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

"Family members, in the previous dozens of episodes we have been talking about the details of the Zhengde reign—Liu Jin's audit of accounts, the reform of salt permits, the centralization of copper mines, and the imperial order to rob. Now let's piece these pieces together and take a look at the big picture to see just how crazy the fifteen-year-old Zhu Houzhao was doing."

Zhu Dijun stood up and erased all the writing on the whiteboard that read "Jiajing New Deal," replacing it with an even more ferocious line of red characters—"Zhengde Reform."

"The Jiajing reforms were merely patching things up within the existing system; in essence, they were like a fever reducer. The fever subsided, but the root of the problem remained. But the Zhengde reforms were completely different."

He forcefully drew three lines under the characters for "new policy".

"What Zhu Houzhao and Liu Jin were trying to do was bypass the entire civil service system and establish a completely new mechanism for the operation of the state! This is not reform, this is revolution!"

On the large screen, the core measures of Zhengde's new policies were enlarged one by one.

"First, reduce redundant staff. This is superficially the same as the Jiajing New Policies, but the scale is completely different. Liu Jin also laid off hundreds of thousands of redundant staff, but he didn't just lay off the lower-level bannermen and laborers; he even dared to dismiss high-ranking positions like the Governor-General of the Three Border Regions of Shaanxi! This is equivalent to not only laying off temporary workers, but also getting rid of all the top executives!"

"Secondly, suppress hereditary privilege. Jiajing later also implemented restrictions on hereditary official appointments, but Liu Jin's version was even more extreme—without military merit or political achievements, even if your father is a Duke, your son can forget about directly becoming an official! This directly struck a nerve with the entire nobility and civil service families!"

"Third, and most crucially, is the thorough surveying of state-owned farmland, the recovery of illegally occupied government land, and a strict investigation into salt merchants' hoarding!"

Zhu Dijun rested his hands on the table.

"We've discussed this in detail before. During the Zhengde era, there was a deficit of 627 million shi (a unit of dry measure) in Huguang (Hubei and Hunan provinces), a hole of 28 billion! Hidden silver in Guangdong, piles of cash in Fujian, and a 60 tael gold treasury in Wuzhou! Liu Jin wasn't reforming; he was digging up graves! He was shoveling up the embezzled funds and filth that the civil service group had buried underground for decades!"

Someone in the live chat asked a pointed question.

"Brother Jun, what are the core differences between the Zhengde New Policies and the Jiajing New Policies?"

"Good question!" Judy Jun clapped her hands.

The difference boils down to four words—execution path!

He drew two lines on the whiteboard.

"The Jiajing New Policies followed the proper channels. The emperor issued an edict, the Grand Secretariat drafted a proposal, the Six Ministries implemented it, and local authorities carried it out. The entire process operated within the civil service system. Therefore, civil officials could obstruct you at every step, reduce the scope of the policy, or outwardly comply while secretly opposing it."

"What path did the Zhengde Reform take? The Inner Depot! The Eastern Depot! The Embroidered Uniform Guard! The emperor's private intelligence agencies bypassed the Six Ministries, sending their elite agents to the provinces to kick open the doors of the governor's offices and begin investigating accounts and confiscating property!"

Zhu Dijun's voice rose.

"That's why the civil service's reaction to the Jiajing reforms was one of passive resistance—because you were using my channels, and I have a million ways to block them. But their reaction to the Zhengde reforms was—a mutiny and assassination! Because you didn't even use the existing channels; you dug a new one to sideline me! You're digging up my foundation! What else would I be waiting for but to fight you to the death?!"

In a parallel timeline of the second year of the Zhengde reign in the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Leopard Chamber, Zhu Houzhao heard this explanation and slowly drew his long sword half an inch from its sheath.

He looked down at his reflection in the blade of the sword.

A fifteen-year-old's face.

"Ōtomo, later generations say that what I did was an attempted coup."

Zhu Houzhao chuckled softly, a bitterness barely concealed in his smile.

"I, the Emperor, am staging a coup within my own kingdom. I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear this."

On the sky, Zhu Dijun continued to poke downwards.

"The Zhengde New Deal also included a core reform that has been deliberately overlooked by traditional historians—the regional adjustment of the number of candidates for the imperial examinations!"

"Liu Jin increased the number of candidates admitted through the imperial examinations in northern provinces, especially Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan. Do you all remember the data I mentioned earlier? Zhejiang and Jiangxi accounted for half of the successful candidates in the Ming Dynasty's officialdom! Zhu Houzhao and Liu Jin were trying to break this monopoly!"

"Using northern scholars to dilute the proportion of southern civil officials in the court will fundamentally undermine the imperial examination hegemony of the Jiangnan and Jiangxi factions! This move is a hundred times more politically valuable than executing ten corrupt officials!"

Zhu Dijun took a sip of water and slowed down his speech.

"There are two other reforms buried in the corners of historical records. First, Zhu Houzhao established the Imperial Mining Bureau in Yunnan to mint Zhengde Tongbao coins with high silver content, attempting to establish a royal financial system centered on silver and challenge the paper money controlled by civil officials. Second, he tacitly approved of or even supported smuggling merchants along the southeast coast, but on one condition: they had to bring official fleets along."

"Did you all understand? Zhu Houzhao was already trying to break the maritime ban controlled by the smuggling groups in Jiangnan five hundred years ago! He was trying to lead the Ming Dynasty's imperial navy to the seas!"

The barrage of comments exploded instantly.

"They wanted to open up the seas five hundred years ago! If they had succeeded, the Ming Dynasty would have been the protagonist of the Age of Exploration!"

"No wonder the civil officials wanted to kill him; the government opening the seas directly threatened the lifeblood of smuggling rings!"

Zhu Dijun shook his head with a cold smile.

"But all of this came to an abrupt end in the fifteenth year of the Zhengde reign. Zhu Houzhao, at the age of thirty, drowned in Qingjiangpu and died the following year."

He picked up the blackboard eraser and very slowly erased the four characters "Zhengde New Deal" stroke by stroke.

"With the death of the ruler, the government's policies ceased. In order to gain the support of the civil service group in the Great Rites Controversy, the succeeding Jiajing Emperor completely negated the political legacy of the Zhengde reign. He killed Jiang Bin, abolished the Leopard House, and shut down the Inner Depot, sweeping away all the achievements of the Zhengde New Policies. Then, through three years of bloody battles at Zuoshun Gate, he painstakingly wrested back some power from the civil service, and then used the fever reducer of the Jiajing New Policies to prolong his life."

"Did you see that? Zhengde's sword was a hundred times faster and a hundred times more ruthless than Jiajing's, but what was the result? Once a person died, everything was gone. Jiajing's fever reducer, though mild, couldn't cure the Ming Dynasty's root cause, and in the middle and later stages, it was still like a cycle of death."

Judy wrote a huge question mark on the whiteboard.

"Why? Why did both violent revolutions and moderate reforms end in failure in the Ming Dynasty?"

"The answer to this question does not lie in the Ming Dynasty."

He turned around abruptly, grabbed the remote control, and changed the screen display.

A map of the Tang Dynasty's territory was suddenly unfolded.

"Family members, let's broaden our perspective beyond the Ming Dynasty. Let's look at another empire from the same historical period, and see how an emperor almost identical to Jiajing, faced the same dire situation, staged a similarly anticlimactic farce of restoration."

In the center of the screen, a portrait of an emperor wearing a Tang Dynasty crown and with a deep expression slowly appeared.

The name below the portrait caused the pupils of all the Tang Dynasty emperors in countless worlds to shrink simultaneously.

Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, Li Chen.

"The man who was later known as 'Little Taizong'."