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

"Oh, my family."

Judy Jun's voice suddenly changed from an extremely violent roar to a sigh filled with absurdity.

He picked up the blackboard eraser and wiped away all the bloody coordinates of Zuoshunmen and Tatar raids on the whiteboard, leaving only the lonely year in the very center.

[The third year of the Jiajing reign].

"Let's calculate their ages."

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the podium, his gaze passing through the camera lens as if he were watching the thin figure in the void wearing a bright yellow dragon robe.

"In the third year of the Jiajing reign, our Taoist Emperor Zhu Houcong had just turned eighteen."

The chat in the live stream slowed down.

"Eighteen years old, family."

Zhu Dijun curled his lips into a sarcastic smile. "In our modern world, this would be the age of someone who has just graduated from high school, with clear, even slightly naive eyes, preparing to enter university or the workforce. If they encounter a minor grievance, they might cry to their parents; if they encounter a difficult boss, they might just quit."

"But what was Jiajing like at eighteen?"

The image on the big screen suddenly split in two: on the left was the blood-soaked Zuoshunmen, and on the right was the war-torn Mongolian border.

"He sits on the most dangerous chair in the entire world! In the imperial court, hundreds of civil officials are lined up, ready to bang their heads against the palace gates, waiting for him to issue an edict of self-reproach! On the border, Mongol cavalry, lured in by smuggling merchants, are charging right under the noses of the Ming capital!"

Zhu Dijun's speech quickened again, like the drums of death striking the battlefield.

"You think this is the ultimate predicament an eighteen-year-old boy faces? No! Heaven felt this game wasn't exciting enough, so it cruelly added another kick to this political meat grinder of internal and external troubles!"

Three large characters dripping with black blood crashed onto the public screen—【Great Famine】!

"In the third year of the Jiajing reign! The most central and prosperous financial and grain-producing areas of the Ming Empire, the southern prefectures, were struck by an unprecedented drought and famine!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a photocopy of a Ming Dynasty archive and held it directly in front of the camera.

The Ming History's "Treatise on the Five Elements" records this disaster as follows: "[The southern prefectures suffered a great famine; fathers and sons ate each other; corpses lined the roads, and the stench lingered for miles!]"

"Sixteen short words, each one dripping with blood! How starved were they? Fathers were eating their own sons! The roads were littered with mountains of corpses, their stench carrying for miles!"

A memorial from a Ming Dynasty official unfolds on the screen.

"This is a memorial submitted by Xi Shu, an official at the time. In it, he wrote in despair: 'The people are starving. First they sell their cattle, then their wives and daughters... some starve to death on the road! The people have sold all the livestock they could, then their wives and daughters. In the end, when they have nothing left to sell, they can only starve to death by the roadside!'"

"The basic social order has completely collapsed! Refugees are everywhere, and thieves are rampant! The very foundation of rule in the Jiangbei region is teetering on the brink of collapse in the face of this great famine!"

In the myriad realms and timelines of the Ming Dynasty during the Hongwu era.

Zhu Yuanzhang looked at the four characters "father and son cannibalism" on the sky, his eyes instantly reddened, and his calloused hands gripped the armrests of the dragon throne tightly.

"We fought to conquer this land so that all the people could have enough to eat! So that the Han people would no longer be able to devour each other!"

Old Zhu's voice was hoarse as if tearing silk, "These beasts, God! Why do they always target the poor people of our Great Ming Dynasty to wreak havoc!"

Inside the modern live-streaming studio, Zhu Dijun's gaze did not linger on pity. He grabbed a marker and quickly drew out the official timeline of disaster relief efforts from the Ming Dynasty on the whiteboard.

"How did the Ming Dynasty handle this hellish disaster? The Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming provides an extremely detailed account."

"As early as November of the second year of the Jiajing reign, before the then Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe was forced to resign, he presided over a court meeting and initially drafted eight relief measures. By September of the same year, the court had allocated 200,000 taels of silver from the Taicang treasury to the disaster-stricken areas in Jiangnan! In January of the third year of the Jiajing reign, another 150,000 taels of silver were urgently allocated to Yingtian Prefecture!"

Zhu Dijun drew several large checkmarks on the whiteboard.

"Besides directly distributing cash, the imperial court in the third year of the Jiajing reign also implemented a highly professional disaster relief strategy! First, they sold off salt permits! They sold the confiscated salt permits to salt merchants, quickly converting the proceeds into silver for disaster relief. Second, they massively reduced or exempted taxes! Sichuan, the southern capital region, and Zhejiang were all exempted! Third, they encouraged private donations! As long as a landlord or gentry donated 1,000 shi of grain, the government would directly erect a memorial arch for them, and even bestow upon them an official hat and title!"

Zhu Dijun tossed aside the marker, crossed his arms, and quietly looked at the camera.

"Family members, after listening to this account from the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Jiajing of Ming,' don't you think that Emperor Jiajing and the cabinet's response was absolutely perfect? ​​Faced with natural disasters, the emperor and his ministers were of one mind, allocating funds and distributing grain—they were truly a beacon of light for the Ming Dynasty!"

Throughout the live stream, many people were indeed commenting that "the Ming Dynasty was quite efficient at disaster relief" and "Jiajing was quite good at managing the economy."

Upon seeing these comments, Zhu Dijun's lips curled into an extremely eerie and chilling smirk.

"If that's what you think, then you're really being sold out and still helping the seller count the money!"

boom!

Zhu Dijun suddenly kicked over the live-streaming chair next to him and approached the camera like an enraged lion.

"These are indeed records from the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming'! But have you considered an extremely terrifying question?!"

Zhu Dijun extended a finger and pointed directly at the map of Nanji on the big screen.

"This severe drought broke out in the South! It broke out within the very core interest base of the Jiangnan gentry, the civil service, and the maritime merchants and compradors! Because their homeland was the one affected, they actively participated in court discussions! That's why they agreed to open the national treasury and allocate silver! That's why they cooperated so readily in exempting the South from taxes!"

The large screen instantly turned blood red.

"But family members! Think about it from a different perspective! What if! What if this severe drought of the third year of the Jiajing reign hadn't happened in the south!"

Judy Jun's roar made the microphone emit static.

"What if this drought had occurred in the north! In one of the nine important border towns that had no vested interests with the Jiangnan gentry! And at that time, it happened during the most intense phase of the Great Rites Controversy!"

"What do you think will happen to this group of civil servants who spout platitudes about benevolence and morality?!"

This question was like a bombshell, exploding in the minds of millions of viewers!

The chat in the live stream was silent for a brief two seconds, then erupted with messages like a volcanic eruption!

"Holy crap!!! This is terrifying to think about!"

"If this happened in the north, these Jiangnan civil officials would absolutely stand idly by! They could ignore the Nanjing plague, so what do they care about the lives of disaster victims in the north!"

"I understand! They deliberately created famine! Regional conflicts! Factional strife! They would even intentionally intercept relief supplies and use the corpses of northern famine victims to force Jiajing to admit defeat and bow down!"

As Zhu Dijun stared at the screen full of comments, a terrifying glint flashed in his eyes.

"That's right! Man-made famine!"

The screen suddenly switched to a strikingly modern image—a chart showing the operations of certain modern superpowers in the international food market, with the word "America" ​​prominently displayed next to it.

"Throughout Chinese history, there are countless examples of man-made famines! Leaving aside distant examples, the recent Huayuankou famine, whose repercussions still affect us today, is a prime example. And look at modern times—this America, touted by countless public intellectuals, that super-comprador empire filled with capitalist tycoons—how did it put on such a show for the world?!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and slammed it hard onto the chart on the screen.

"Capital monopolizes the world's four major grain traders! When they want to destroy a country's economy and force it to compromise its sovereignty, they don't even need to use aircraft carriers! They only need to cut off the distribution channels in the global market when there is a poor harvest! They can hoard grain like crazy and drive prices sky-high! So that your ordinary people can't even afford moldy bread!"

"When your country is plagued by famine, social unrest, and displaced people storming government institutions, these capitalists will step forward, wearing masks of hypocrisy, and acquire your country's most core assets at the lowest possible prices with extreme precision!"

Judy Jun turned around and stared at the camera with an extremely violent look.

"Isn't this just the same tactic used by the Ming Dynasty's civil officials and wealthy merchants in Jiangnan?!"

"Why is there such a severe drought in the south, leading to widespread displacement? Because the granaries of wealthy and powerful families are overflowing with grain, yet they won't part with a single grain! They want to watch the self-sufficient farmers starve to death, to watch them hand over their ancestral lands to them at an extremely low price just to survive!"

"But if a drought were to occur in the north, these civil officials who control the Ministry of Revenue and the Grand Canal would have a thousand legitimate ways to prevent grain from reaching the disaster area! Then they would storm up before Jiajing with a memorial detailing the starvation deaths of tens of thousands in the north: Your Majesty! This great calamity is all because you have angered Heaven by disregarding the Great Rites Controversy! Please issue an edict of self-reproach immediately!"

The era of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty.

Beneath Coal Hill, Zhu Youjian, who had been holding a hemp rope and lost in thought, was struck dumb by these scathing remarks from the sky.

He thought back to the seventeen years he had ruled.

Shaanxi suffered a severe drought, and the Central Plains were gripped by famine, with the land parched and barren. He was so anxious his mouth was blistered, and he emptied the imperial treasury to provide disaster relief, but all the money distributed was lost through layers of officials along the way! The Donglin Party in the south constantly complained of poverty to him in court, pressuring him to issue an edict of self-reproach, while the salt merchants and gentry of Jiangnan were rolling in wealth, refusing to pay even a single tael of silver in commercial taxes!

"So that's how it is...so that's how it is!" Zhu Youjian suddenly tore the hemp rope in his hand to shreds, two streams of bloody tears flowing from his eyes.

"They're not incapable of saving lives! They're deliberately creating a severe drought! They're using the refugees of the Ming Dynasty and Li Zicheng's sword to force me to my death!"

In the skylight, Zhu Dijun casually tossed the pointer onto the table.

He looked again at the lonely figure of the eighteen-year-old boy, his voice carrying a suffocating sense of oppression.

"Family members, put yourselves in the position of the eighteen-year-old Jiajing Emperor. Inside, there are more than two hundred high-ranking officials ramming the gate of Zuoshun Gate to force the emperor to abdicate; outside, Altan Khan's cavalry is ready to trample the capital at any time; and there is a super famine in the country that can be turned into political bargaining chips by civil officials at any time."

"If it were an ordinary person, let alone navigating the court, they would probably have been devoured alive by these ruthless monsters, and would have been branded with the infamous titles of 'Severe' and 'Excessive' in history books, leaving a lasting stain on their reputation!"

The large screen suddenly fell into a deathly black.

"However, Zhu Houcong survived. Not only did he survive, but he was also about to deliver the most fatal blow to this group of vested interests who had monopolized the Ming Dynasty's defenses."

In the darkness, a line of extremely glaring white text appeared.

You think this is the swan song of the Ming Dynasty? No, this is merely the prelude to the birth of the ancestral hall.