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 asked you, who is the next thorn in the side the civil service group wants to kill?"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the whiteboard, watching the screen filled with wildly scrolling comments.

"It's definitely Zhang Cong and Gui E! These two are rising stars in the etiquette debate, and the civil officials practically want to tear them apart!"

"It must be Yang Yiqing! He's the one who started the Great Japanese Invasions!"

["I'm guessing Yang Shen! These people are ruthless when they start biting each other!"]

Judy Jun looked at the names, a cold, extremely mocking smile curling at the corner of his mouth. He grabbed the blackboard eraser, casually scribbled a couple of times on the whiteboard, and then moved directly close to the camera.

"What you're guessing are merely pawns on the table. This time, the civil official group is going to kill a top military commander who directly sides with Jiajing and wields real power in the Beijing Garrison of the Ming Empire! They want to use an extremely absurd and monstrous case to sever Jiajing's strongest arm!"

He slammed three large characters into the center of the whiteboard with a red marker: 【Li Fuda】!

"Dear family members, especially those of you born in the 80s and 90s who enjoy reading online novels, if you've read the masterpiece of time-travel novels set in the Ming Dynasty, 'Back to the Ming Dynasty to Be a Prince,' you'll definitely recognize this name. The main antagonist in that book, the leader of the White Lotus Cult who relentlessly battles the protagonist and even stirs up trouble in the capital, is him!"

A faded, ancient wanted poster was slammed onto the big screen.

"Li Fuda! Also known as Li Wu or Li Wu, a native of Guoxian County, Shanxi Province. The most dangerous criminal wanted by the Ming Dynasty! In his early years, he organized the White Lotus Rebellion and was arrested and exiled after the incident. But this old bastard managed to escape from prison multiple times using his miraculous escape skills! In the end, he even changed his appearance, changed his name to Zhang Yin, and through spending money to buy his way into becoming the commander of Taiyuan Guard!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers flew across the keyboard, and a complex web of relationships unfolded on the screen.

"A high-ranking criminal of the imperial court not only laundered his identity but even infiltrated the system to become a high-ranking official! How did he do it? Because he climbed up to an unassailable patron!"

A red line connects directly from Li Fuda's name to another glittering title—[Marquis Guo Xun of Wuding]!

"Who is Guo Xun? He is a descendant of a founding hero of the Ming Dynasty! More importantly, at the height of the Great Rites Controversy, when all the civil officials in the country were pressuring Jiajing to compromise, Guo Xun was an extremely rare military official who unequivocally supported Jiajing's claim to have a biological father—a staunch royalist! Jiajing used him as an absolute trump card to control the civil officials!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, a terrifying glint in his eyes.

"Li Fuda, who used the alias Zhang Yin, was extremely clever. Knowing that he had no clean background, he directly used a trick of 'divine arts,' which was essentially a charade of alchemy and medicine making, to cling tightly to Guo Xun's coattails. The two were inseparable."

"But the truth can never be hidden forever! In August of the third year of the Jiajing reign, this time bomb finally exploded!"

The large screen split in two, and on the left appeared a phantom image of a commoner dressed in plain clothes—Xue Liang.

"Xue Liang, a native of Xugou County, Shanxi Province, was once a debtor of Li Fuda. Driven to desperation by Li Fuda's repeated demands for repayment, Xue Liang went directly to Bi Zhao, the governor of Shanxi Province, and reported: 'Zhang Yin, the current commander of the Taiyuan Garrison, is none other than Li Fuda, the leader of the White Lotus Rebellion!'"

Judy Jun let out a sneer.

"At this point, the case was still at the local level. When Governor Bi Zhao investigated, he discovered that it involved the Marquis of Wuding in the imperial court, and immediately backed down. He casually found an excuse of insufficient evidence and released Zhang Yin without charge. If the matter had ended there, it would have been just a case of grassroots corruption. But in July of the fifth year of the Jiajing reign, the entire case underwent a devastating and earth-shattering reversal!"

A guillotine stained with black blood filled the screen.

"In the fifth year of the Jiajing reign, Censor Ma Lu took office as the circuit inspector of Shanxi! This guy was an extremely hardcore and stubborn man. He unearthed Xue Liang's old case and, despite all the pressure, thoroughly reinvestigated it. Through numerous face-to-face confrontations with witnesses, Ma Lu obtained irrefutable evidence, arrested Zhang Yin on the spot, and confirmed that he was indeed Li Fuda!"

"Logically speaking, capturing the leader of the White Lotus Sect and reporting it to the court would have been enough to have him beheaded. But Ma Lu did something that directly ignited the powder keg of factional strife in the Ming Dynasty court!"

Judy Jun suddenly kicked over the chair next to him.

"Ma Lu not only sentenced Li Fuda to death, but he also submitted an extremely crucial impeachment memorial, directly targeting Marquis Wuding, Guo Xun! The charges were: protecting traitors and disrupting the law! Intending to rebel!"

"As soon as this memorial was sent to the capital, the entire civil service group went wild! The Censorate immediately reviewed it, and Minister of Justice Yan Yishou, Left Censor-in-Chief Nie Xian, and all the old party members who had been suppressed by Jiajing during the Great Rites Controversy all jumped out to support Ma Lu!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, speaking at a rapid pace like a machine gun firing off bullets.

"Family members! Do you understand this group of civil officials' scheme to wipe out the emperor's entire family?! They don't care at all whether Li Fuda is a member of the White Lotus Religion! They just want to use this case to pin a treason charge on Guo Xun! Killing Guo Xun is like severing Jiajing's right arm in the army! It's like telling the whole world: anyone who dares to support the emperor during the Rites Controversy will have their entire family punished!"

The era of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Wuzong Zhu Houzhao sat on the carpet in the Leopard Chamber, the imperial wine in his hand spilled all over his clothes, but he didn't bother to wipe it off, his eyes bloodshot as he stared at the sky.

"These pedantic scholars, unable to defeat the emperor, resort to undermining him."

Zhu Houzhao gritted his teeth and sneered.

"They're better than anyone at using the guise of righteousness to carry out political purges—a tactic of using others to do their dirty work."

Inside the modern live stream room, the chat was also flooded with comments from viewers.

"This is outrageous! They've escalated a minor public order case to a treason charge!"

"This is a meat grinder of factional infighting! The White Lotus Sect will use anything to kill political enemies!"

"Could Jiajing tolerate this? If Guo Xun were killed, who would dare to serve Jiajing in the future?"

"Of course, Jiajing could not tolerate this!"

Zhu Dijun yelled at the top of his lungs, frantically drawing circles on the whiteboard with his red pen.

Faced with the combined assault of the civil official group, Marquis Guo Xun of Wuding was terrified and scrambled to Jiajing Emperor's side, weeping and pleading. He cleverly avoided mentioning Li Fuda's case, clinging to one point: "Your Majesty! They don't want to kill me; they're retaliating because I supported you during the discussion of rites!"

Four extremely glaring, blood-red characters slammed onto the public screen: 【Advanced Trial】!

"The Jiajing Emperor was furious! He immediately ordered the case to be transferred to Beijing for retrial! And look at the top-notch judicial team that Jiajing sent!"

Three portraits of people dressed in scarlet official robes appeared side by side on the screen.

"Zhang Cong! Gui E! Fang Xianfu! They're all the emperor's most loyal rabid dogs during the Great Rites Controversy! Jiajing directly parachuted these three in, giving them control of the Ministry of Justice, the Censorate, and the Court of Judicial Review respectively! Let them handle the trials!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly smashed a water cup prop on the podium with a deafening bang.

"This isn't a trial! This is pure blatant misrepresentation! This is an extremely violent 'obedience test' conducted by the Jiajing Emperor on the civil service!"

"After Zhang Cong and Gui E took over the case, they completely disregarded how solid Ma Lu's chain of evidence was. You say Zhang Yin is Li Fuda? I'll argue he isn't! They directly stripped dozens of high-ranking officials of the second and third ranks, including the original trial censor Ma Lu, the Minister of Justice Yan Yishou, and the Left Censor-in-Chief Nie Xian, and threw them all into the imperial prison!"

The piercing screams echoed in the background at the bottom of the live stream.

"Severe torture! Beat them to death! Under Zhang Cong's torture, the truth of the entire case was completely reversed! The final verdict from the three judicial departments was: Zhang Yin was not Li Fuda at all, but was maliciously framed by Xue Liang! Ma Lu and others, out of personal grudges, deliberately implicated Marquis Guo Xun of Wuding, creating a massive miscarriage of justice!"

A deathly stillness of extreme violence churned in Judy Jun's eyes.

"The laws of the Ming Dynasty, caught between imperial power and factional strife, became nothing more than a piece of waste paper, barely useful for wiping one's own backside. This shocking case, known in history as the 'Disaster of the Nobles,' ultimately yielded a devastating verdict!"

Lines of judgments flowed down the screen like blood.

"Li Fuda, a notorious White Lotus Sect criminal who used the alias Zhang Yin, was acquitted in court and reinstated to his original position as Commander of the Taiyuan Garrison!"

"Xue Liang, who dared to stand up and report the crime, was executed on the spot for false accusation!"

"Censor Ma Lu, who upheld impartiality in handling cases, was stripped of his official rank and exiled to the frontier as a soldier, never to be pardoned!"

"Yan Yishou, Nie Xian, and more than forty other court officials involved in the case were all demoted, dismissed from their posts, and had their homes confiscated!"

"And Zhang Cong and Gui E, who acted as the emperor's henchmen in this massacre, rose to the pinnacle of power because of their 'meritorious service in exonerating the guilty'!"

The era of the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang gripped the dragon-carved armrests of the throne tightly, his fingernails oozing crimson blood. His chest heaved violently, his eyes fixed on the "acquittal" verdict displayed on the screen.

"Turning black into white... For the sake of factional strife, they even let treacherous Taoist priests go free! And exiled honest officials who investigated the case!" Old Zhu was so angry that he kicked over the imperial desk in front of him. "This is the court of our Ming Dynasty! This is the kind of civil officials and emperors who keep talking about propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame! The laws of the world have all become chamber pots for their power struggles!"

Inside the live stream, the audience was equally utterly shattered by this absurd verdict.

"Xue Liang was so tragic. He offended the White Lotus Sect and ultimately died on the execution ground of the Ming Dynasty."

"Calling a deer a horse! This is the real 'calling a deer a horse'! Even if the emperor wants you dead and the evidence is conclusive, it's still a frame-up!"

"Jiajing's move completely uprooted the foundation of the rule of law in the Ming Dynasty."

As Zhu Dijun watched the frenzied online comments, he slowly withdrew his hands from the podium and straightened his wrinkled shirt collar. The horrific images on the big screen gradually faded, turning into a dark gray hue imbued with extreme black humor.

"Family members, do you think this is the darkest moment in the history of Ming Dynasty politics?"

He picked up a marker and wrote down a distant year in the far corner of the whiteboard—[the 45th year of the Jiajing reign].

"What goes around comes around, and no one escapes the judgment of Heaven. This injustice, utterly crushed by power, was finally exposed by Heaven itself forty years later, just as Jiajing was about to close his eyes and the Ming Empire was on the verge of collapse!"

A battle report with an extremely ironic tone landed in the center of the screen.

"In the forty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign, a devastating peasant uprising broke out in Sichuan. Its leader was named Cai Boguan. The Ming army, after a tremendous effort, captured Cai Boguan. In the death row cell, the presiding judge asked him: 'From whom did you learn your sorcery?'"

Zhu Dijun's voice revealed a suppressed, maniacal laugh.

Cai Boguan confessed without hesitation: "My master was from Shanxi, and his name was Li Tong!"

"The presiding judge followed the clues and investigated Li Tong's ancestors for eighteen generations. Guess what they found out?"

Zhu Dijun suddenly turned around, his finger pointing directly at the camera like a sharp sword.

"Li Tong's biological grandfather! He was Zhang Yin, the Taiyuan Guard Commander who was personally confirmed by the Jiajing Emperor as a false accuser, acquitted, and reinstated! He was also the genuine leader of the White Lotus Sect—Li Fuda!"

boom!

The entire internet fell silent instantly! Countless viewers felt a chill run straight to the top of their heads, even through their screens.

"Forty years ago, those forty-odd civil officials who were exiled, had their homes ransacked, and were beaten to death in court—the truth they uncovered through their desperate efforts was all absolutely true! Li Fuda was a monster! Guo Xun was protecting a traitor! Ma Lu didn't frame anyone! Xue Liang didn't make any false accusations!"

"For forty years! Li Fuda's family received official salaries from the Ming Dynasty and continued to spread the White Lotus Rebellion peacefully under the very nose of the Ming, until his grandson raised the banner of rebellion once again!"

Judy Jun kicked the whiteboard over with a loud bang.

"After the Longqing Emperor ascended the throne, Censor Pang Shangpeng presented this irrefutable truth to the court. The court had no choice but to reluctantly exonerate this massive miscarriage of justice that had spanned half a century. Ma Lu, Yan Yishou, and their ilk were posthumously reinstated."

"But what good is that! Everyone's long dead! Even the bones have rotted to ashes!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly against the edge of the podium, the light casting his shadow long on the wall.

"This is the Ming Dynasty! This is the political ecology of the Jiajing era, where there are no bottom lines, only factionalism and life and death. In order to maintain his absolute authority, the emperor did not hesitate to trample the law into the cesspool. Civil officials did not hesitate to gamble with national security in order to defeat their political enemies."

He suddenly lowered his voice, as if possessed by a demon.

"The Li Fuda case was just a small piece of bone that fell out of this meat grinder. After Jiajing used his power to suppress the court and control the writing of history, he could finally move into the Western Garden with peace of mind."