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

"Family members, in the last chapter we talked about how Jiajing implemented a series of extreme micro-management measures to maintain stability." Zhu Dijun stood in front of the whiteboard, his pointer slamming heavily against his palm.

"But micromanagement cannot change the fact that the Ming Dynasty's border defenses have been riddled with holes by factional strife among civil officials and smuggling rings. We mentioned earlier that the aftershocks of the Great Rites Controversy triggered the Ganzhou Incident, directly leading to the loss of Hami Garrison by the Ming Dynasty. So, have the aftershocks of this political meat grinder stopped?"

On the screen, the words "Ganzhou Incident" quickly went dark, and were replaced by a broken Great Wall defense line stretching through the mountains.

The coordinates are firmly fixed at [Xuanfu].

"It hasn't stopped! Not only has it not stopped, it's getting even more intense!" Judy Jun shouted, drawing a glaring bloodline on the screen with a red laser pointer.

"The timeline jumps to the spring of the sixth year of the Jiajing reign! Xuanfu, one of the nine most important border towns of the Ming Empire, is directly confronted by a fierce counterattack from the Tatars!"

"Volume 76 of the Veritable Records of Emperor Jiajing (Ming Shizong) clearly states in black and white: On the day of Xin Hai in the second month of the sixth year of Jiajing's reign, the Tatar tribe, also known as the 'Little Prince' in the History of Ming—not the one severely injured by Zhu Houzhao, but his son—launched a large-scale invasion of the border!"

A blood-stained list of the dead is slapped in the center of the screen.

"This battle was extremely frustrating! Wang Jing, a military officer of the Ming Dynasty, led his troops in a desperate battle on the front lines, ultimately fighting to the death and sacrificing his life on the spot!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was very clear.

"Family members! This is a high-ranking military officer from the Nine Garrisons! He's equivalent to a modern-day brigade commander or regimental commander! And he died on the border! Why did Wang Jing die in battle? Was the Ming army no match for the Mongols? Were the swords of the Ming Dynasty no longer sharp?"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes revealing an extremely mocking light.

"Because no one saved him!"

Four large characters crashed onto the public screen: "[Possessing military power and acting arrogantly]!"

"These four characters represent the ultimate survival strategy developed by the military generals during the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty after they were relentlessly suppressed by civil officials!"

Zhu Dijun quickly wrote two names on the whiteboard: [Zhu Zhen] and [Ye Zong].

"In May of the sixth year of the Jiajing reign, the court sought to hold those responsible for the defeat in February accountable. Du Minbiao, the Imperial Censor of Shanxi, submitted an extremely sharp memorial to the Forbidden City, directly exposing the true nature of the Xuanfu-Datong defense line!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a model of a memorial to the throne and slammed it on the table.

"What did the memorial say? Commander-in-Chief Zhu Zhen! Guerrilla General Ye Zong! What did these two border generals, who held considerable military power, do when the enemy launched a massive raid on Jingping, Shuozhou, and Mayi? They cowered in the cities! They kept the city gates tightly shut! They just watched as the Mongols beheaded, stole their grain, and enslaved the people of the Ming Dynasty outside!"

"The censor berated them, saying they were 'insatiably greedy, had lost the hearts of the people, and were only concerned with their own safety, showing no intention of fighting the enemy!' Do you understand? If I don't go out to fight, I won't be defeated. If I'm not defeated, the court won't have an excuse to kill me. As for the common people outside dying out, what does that have to do with me? Military strength is my capital as an official; if I lose it all, I'll be a commander without an army!"

The era of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao sat on the imperial couch in the Leopard Chamber, suddenly crushing the wine cup in his hand, the porcelain shards digging into his palm and drawing blood. He stared at the names of Zhu Zhen and Ye Zong on the sky, his teeth grinding together.

"These cowardly cowards! They've turned the border troops of the Ming Dynasty's nine border regions into their own watchdogs! They won't even save their comrades when they die before their eyes—what use are these people?!"

In the modern live stream room, the chat was also filled with anger.

"That's called preserving strength. Since we'll be killed by the civil officials if we lose anyway, it's better not to fight."

"Even the general isn't leaving the city; no wonder a lieutenant general was betrayed and killed in battle."

"Isn't the Taoist priest ruthless? Zuo Shunmen killed so many people, shouldn't such a general be thrown into prison and executed by a thousand cuts?!"

Zhu Dijun looked at the comments and let out an extremely chilling sneer.

"Imprisoned? Tortured to death?"

Judy shook her head.

"Family members, you know too little about Jiajing and the political calculation methods of feudal emperors."

The image on the big screen suddenly changed, switching to Xiyuan Abode.

"Upon receiving the impeachment, the Ministry of War immediately demanded severe punishment for the two men. Had it been during the Great Rites Controversy, Jiajing would have shown absolutely no mercy. But at this critical juncture, faced with these warlords who refused to help and were insatiably greedy, the eighteen-year-old Daoist Emperor gritted his teeth and swallowed a mouthful of blood."

A final judgment, stamped with an imperial seal, gleamed and filled the screen.

The Jiajing Emperor issued a very realistic, yet extremely helpless, directive: "The enemy is eyeing our borders; manpower is urgently needed!"

"General Zhu Zhen, who had already been dismissed and placed on idleness, was pardoned by the Emperor! He was spared! Guerrilla General Ye Zong was merely relieved of his post! Other adjutant generals like Zhao Lian had two months' salary deducted!"

Zhu Dijun spread his hands.

"It's over! A military commander died in battle, several cities were looted, and the worst punishment they got was just dismissal and a two-month salary deduction!"

The entire internet was in an uproar, with many saying that this punishment was even more outrageous than a slap on the wrist.

"Why not kill them?!"

Judy Jun yelled at the top of her lungs.

"Because Jiajing dares not kill them! The border is now covered with Mongol hoofprints, and there was just a mutiny in Datong. The army is full of scoundrels and old hands! If you kill these warlords who hold their own, the soldiers below will stage another mutiny in Datong's Five Forts tomorrow! Jiajing is reluctantly compromising because he is within the system and currently cannot find a loyal core of personnel to immediately replace these warlords!"

To appease the areas ravaged by the Mongols, Jiajing could only order the local officials to provide relief to the dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, and exempt the area from taxes for three years. He was essentially using the Ming Dynasty's national treasury to clean up the mess left by these arrogant border generals.

Zhu Dijun picked up his teacup, took a sip of water, and suppressed his anger. "But Jiajing was, after all, a wise man. He knew that compromise alone couldn't hold the Great Wall. The Ming Dynasty, this leaky, dilapidated house, had to be repaired. So, in May, an imperial censor named Qiu Yanghao stepped forward and presented Jiajing with a divine diagnosis in the history of the Ming Dynasty's defense in its later period—'Ten Matters Concerning the Border Affairs of Chen, Ji, and Liao'!"

The large screen instantly displayed ten densely packed reform clauses.

"This ten-point memorial directly exposes the rotten flesh of the Ming Dynasty's nine border regions to the emperor! Let's break it down point by point and see just how appallingly bad the Ming Dynasty's national defense has become!"

Zhu Dijun frantically tapped the first message on the screen.

"First, the army is short-handed! Desertion among soldiers is extremely serious. What did Qiu Yanghao suggest? Stop with the tedious household registration and clan search, you can't find them! Just spend money to recruit strong men to fill the ranks! This shows that the Ming Dynasty's proud hereditary military system of garrisons during Zhu Yuanzhang's reign has completely collapsed by the Jiajing era, and has completely turned into a conscription system!"

"Secondly, the defensive fortifications are practically non-existent! The watchtowers of Yanhe Camp have been in disrepair for years, perched precariously on a mountaintop. Qiu Yanghao has requested that the garrison troops from Yongping Prefecture be transferred to repair them! Thirdly, the command structure is severely lacking! Taipingzhai used to have a deputy commander, but he was dismissed by the Ministry of War, leaving the central gate of the defensive line wide open, allowing the Mongols to enter at will!"

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes twitched violently as he stared intently at the phrase "the hereditary military system of garrisons has completely collapsed." The invincible military system he had personally designed, which he claimed could "support a million soldiers without costing the people a single grain of rice," had in later generations degenerated to the point where they had to spend money to hire street thugs to fight!

In the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel pierced deeper and deeper.

"Fifth! The drawbacks of relocating strategic passes inland! This point directly criticizes the Zhengde Emperor! Back then, in order to save trouble, the Zhengde Emperor moved strategic passes such as Xiahekou inland. Qiu Yanghao vehemently denounced this as 'abandoning their natural defenses' in his memorial! He demanded that the court immediately push the passes outwards and reclaim the commanding heights!"

"Articles seven, eight, and nine are all logistical disasters!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a pointer and lashed it against the blackboard.

"The 'Night Scouts'! The most elite special forces and reconnaissance soldiers of the Ming Dynasty are doing the most dangerous work, yet their pay is extremely low! They are starving and freezing, so who will risk their lives for them? Qiu Yanghao is demanding an increase in rations! Firearms are scarce, and gunpowder supplies are as slow as snails; of the original quota of military horses, only half remain, and the rest have been embezzled by officials!"

"This isn't an army! It's a beggar's shelter ready to disband at any moment!"

The viewers in the live stream were sweating bullets, completely unable to imagine how the Ming Dynasty had managed to hold out for over two hundred years with such a dilapidated defense line.

Zhu Dijun threw the marker on the table, his expression becoming extremely serious. He circled the sixth of Qiu Yanghao's ten points in red in the center of the whiteboard.

"Family members, all of the above are military-level repairs. But what I want to emphasize today is the sixth point proposed by Qiu Yanghao! This point precisely echoes what we discussed in the previous chapter!"

Several large characters lit up on the screen: "[Implement the Baojia system and elect leaders to organize local militias]".

"See that? The Baojia Law!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes gleamed with a wolf-like light. "The border residents are a mixed bunch, and management is chaotic. Qiu Yanghao keenly perceived the absolute vacuum in the Ming Dynasty's grassroots organization. He demanded that the scattered small villages be merged into large estates, implement a scorched-earth policy, and then promote the Baojia system that Wang Anshi had once implemented, allowing the people to organize their own armed militias to resist the Mongols!"

"There are clever people among the civil officials! They know that the imperial army is unreliable, and they also know that the generals-in-chief hold considerable power. They are trying to bypass the warlords and establish a low-level military organization directly among the people!"

Zhu Dijun stared intently at the camera, a cruel sneer curling at the corner of his mouth.

"But will it work?"

"Wang Anshi's Baojia system was distorted by vested interests into a corrupt policy that forced women into prostitution. Could the Ming Dynasty have stopped the Mongol cavalry by implementing village covenants and the Baojia system?"

The answer is—absolutely unstoppable!

"Because this kind of militia system, forcibly implemented from top to bottom by court officials, simply cannot give the common people at the bottom any real faith or motivation! You ask them to risk their lives to defend their villages, but behind them, local gentry are still collecting heavy taxes from them, and border generals are still seizing their relief grain! They are not fighting for themselves; they are merely human shields for the Ming Empire to stand in front of the Mongols' blades!"

Throughout the entire universe, every civil and military official who heard these words felt a chill run from the soles of their feet straight to the top of their heads.

The ten memorials displayed on the big screen were instantly engulfed by the fire and burned to ashes.

"Qiu Yanghao's memorial was beautifully written, and Jiajing adopted it entirely. But it was just a band-aid that only treated the symptoms, not the root cause!"

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the table, his upper body leaning forward with an overwhelming sense of pressure.

"The Ming Dynasty's border defenses are rotten to the core. Without the kind of revolutionary, game-changing attacks that can rebuild the nation's foundation, this level of repair is merely delaying the time it takes for the Ming Empire to be drained of its lifeblood."

In the scene, the northwest wind whips up a sky full of yellow sand, burying the corpses of Ming Dynasty soldiers at the foot of the Great Wall.

"The mess of the sixth year of the Jiajing reign has been temporarily swept away. But deeper within the Ming Dynasty's defenses, a shocking case that is even more disgusting and absurd than the Tatar invasion is quietly brewing."

Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly turned extremely sinister.

"Do you think the Datong Mutiny just ended with the killing of the governor?"

He held up one finger, pointing to the Datong defense line on the screen.

"Years later, these border guards and smuggling merchants, spoiled by the court's compromises, will show the Jiajing Emperor what it means to shit on the emperor's neck and even expect him to hand them toilet paper!"

"That vicious mutiny that directly tore Jiajing's face apart was the second major explosion on the Datong defense line of the Jiajing court."