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

"Family members, before we talk about Li Chen, I have a question for you."

Zhu Dijun drew two little figures on the whiteboard with a black marker. He wrote "Jiajing" on the left and "Li Chen" on the right.

"One ascended the throne at fifteen, fighting his way out of the encirclement of civil officials. The other ascended the throne at thirty-six, feigning insanity for thirty years under the threat of eunuchs. What do you think these two people have in common?"

Various answers flooded the comments section.

"Are they all masters of political maneuvering?"

"Did they all work on ZTE?"

"Both are correct! But there's only one crucial common point—"

Judy Jun drew the same crown on the heads of the two little figures.

"They were all trying to reverse the fate of the entire nation on the ruins of an empire that was rotten to the core, relying solely on the wisdom and skill of the emperor."

On the large screen, the map of the situation in the late Tang Dynasty looked like a torn rag.

"By the time of Li Chen, the Tang Dynasty was already terminally ill. Regional warlordism was rampant—local military governors ruled independently, and central government orders could not even leave Chang'an. Eunuchs held absolute power—the military power of the Shence Army was firmly in the hands of eunuchs, and the deposition and enthronement of emperors were decided by them. The Niu-Li factional strife—the civil officials in the court were divided into two factions, constantly bickering and neglecting all their duties."

"How similar are these three major challenges to the situation faced by the Jiajing Emperor?"

Zhu Dijun counted on his fingers.

"Jiajing faced a civil service group that monopolized the discourse—Li Chen faced a regional military governor and eunuchs who monopolized military power. Jiajing faced the factional strife of the Great Rites Controversy—Li Chen faced the Niu-Li factional strife. Jiajing's decrees were met with passive resistance at the grassroots level—Li Chen's imperial edicts were treated as worthless by the regional military governors."

"But what's remarkable about Li Chen is that his starting point was ten thousand times more hellish than Jiajing's!"

Li Chen's resume popped up on the screen.

"This guy was treated like a fool from a young age. He was bullied, ostracized, and treated like he was invisible in the palace. Emperor Wuzong of Tang even tried to kill him several times. He survived for thirty-six years by feigning madness. Until the sixth year of Huichang, the eunuch Ma Yuanzhi, in order to find an easy-to-control puppet, took him out of the temple and put him on the throne."

Judy Jun let out a cold laugh.

"The eunuch thought he had picked up a well-behaved yet foolish puppet. But the moment Li Chen sat on the dragon throne, his thirty-six years of pretense were shattered in an instant!"

"His first move was to strike the eunuchs. Although he failed to regain control of the Shence Army, he used extremely skillful balancing act to suppress several of the most arrogant chief eunuchs. This tactic was exactly the same as Jiajing's withdrawal of the garrison eunuchs!"

"The second blow was to end the Niu-Li factional strife. Li Chen used the most direct method—to banish all the core figures of the Niu and Li factions from the court! Whether you are Niu Sengru or Li Deyu, as long as you participated in the factional struggle, get out of Chang'an!"

"The third strike, and the most brilliant one, was the recapture of lost territory!"

Zhu Dijun clapped his hands suddenly, and three place names lit up on the big screen.

"Hehuang! Qinzhou! Yuanzhou! These three former territories of the Tang Dynasty, which had been occupied by the Tibetan Empire for decades, have all been reclaimed by Li Chen! The banners of the Tang Dynasty are once again flying on the walls of Longyou!"

The era of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty.

Inside the Taiji Palace, Li Shimin looked at the three place names that had been lost and then recovered on the sky, and his fingers, which were tightly gripping the armrests of the dragon throne, loosened slightly.

"Hehuang..."

Li Shimin's voice was deep and complex.

"The land I conquered back then, I lost and then took it back. These descendants of mine have certainly not disgraced me."

In the modern live stream room, the barrage of comments was filled with "The Little Emperor Taizong lives up to his name".

But there was not a trace of admiration on Zhu Dijun's face.

"Alright. That's all for the awesome parts. Now let's see how this 'Great Harmony' died."

He drew a black frame around the little figure of Li Chen on the whiteboard.

"The Jiajing New Policies were implemented and then halted repeatedly, and in the end, Zhang Juzheng was the only one who managed to patch up the problems. What about Li Chen's Dazhong Era? He didn't even live to see Zhang Juzheng! In the thirteenth year of Dazhong, Li Chen died from taking elixirs. He was fifty years old."

"Upon his death, the true nature of the Tang Dynasty was immediately revealed! His successor, Emperor Yizong, was a notorious spendthrift, abolishing all policies and halting all reforms. The eunuchs launched a counterattack instantly, and the separatist rule of the regional military governors intensified. Just over a decade later, the Huang Chao Rebellion broke out, and the Tang Empire collapsed with a bang!"

Zhu Dijun drew an even bigger red cross outside the black frame.

"From the death of Emperor Li Chen to the fall of the Tang Dynasty, only fifty years passed. His so-called 'Great Zhongzhi Era' was essentially just the last gasp of the Tang Empire! A dying man suddenly sits up and drinks a bowl of porridge before his death, and those around him think he is getting better, but he dies the next day."

Why?

Zhu Dijun stared intently at the camera.

"Because Li Chen made the exact same fatal mistake as Jiajing—all his reform achievements were built on the emperor's personal diligence and political maneuvering!"

"He didn't change any system! The regional military governors were still regional military governors, the eunuchs were still eunuchs, and the imperial examination was still the one controlled by powerful families. He just temporarily put these messes under control with his own energy and skill."

"He reigned for thirteen years, so diligent that he often neglected to eat. But could he remain so diligent for the rest of his life? Could he guarantee that the next emperor would be as wise as him?"

On the whiteboard, Zhu Dijun drew an equal sign between Jiajing and Li Chen.

"Jiajing Emperor suppressed the civil officials for thirty years through his personal political maneuvering, at the cost of retreating to the Western Garden to cultivate Taoism, exhausting himself to the point of near death. Li Chen suppressed the regional military governors and eunuchs for thirteen years through his personal diligence, at the cost of dying from consuming elixirs."

"And what was the outcome? As soon as Jiajing died, the politics of the Longqing and Wanli reigns immediately reverted to the old path of civil officials dominating the country. As soon as Li Chen died, the Tang Dynasty perished within fifty years."

"The two men used different reform methods, implemented them with different levels of force, and faced different enemies. But the reasons for their failures were exactly the same—"

Zhu Dijun wrote eight characters below the equals sign.

Strongman politics ends with the death of the leader.

"Relying on a wise emperor to save a corrupt empire is a dead end from the start. Because you can produce one wise emperor, but you can't produce ten. You suppress the vested interests of this generation, and the next generation will immediately make a comeback."

"Is there a reform that doesn't rely on strongman politics and attempts to fundamentally solve the problem at the systemic level?"

The live stream was silent for a few seconds.

Zhu Dijun turned around, wiped the whiteboard clean, and then wrote a name very slowly.

There are many strokes, and he writes with great effort, each stroke like it's carved on a stone tablet.

[Wang Anshi].

"Yes. But its ending was a hundred times more tragic than that of Jiajing and Li Chen combined."