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

"Family members, be quiet."

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the big screen, not roaring wildly as before, but surprisingly calmly placing his hands on the podium and quietly watching the rapidly scrolling barrage of comments on the screen.

The screen was filled with all sorts of curses. People were cursing the Ming Dynasty court as utterly rotten, calling Jiajing a cold-blooded and ruthless tyrant, and Zhang Conggui'e a heartless and treacherous official. Some were even expressing their sympathy for Xue Liang, the whistleblower who died on the execution ground.

Once the barrage of comments subsided, Zhu Dijun picked up the blackboard eraser and casually wiped away the shocking verdict from the whiteboard.

"After reading this, don't you all think that Zhu Houcong was a bad person? Even I think that he wrongly killed innocent people in this matter, let genuine White Lotus rebels escape, and fabricated a false case that caused loyal ministers to die with their eyes open in disgrace."

Zhu Dijun's eyes suddenly became extremely sharp, like two knives piercing the lens.

"But my fellow family members, put away your overflowing sense of morality for now! We are dissecting the power structure of feudal politics, not reading some fairy tale of truth, goodness, and beauty! From the perspective of ordinary people, of course you think Jiajing was cruel! But, move your buttocks a little, sit on that dragon throne where fifteen to eighteen-year-olds had to sleep with their eyes open, and think about it!"

The images on the big screen suddenly changed.

Four extremely horrific images exploded on the screen simultaneously!

Top left corner: The Nanjing epidemic has left corpses strewn across the fields, but local officials are blocking the news while people are enjoying themselves.

Top right corner: A great famine struck Southern Zhili, with fathers and sons resorting to cannibalism. Meanwhile, wealthy gentry in Jiangnan hoarded goods and forced the people to surrender their land.

Bottom left corner: The Datong Mutiny, the Mongol Tatar cavalry rampage across the border, and the Ming border troops are so hungry that they cannot receive their monthly rations.

Bottom right corner: The Ganzhou Incident, in the name of factional strife, the civil officials used the knife of Turpan to imprison the Ming governor who was guarding the border!

Zhu Dijun frantically tapped on the four screens.

"Look at this hellish start! Since the Great Rites Controversy broke out, what have the civil officials done to keep this young emperor pinned down and turn him into a docile puppet?!"

"They let the plague rage in Nanjing! They deliberately created famine in Southern Zhili! They tipped off Mongolian smugglers on the border, letting wolves into the house! They even later ignited the massive Japanese pirate raids that plagued the southeastern coast for decades!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer from the podium and slammed it hard onto the whiteboard.

"These self-proclaimed upright officials, which one of them doesn't have the blood of the Ming people on their hands?! Have they ever cared about the truth? Have they ever cared about the common people? They only care whether the emperor obeys them!"

He stared intently at the camera, his voice low and hoarse.

"In such a chaotic arena, surrounded by wolves, what do you expect Jiajing to do? To act as a moral saint who can distinguish right from wrong? If Jiajing had actually followed the memorials of Ma Lu and those old party officials in the Li Fuda case and killed Marquis Guo Xun of Wuding, what would the result have been?"

A phantom image of a guillotine crashed onto the screen, with Guo Xun's name engraved on it.

"Guo Xun was the only nobleman in the entire Ming Dynasty who held military power in the capital garrison and clearly sided with Jiajing! He was Jiajing's only military island in this vast ocean of civil officials!"

"If Jiajing accepts the evidence and the so-called truth, then if he kills Guo Xun today, the civil officials can easily fabricate a charge and kill Wang Xian, the commander-in-chief of the three border regions, tomorrow! The day after tomorrow, they can completely strip the emperor of all military power! As long as the emperor dares to back down, he will immediately become a lonely ruler without any ability to resist!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly kicked over the chair next to him.

"In this life-or-death power struggle, Jiajing had no choice! On one side was a truth that could not be proven and a wrongful case involving ordinary people; on the other side was the absolute military backing he used to suppress civil officials! If you were in his shoes, what would you choose?!"

"To prevent his imperial power from being usurped and to avoid becoming a puppet manipulated by civil officials, Jiajing had no choice but to distort the truth! He had no choice but to blindly wield the executioner's blade, unjustly killing loyal officials! This was the underlying logic of Ming Dynasty politics! This was the price of power!"

Inside a modern live streaming studio.

The barrage of curses and insults that had been flooding the screen gradually slowed down after this extremely cold and realistic analysis.

Apart from a small group of trolls who keep shouting "No matter what, killing good people is tyranny" and "letting the White Lotus Cult go is being a foolish ruler," most netizens who put themselves in others' shoes suddenly felt a deep sense of powerlessness.

"If I were the Jiajing Emperor, I might also have protected Guo Xun. I cut off both my arms, and the next day I wouldn't even know how I died."

"This is the despair of a feudal court: either everyone succumbs to corruption, or everyone dies alone."

"This is so true. In the face of political interests, the truth is nothing but a fart. A long sigh escapes me; being an emperor isn't easy."

As Zhu Dijun looked at the understanding comments on the screen, a cold, bloodthirsty smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

He casually tossed aside the pointer and turned to write a few words heavily on the whiteboard.

"Family members, I once watched a very popular TV series. The male lead, known as 'Dog Li Chengyin,' was a fictional character, but one line he uttered pierced the very essence of all successful emperors in our country's more than two thousand years of feudal history!"

The writing on the whiteboard was as sharp as if carved with a knife and chisel, making one's eyes hurt.

The imperial throne is chillingly cold; how could one sit upon it if one's throne weren't even colder?

"That's what you call killing someone by breaking their spirit!"

Judy Jun pointed at the sentence and burst into laughter. "If you want to sit firmly in that chair, you have to put away all your pity, sympathy, and even conscience! You have to be more cold-blooded and ruthless than that piece of rotten wood! Because any emperor who wasn't cold-blooded enough would have long been devoured by those cannibalistic courtiers, leaving not even bone fragments!"

Just as Zhu Dijun was talking at length in the live broadcast room.

The era of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty.

Chang'an City, Taiji Palace.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of blood and an atmosphere of despair.

Li Chengqian, the deposed crown prince who had just been stripped of his title and imprisoned in a side hall after his failed rebellion, was sitting slumped on the cold bluestone slab with disheveled hair and empty eyes, waiting to die.

When he heard Zhu Dijun utter that famous quote about the imperial throne from the sky, Li Chengqian trembled violently.

Cold to the bone... Yes. This imperial power, this position of the Crown Prince, has it ever shown even a shred of warmth?

But then, when that extremely jarring name—"Dog Li Chengyin"—resonated throughout Chang'an, Li Chengqian's originally pale and numb face instantly contorted.

He suddenly raised his head, his leg, crippled from the fall from his horse, kicking wildly at the ground, his bloodshot eyes staring intently at the sky.

"Li Chengyin?!"

Li Chengqian's voice cracked, revealing extreme astonishment and absurdity.

"My full name is Li Chengqian! My fourth son is Li Tai! My ninth son is Li Zhi! Where the hell did Li Chengyin come from?! I actually have a younger brother named Li Chengyin?!"

The deposed crown prince suddenly turned his head and looked at the guards at the door, roaring like a madman.

"When was that old Deng born behind his mother's back?! He's been hiding outside for so many years, how come he's still so revered by later generations?!"

Meanwhile, inside the main hall of Taiji Palace.

Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, who had personally suppressed his own son's rebellion and was in a state of extreme grief and self-doubt, was wearily rubbing his temples.

The main hall was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

"The imperial throne is cold..."

Li Shimin pondered these words repeatedly, an indelible pain flashing in his eyes. The Xuanwu Gate Incident—the killing of his brother and the forcing of his father—and now his son was following his example. The blood on this dragon throne could never be washed away.

But it was in this extremely bleak atmosphere that...

Li Shimin's movements suddenly froze.

He suddenly straightened up from the dragon throne, and his eyes, which had once been sharp and decisive on the battlefield, now showed a rare look of bewilderment, as if he had seen a ghost.

"Changsun Wuji!"

Li Shimin shouted in a deep voice.

Duke Changsun Wuji of Zhao, who was waiting outside the hall, scrambled into the hall and knelt down with a thud.

"Let me ask you a question!"

Li Shimin pointed to the sky, his tone revealing a panic he himself was unaware of.

"What Li Chengyin? When did I ever have a son named Li Chengyin?! Even later generations are praising his imperial cunning? This dog... where did he get this title?!"

Changsun Wuji broke out in a cold sweat, frantically going over the genealogy of the Tang Dynasty royal family a hundred times in his mind.

"Your Majesty, I oversee the records of the Imperial Clan Court, and there is absolutely no prince named Cheng Yin! Could it be... could it be a lost treasure left behind by Your Majesty during your early campaigns?"

Changsun Wuji wiped his sweat and cautiously probed.

"fart!"

Li Shimin kicked over the incense burner beside him. "Do you think I don't know whether I've overlooked a talent?! Go! Immediately send the Hundred Cavalry to search the inner and outer courts thoroughly! Even if you have to dig three feet into the ground, find this Li Chengyin for me! I want to see who understands this cold dragon throne better than me!"

This extreme chaos was not limited to the Zhenguan era.

The timelines of Emperor Gaozu of Tang's Wude era, Emperor Gaozong's Xianqing era, and Emperor Xuanzong's Kaiyuan era.

All the emperors of the Tang Dynasty throughout history went completely mad.

Thick, brick-like imperial genealogies were slammed onto the emperor's desk. Countless officials from the Court of Imperial Clan Affairs worked through the night, burning the midnight oil to thoroughly examine the hundreds of years of collateral relatives, illegitimate children, and even adopted children of the Li Tang imperial family.

Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, Li Longji, in the Kaiyuan era stared intently at the list, gritting his teeth:

"To be able to summarize the art of rulership so thoroughly—just this one sentence shows that this person possesses an unfathomable depth of cunning! The Li family actually produced such a monster? Find him for me! See which ancestor committed this sin!"

The entire Tang Dynasty universe was plunged into a protracted search for Li Chengyin because of a novel protagonist's name that Zhu Dijun casually mentioned.

Inside a modern live streaming studio.

Zhu Dijun had no idea that a casual joke he made would cause such chaos for the emperors of the Tang Dynasty.

He crossed his arms and turned his gaze back to the timeline of the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty.

The scene on the big screen gradually changed from the bloody battles in the imperial court to a secluded, tranquil, and misty royal garden.

That place is talked about with great interest by countless people in later generations, yet it is also considered extremely eerie.

【Xiyuan Study】.

"Family members."

Judy Jun's voice returned to its cold yet magnetic quality.

"The Li Fuda case was the final aftershock of the Great Rites Controversy. Through this tragic case of calling a deer a horse, the eighteen-year-old Jiajing Emperor completely tamed the Ming court."

"The backbone of the civil officials was broken, the disobedient border generals were imprisoned, and Xun Gui, who held military power, was forced to become a loyal dog. This vast empire finally became his plaything."

"And he was then able to realize his ambitions as emperor. This was historically known as the 'Jiajing Reforms!'"