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

The large screen suddenly went black.

The pause lasted less than three seconds.

The entire live stream chat was instantly flooded with a blinding, violent crimson color!

The dense barrage of comments flooded the screen like a tsunami, completely obscuring Judy Jun's face.

"Eternal rest to the teacher!"

"May the Duke of Zhou live forever!"

"May General Zhu rest in peace!"

"That was an era of overwhelming dominance! Those were the greatest launch day players in human history!"

"Strongman politics is nothing! The teachers are following the people's line! They've truly handed over the power to overturn the table to the lowest levels of society!"

"Everyone before us was just patching things up, but they smashed that man-eating old table to pieces and built a new skyscraper!"

The screen is filled with red, conveying a kind of fervor and shock that transcends time and space and strikes the soul.

The Qin Dynasty, Xianyang Palace.

Ying Zheng stood alone on the high Dan Chi platform, looking up at the fiery red barrage of bullets in the sky.

He didn't understand what "launch players" meant.

But he could understand the soul-stirring reverence and admiration that countless descendants held for those names behind those words.

That fervor even surpassed the cheers the Qin people hurled at him when the Qin cavalry swept across the six states.

"Instructor? Duke Zhou? General Zhu?"

Ying Zheng pondered these somewhat strange titles repeatedly, a smug smile creeping onto his hard lips.

"Excellent! Among my descendants, there have indeed emerged peerless strongmen capable of shattering the old shackles. I unified the six kingdoms, standardized cart axles and written language. It seems these descendants have accomplished what I have, or even surpassed,!"

The Great Han Dynasty, Weiyang Palace.

The old rogue Liu Bang sat imposingly on the couch, holding a half-eaten lamb leg in his hand, pointing at the sky and marveling at it.

"E'xu, look at this commotion. Could it be that someone in later generations has truly accomplished something as great as the Qin Emperor?"

Empress Lü sat to one side, gently stroking Crown Prince Liu Ying's head. Her phoenix eyes, which had seen through countless court intrigues, shone with an extremely sharp light.

"Your Majesty, judging from the reactions of future generations on the celestial screen, it is not difficult to see that this man known as the 'Instructor' has successfully navigated that dead end. And he has been extremely successful, far surpassing the current state of our Great Han."

Liu Bang threw the lamb leg bone on the ground and hastily wiped the grease off his mouth.

As a "player" who started playing the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang knew all too well what the Han Dynasty's foundation was.

The Han dynasty inherited the Qin system.

No matter how many different ways later Confucian scholars criticized Qin Shi Huang's tyranny, Liu Bang knew perfectly well that Qin Shi Huang's absolute centralized system was the true foundation for a dynasty that would last for ten thousand generations.

However, when the Han Dynasty was first established, in order to appease the arrogant generals and local nobles who had followed him in conquering the country, he had no choice but to reluctantly implement the system of parallel prefectures and kingdoms, cutting off more than half of the pure Qin system.

As for the group of civil officials in the Ming Dynasty mentioned in the sky?

Liu Bang let out a cold laugh filled with utter contempt.

"A bunch of nouveau riche and gentry who spout empty words of benevolence and morality while secretly engaging in illicit sexual acts! In my hands, such people don't even deserve to sit at the table! If any teacher in later generations can manage to discipline these beasts, I will respect him as a true man!"

During the Yuanshou era of the Han Dynasty.

Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, held a wine cup, his gaze fixed on the summary table on the sky that read "Reforms Failed".

The young Emperor Taizong of Tang failed.

Wang Anshi of the Song Dynasty failed.

The Zhengde and Jiajing emperors of the Ming Dynasty both failed.

These emperors, who struggled within the system, ultimately all died under the soft knife of the bureaucratic machine.

"Strongman politics..."

Liu Che chuckled coldly in a low voice.

"When I implemented the Edict of Grace, established state monopolies on salt and iron, and cracked down on corruption, which of these measures wasn't enforced by force with the hilt of my sword? Without my swift blade, those powerful merchants and tyrants would have long since emptied the Han Dynasty out of its coffers!"

Liu Che strongly endorsed strongman politics. But he also knew that once he passed away, who could control those people?

He was extremely curious.

How did those people from later generations, who didn't even have the title of emperor, manage to carve out a path to survival in this dead end?

The second year of the Xining era of the Great Song Dynasty.

Inside the main hall of the imperial palace in Bianliang, the atmosphere was so oppressive it felt like it was about to freeze.

Emperor Shenzong of Song, Zhao Xu, sat slumped on the dragon throne, his face ashen, with Zhu Dijun's words, "The patient died on the operating table," still echoing in his ears.

Wang Anshi stood upright in the center of the hall, staring intently at the sky.

His Green Sprouts Act and Market Exchange Act, the reforms he poured his heart and soul into, ultimately resulted in decades of factional infighting and the complete demise of the Song Dynasty.

"His Majesty."

Wang Anshi's voice was hoarse, but his back remained perfectly straight.

"Since reform has proven to be a dead end, I want to see what kind of earth-shattering methods future teachers will use to break this age-old impasse!"

The Ming Dynasty, the eleventh year of the Hongwu reign.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang paced back and forth like a raging tiger, his hands behind his back.

His mind was filled with all the messy things Zhu Dijun had mentioned before.

The "compensation system" implemented during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Ming directly cut off the Ming Dynasty's national defense logistics, exchanging the lives of border soldiers for the silver of civil officials and merchants in Jiangnan!

The civil service was so focused on factional struggles that they even protected the White Lotus Rebels!

"These vermin that seem impossible to eradicate!"

Zhu Yuanzhang slammed his fist into a pillar, his knuckles going numb from the impact.

He didn't want to wait any longer.

He didn't even want to wait for Biao'er or Zhu Di to succeed to the throne.

Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly stopped and stared intently at the red barrage of images on the sky.

He wanted to seize the opportunity of having absolute power to carry out a thorough reform during the Hongwu reign, so as to eliminate all the civil officials' future escape routes by pouring molten iron on them!

"We want to hear just how that young man called 'Instructor' managed to flip the table!"

Inside a modern live streaming studio.

Judy finally raised her hand and casually fiddled with the control panel, slightly lowering the transparency of the sky full of red bullet comments.

He picked up the black marker again and tapped the whiteboard behind him.

"Family members, you just saw me list four reforms by Wang Anshi, Zhengde, Jiajing, and Li Chen."

Zhu Dijun's eyes turned extremely cold, like a sharp boning knife.

"Why did these four reforms fail? Because no matter how they reformed, they couldn't get around a fatal flaw—they had to rely on the old system of landlords, gentry, and bureaucrats to implement policies!"

He drew a huge triangle on the whiteboard, divided into three layers: top, middle, and bottom.

"At the very top is the emperor. At the very bottom are countless ordinary people and soldiers."

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red pen and heavily filled in the middle layer.

"This thick middle layer represents the entire bureaucratic system, from county magistrates to prefects, from ministers to the Grand Secretary! They were also local landlords, gentry, and tax farmers!"

"When the emperor's decrees reach this level, they are intercepted. They selectively implement the decrees that are advantageous to themselves, while imposing even greater burdens on the people below."

"The people's sentiments at the bottom are being conveyed upwards, but when they reach this level, they've been intercepted again. They only show the emperor what they want the emperor to see."

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the whiteboard, creating a deafening explosion.

"This is the fundamental reason why imperial power has failed to extend to the county level for two thousand years—imperial power doesn't reach the county level! All grassroots organizations below the county level are controlled by local gentry who have only had a few days of formal education!"

"As long as these people still control the grassroots organization and the discourse, your emperor's reforms are utterly worthless!"

During the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's expression suddenly changed.

Imperial power did not extend to the county level.

These five words, like a sledgehammer, struck precisely at the Achilles' heel of the Ming Dynasty.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun threw away the red pen, grabbed a blackboard eraser, and violently wiped the thick layer of "bureaucratic gentry" in the middle of the whiteboard clean!

Not even a trace was left!

"So, how did that great team from later generations break the deadlock?"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his hands firmly pressed on the podium, his voice carrying a chilling, ruthless aura.

"They did not compromise with civil officials like Jiajing did, nor did they set up a secret service to investigate accounts like Zhengde did."

"They did something truly groundbreaking—they completely smashed the entire middle layer!"

Four large, blood-red characters exploded on the screen—

[The Party branch is established at the company level!]

"What is meant by 'organization level'?!"

Zhu Dijun roared at the top of his lungs, "It's about directly extending the tentacles of management and faith, bypassing all traditional bureaucracy, and inserting them into the minds of every soldier at the very bottom! Into every village! Into the beds of every peasant!"

"Soldiers in the past didn't know why they were fighting; they thought they were serving the emperor. The instructors told them, 'You are fighting for yourselves! You are fighting for your land!'"

At the Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty, Wei Qing was so shocked that he took a step back. To directly instill morale into the lowest ranks of soldiers? The Han army relied entirely on the personal prestige of its generals!

Zhu Dijun frantically tapped the screen with his fingers.

"The second move! Strike down the rich and distribute the land!"

"When Wang Anshi implemented the Green Sprouts Law, he still had to guard against landlords lending money at exorbitant interest rates. How did later generations handle this? They simply overturned the landlords' tables! They distributed the land directly to the lowest-ranking farmers! Anyone who dared to obstruct them was immediately executed!"

"They weren't just improving old machines; they completely scrapped that old car and then used millions of ordinary people from the lowest rungs of society to assemble a super war fortress with no middlemen taking a cut!"

The entire internet is in an uproar! All worlds are deathly silent!

This is not a reform at all.

This uproots the very lifeblood of all those who have vested interests in the world!

"but!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly changed the subject, a cold smile curving his lips.

"You understand this kind of violent aesthetic of dimensional reduction. Perhaps some of you also wish you could travel back in time, become an emperor, and replicate that 'imperial power extending to the countryside' in your own dynasty?"

He suddenly grabbed a prop ruler and pointed it at the camera.

"To pave this path, the first step is to do something that no feudal emperor dared to do, and absolutely could not do!"

"That is—"