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

Inside the modern live streaming room, a dense barrage of comments filled the public screen like snowflakes.

"I'm so tired of watching this. Did the Ming Dynasty emperors all get the wrong scripts?"

"Other emperors enjoyed their time as emperors, so why was Emperor Jiajing constantly fighting on three fronts?"

"Internally, there's factional strife among civil officials; externally, there are chieftain rebellions in the south, Turpan in the northwest, and the Mongols to the north. This is a complete mess!"

"The fact that the Taoist priest lived to be over sixty years old shows his exceptional mental fortitude."

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the podium, looking at the barrage of comments, and let out a sneer without any mercy.

"Family members, you think the Ming Dynasty's three-front war is surreal? That's because you underestimate just how deep the historical debts left by the previous dynasty are!"

He grabbed the blackboard eraser and slammed it twice on the whiteboard.

"The Sitian Rebellion in the south, which you call the rebellion of the southern chieftains, ultimately forced the imperial court to call upon the formidable Wang Yangming, who was currently retired at home, to clean up the mess. With the intervention of the sage Wang, the south was temporarily quelled. But—"

Zhu Dijun's red laser pointer swept across the map of the Ming Dynasty's territory on the screen, fixing its image on the Great Wall defense line and the northwestern desert.

"Wang Yangming just resolved one crisis, and now the western and northern fronts are in turmoil! Family, today we'll focus on the eighth year of the Jiajing reign, to see just how utterly devastating and strategic retreat the Ming Empire suffered on its western and northern fronts was!"

The Great Wall defense line on the screen instantly zoomed in, and two extremely glaring Mongolian names slammed into the center of the screen—[Jinang] and [Anda]!

"Do you remember when I mentioned that Xuanfu, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, was invaded on the border?"

Zhu Dijun's eyes were as sharp as knives. "By the eighth year of the Jiajing reign, these two brothers of the Mongol Right Wing had officially risen to become the Ming Dynasty's number one nightmare in the north for decades!"

"The elder brother, Jinang, occupied the fertile Hetao region. The younger brother, Anda Khan, received an extremely barren territory! On the steppe, poverty means death! What was Anda's only choice to survive and support his cavalry?"

Four large, blood-red characters flashed: [Border Raiding]!

"How did the Ming Dynasty respond? After the Great Rites Controversy, Jiajing Emperor released Wang Qiong, the former Minister of War who had been purged, and appointed him as the Governor-General of the Three Border Regions to put out the fire."

Zhu Dijun's fingers tapped on the keyboard, and an engineering drawing of Wang Qiong building the border wall appeared.

"Wang Qiong was a seasoned military strategist. Upon taking office, he launched a massive 'deep trench and high fortification' campaign in the Yulin and Ningxia areas. He dug trenches and built the Great Wall! He single-handedly withstood several fierce attacks from Anda!"

Just as the barrage was about to flood the screen with comments like "The veteran is mighty," Judy Jun poured cold water on it.

"Don't be too happy yet! Will building walls work? Yes, but the defensive line is too long. Being fortified everywhere is the same as being undefended everywhere! In the eighth year of Jiajing's reign, Anda's iron cavalry bypassed Ningxia and stormed into Piantou Pass!"

On the big screen, battle reports flew out like snowflakes.

"Deputy Commander Li Jin! Note that this is the Li Jin from the eighth year of the Jiajing reign (1549), not the commander with the same name who was later killed in the Datong Mutiny. This Deputy Commander Li led the Ming border army in an encounter battle against Anda's cavalry at Liuhaizhuang!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, raising his voice.

"What was the result? A crushing defeat! The Ming army's field combat capabilities were like paper against these Mongol cavalry; they crumbled at the first touch!"

"Why couldn't we win? My family, let's recall what we discussed in the last chapter about the border troops becoming like personal guards! The regular garrison soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were already starving, armed with nothing but inferior, rusty weapons. The elite personal guards under the generals were unwilling to fight the Mongols to the death in open battle; they all hid in the rear to save their own lives! This defeat directly exposed the true strength of the Ming border troops to Altan Khan—the Ming Dynasty had completely lost the confidence to engage the Mongols in open battle beyond the Great Wall!"

Zhu Dijun picked up a red pen and drew a huge tortoise shell on the whiteboard.

"From this year onward, the Ming Dynasty officially entered its darkest hour on the northern front, a time of constant invasion! Anda could come and go as he pleased. The Ming Dynasty could only cower behind the Great Wall and watchtowers, passively taking hits!"

Viewers across the internet felt a tightness in their chests. The emperors from various historical periods, in particular, turned ashen-faced.

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared at the giant tortoise shell in the sky, trembling with rage.

"Back then, we sent Xu Da and Lan Yu deep into the northern deserts to chase and defeat the Northern Yuan Dynasty! Now, these unworthy descendants can't even defend a single pass on the Great Wall?! They've humiliated the nation! They've humiliated the nation!"

After cursing a few times, he turned into a heavy sigh. Was this Jiajing's fault?

Of course not. Jiajing didn't want to lose face like that. Why blame his cousin Zhu Houzhao?

That's utter nonsense. The Yingzhou victory was smeared and erased by later civil officials. It can be said that in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, the imperial family had lost most of its control over the army!

The root of the problem lies with that damned little fat boy, Zhu Gaochi, the fourth prince. Did you even know how to be an emperor? Why didn't you pass the throne to Zhu Gaoxu? You ruined your own son Zhu Zhanji, grandson Zhu Qizhen, and great-grandson Zhu Jianshen.

Zhu Dijun on the screen ignored Lao Zhu's impotent rage. He threw down the red pen, and the image on the big screen suddenly shifted from north to west.

Amidst the swirling sandstorm, a dilapidated and isolated city looms in and out of view.

【Hami Guard】.

"If the passive defense on the northern front was due to a decline in military strength, then the astonishing maneuver carried out on the western front in the eighth year of the Jiajing reign was pure political shortsightedness and self-destructive!"

Judy Jun approached the camera, her eyes filled with extreme absurdity and anger.

"Family members, do you remember the Ganzhou Incident and the Prison of the Frontier that we talked about in the previous two episodes? After Turpan conquered Hami, they themselves were actually struggling. By the eighth year of the Jiajing reign, Turpan finally yielded, voluntarily requesting surrender to the Ming Dynasty and expressing their willingness to return Hami to the Ming Dynasty!"

"Someone has returned the territory they stole! What would a normal country's reaction be? To immediately take over! To rebuild the defenses! Right?"

Zhu Dijun roared at the top of his lungs.

"But how did the Ming Dynasty's cabinet approve it?! Zhang Cong and his cronies, who rose to power through the Great Rites Controversy, took a look at the Ministry of Revenue's accounts and calculated. 'Oh dear, Hami is now a ruin, with only a few thousand permanent residents. For such a godforsaken place, the court still has to pour huge sums of military funds and provisions into it every year. This is not a worthwhile deal!'"

On the big screen, seven extremely glaring characters, like seven knives, stabbed into everyone's vision.

[Exhaust China to preserve foreign powers!]

"This was the conclusion reached by the Jiajing Emperor's cabinet! They believed that Hami was a foreign land, and that it was extremely foolish to waste the wealth of the Central Plains to protect Hami! Thus, the Jiajing Emperor wrote a bold stroke of his pen—'It is hereby abandoned!' Hami, the Ming Dynasty no longer wanted it!"

The Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty.

"How dare you, you brat!"

Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, suddenly drew his long sword from his waist and shattered the imperial desk in front of him with a single blow. His eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at the seven characters on the sky, his chest heaving violently.

"That's the Western Regions! That's the Western Regions that I, with the full strength of the Han Dynasty, dispatched Wei Qing, Huo Qubing, and Zhang Qian, and fought with the bones of countless soldiers to conquer! That's the throat through which the Central Plains dynasty extends to the west! These fools actually threw away the foundation laid by our ancestors for a few taels of silver?!"

The Great Tang Taiji Palace.

Li Shimin's face was so gloomy it seemed like it could drip water, and he used his fingers to pry off a piece of the gold paint from the dragon throne.

"He who does not plan for the long term is not fit to plan for the short term. These civil officials of the Ming Dynasty are only concerned with the income of the national treasury and have no idea what a geographical barrier is. Without Hami, the Great Wall in the northwest is like a wide-open gate."

In the live stream room.

Judy slammed her fist on the whiteboard, producing a series of dull thuds.

"Those civil officials in the Ming Dynasty's cabinet thought they had gotten rid of a financial burden, but what was the reality? They had actually pulled out the last thorn in the side of the Ming Dynasty in the Western Regions!"

A red line rapidly retreated from Hami, shrinking directly into Jiayuguan.

"With the loss of Hami, Turpan and the Oirats no longer had any scruples. The thousands of miles of land outside Jiayuguan, which had been a strategic buffer zone, instantly became enemy territory! The Ming Dynasty completely lost its intelligence outposts and strategic depth in the Western Regions!"

"From that year onward, the entire Hexi Corridor was directly exposed to the enemy's iron cavalry. The Gansu defense line was constantly on the move, with the border troops exhausted every day! In order to save the little money needed to build the Hami Garrison, the Ming Dynasty later had to spend ten or even a hundred times more on military expenditures and lives along the entire Gansu-Shaanxi defense line!"

Zhu Dijun turned around and wiped the whiteboard clean. Then he wrote four large characters: "[Total Contraction]".

"Family members, do you understand the timeline of the eighth year of the Jiajing reign?"

"It's not just a year; it's the ultimate watershed moment that fundamentally changed the entire Ming Empire's defense strategy!"

"On the western front, completely abandon Hami and forcibly pull the defense line back into Jiayuguan from the outside in to hold it to the death. On the northern front, facing Altan Khan's iron cavalry, abandon open battle, switch from offense to defense, and hide behind the Great Wall like turtles."

"The military might of the Ming Dynasty was completely swept into the dustbin of history in this year."

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair, sat down, picked up his teacup, and took a large gulp of water to calm his heavy breathing. The map on the large screen gradually dimmed, eventually turning into a somber, oppressive black.

"The external threat has become so severe that the Great Wall defenses are leaking everywhere. Under normal circumstances, shouldn't the entire government and the people be united in their hatred of the enemy and prioritize defending against them?"

His lips twitched upwards in an extremely eerie way, and his eyes once again revealed that mocking look that saw through the very essence of feudalism.

"But don't forget, those stationed on this dilapidated defensive line are not a group of loyal ministers and generals who sacrificed themselves for their country, but a group of local warlords who don't care about the lives of their comrades in order to protect their own private soldiers and retainers!"

A drop of scarlet blood fell into the darkness of the large screen, slowly seeping into a disfigured face.

"The powder keg of the Datong defense line is already hissing and smoking."

Zhu Dijun lowered his voice, each word sounding like a death knell.

"In the eighth year of the Jiajing reign, another front emerged internally. This was the Jiangyin Hou Zhongjin Rebellion, caused by the smuggling gangs in Jiangnan and the corruption of local officials, and the unequal distribution of benefits between the people and the smuggling gangs."