A pair of sinister eyes, hidden in the shadows and dressed in court attire, appeared and disappeared in the gloom.

"But do you really think that with these generals, Jiajing can peacefully cultivate immortality in his lofty Western Garden Abode, and that the world will be at peace?"

Zhu Dijun's voice was like a cold wind blowing from an ice cellar.

"How could the civil officials, whose backbone was broken by Jiajing at Zuoshun Gate and who lost their official positions in the border purge, possibly stand by and watch the military group rise again? Since the Mongols outside cannot force the emperor to bow down."

"Next, the Ming Dynasty's imperial court will witness the most surreal and heinous internal power struggle in Chinese history!"