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

In modern live streaming rooms, the barrage of comments has long since covered up the entire screen.

After hearing about the rebellion of Hou Zhongjin in Jiangyin, these netizens, who grew up under the red flag and were used to the close relationship between the PLA and the people, were disgusted to the extreme by the Ming Dynasty's thuggish military practices of forcing good citizens into becoming pirates and then supporting these thieves for their own benefit.

"The soldiers of the Ming Dynasty are legal thieves! What kind of dynasty is this?!"

"Ordinary people have relied on the sea for their livelihood for generations. A single maritime ban has destroyed their rice bowl, and they're even forbidden from smuggling to make a living. Doesn't this force people to revolt?"

"Those who suffer the most are always the common people at the bottom of society. They are exploited by those smuggling officials and warlords just to be cannon fodder!"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the podium, watching the rapidly scrolling bullet comments, and casually tossed the pointer in his hand, which was covered with the tattered accounts of the Ming Dynasty's border troops, onto the table.

"Family members."

Zhu Dijun's eyes were cold and sharp as knives, and his hands gripped the sides of the podium tightly.

There is an irrefutable truth: Economics is the concentrated manifestation of politics, and war is a continuation of politics!

"We criticize the Ming Dynasty from God's perspective, calling it utterly rotten, but put yourselves in the shoes of ordinary people. If they could have a full meal every day and a ragged coat to cover their bodies, who the hell would be willing to risk their lives at sea to fight the government troops?!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and drew a huge skull on the whiteboard.

"Behind the forced thievery lay the complete depletion of the Ming Empire's livelihood and finances! This young, troublemaking emperor, Jiajing, immediately stumbled upon a hellish start that could have crippled any feudal dynasty after resolving the Great Rites Controversy!"

The Jiangnan water towns on the screen were instantly burned to ashes by raging fire, replaced by a barren, barren wasteland with countless starving corpses.

"From the eighth to the ninth year of the Jiajing reign! Heaven began to relentlessly pour sulfuric acid into the dilapidated house of the Ming Dynasty, which was full of leaks!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers furiously tapped the keyboard, and a series of shocking lists of disaster victims rained down.

"Shanxi! Beijing! Yansui! Henan! The north has been experiencing hellish famines year after year! People are so hungry they eat grass roots, gnaw on tree bark, and even resort to cannibalism!"

"Faced with such a natural disaster, the imperial court must provide relief! Taxes and grain waivers should be waived for the affected areas! Grain should be allocated from the imperial granary for relief! We need money! We need a massive amount of silver and grain!"

"But is there any money left in the Ming Dynasty's treasury? The military expenses for the nine border regions have been emptied by the warlords' henchmen, and the tax revenue from Jiangnan has been intercepted by smuggling officials. Even a rat that goes into the treasury will have to come out with tears in its eyes!"

Judy Jun yelled at the top of her lungs.

"What if I don't have any money?!"

The entire online audience had the same thought flash through their minds: Make money!

"That's right! Make money!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the whiteboard. "But Jiajing was an exceptionally intelligent politician. He would never be as foolish as Chongzhen to collect 'three taxes' from the people and drive himself to his death. He found an extremely sharp butcher's knife and used it to slaughter the fattest pigs in the Ming Dynasty!"

In the center of the large screen, the portrait of Zhang Cong, who climbed to the top by stepping over the corpses of countless civil officials during the Great Rites Controversy, was enlarged to its maximum size.

"In the ninth year of the Jiajing Emperor's reign, he pulled off an ultimate workplace maneuver! He personally issued an edict bestowing upon Zhang Cong, a core member of the cabinet, the name 'Zhang Fujing,' signifying integrity and respect!"

A cruel sneer curled at the corner of Zhu Dijun's mouth.

"What is this? This is the highest level of endorsement from the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty to the Grand Secretary! Jiajing is using this method to tell the whole world: Zhang Fujing is my double! Everything he does is in accordance with my will!"

"With this pardon, Zhang Fujing, the Ming Dynasty's number one mad dog, was completely unleashed, wielding his three sharpest blows for Jiajing!"

A dripping red line cuts across the screen.

"The first move! Dismiss the eunuchs and reclaim control of local finances!"

"Ever since the Ming Dynasty established the extremely disgusting system of garrison eunuchs, these corrupt eunuchs have been frantically amassing wealth in the provinces, pocketing large sums of money that should have gone into the national treasury, while simultaneously suppressing local civil officials. In the ninth year of the Jiajing reign, Zhang Fujing led the cabinet to take drastic measures, dismissing a large number of garrison eunuchs in Yunnan, Zhejiang, and Guangdong!"

The era of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang's face, which had been as black as the bottom of a pot, finally lit up for a moment. He slammed his fist on the imperial desk and shouted:

"Well done! These rootless bastards should just stay in the palace and sweep the floors! Finally, someone among our descendants has come up with the sense to strip these eunuchs of their titles!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's second finger stood up sharply.

"The second blow! An extremely bloody political retaliation and purge—severe punishment of the maternal relatives! I'm repeating it here because they are typical representatives."

Two portraits of noblemen dressed in magnificent court robes appeared on the big screen—Duke of Changguo Zhang Heling and Marquis of Jianchang Zhang Yanling!

"Who are these two? They are the brother-in-law of the Hongzhi Emperor and the maternal uncle of the Zhengde Emperor, Zhu Houzhao! They were among the most powerful imperial relatives of the Ming Dynasty at that time!"

Zhu Dijun approached the camera, a menacing glint in his eyes.

"Remember the death of Emperor Zhengde that we discussed earlier? Remember Empress Dowager Zhang, who colluded with Yang Tinghe in the early stages of the Great Rites Controversy, and used her status as Empress Dowager to exert relentless pressure, forcing Emperor Jiajing to recognize someone else as his father?!"

"Jiajing, this recluse, holds grudges! The blood of the Zhu family emperors flows in his veins—extremely harsh and ungrateful! He endured for nine years, and the old faction of the Great Rites Controversy was wiped out. Now, it's the Empress Dowager's turn to bully him back then, when he was just a prince from a distant vassal state!"

"In the ninth year of the Jiajing reign, the court casually found a pretext for rebellion, or perhaps because these two brothers had left too many messes behind due to their usual tyrannical behavior, Zhang Fujing went along with it and directly imprisoned and punished Zhang Heling and Zhang Yanling, two princes and relatives of the emperor!"

The live stream room instantly went wild.

"A gentleman takes revenge even after ten years, but Jiajing only waited nine years to take his revenge!"

"Under the guise of rectifying the court, they uprooted the power of the maternal relatives left behind by Emperor Zhengde. This political maneuvering is too ruthless!"

"By taking over these two top-tier clubs, the national treasury must be overflowing with gold!"

The era of the Zhengde reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao sat in the Leopard Chamber, watching the scene of his uncle being imprisoned on the screen. For the first time ever, he did not get angry, but instead let out a desolate, cold laugh.

He knew better than anyone what kind of people his two uncles were; they had caused him no end of trouble in the imperial court back then. He just never expected that after his death, his own mother, Empress Dowager Zhang, would collude with civil officials to have him drown, and in the end, the entire Zhang family would be wiped out by his seemingly docile cousin.

"This is karma..." Zhu Houzhao took a big gulp of wine.

In the sky above, Zhu Dijun casually swept the portraits of the two Zhang brothers into the trash can.

"The imperial relatives have fallen, the eunuchs have left. But these gold coins are still not enough to fill the hole left by the great famine! The real big move is Zhang Fujing's third strike!"

Four large, gilded characters slammed onto the public screen: 【Investigate Farmland】!

"What are estates? They are the lands that the founding nobles and imperial relatives of the Ming Dynasty used their privileges to ruthlessly seize from the common people! They occupied fertile land and refused to pay taxes! They gnawed away at the foundation of the Ming Dynasty, leaving it riddled with holes!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a marker and wrote a string of numbers on the whiteboard with extreme aggression.

"Fifty-seven thousand hectares! Family members, in the ninth year of the Jiajing reign, Zhang Fujing's investigation team alone extracted a full fifty-seven thousand hectares of concealed and seized land from these nobles in the area surrounding the capital!"

"These lands were directly confiscated! They were redistributed to landless farmers or forcibly incorporated into the taxpayer registration system!"

Liu Bang was thoroughly entertained by the sights at the Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty, slapping his thigh in delight.

"That kid's heart is truly ruthless! He only picks the fattest pigs to slaughter! He cuts off the flesh of the privileged class to feed the starving common people, not only making money to fill the national treasury, but also getting the reputation of a sage ruler for all time! This is the way an emperor works!"

Zhu Dijun pounded on the whiteboard, striking the number "5.7".

"This isn't over yet! Gui E and Zhang Fujing, those two ruthless men, with Jiajing's tacit approval, have begun to tamper with the Ming Dynasty's most fundamental tax system!"

A brand-new tax law appeared on the screen.

"They created the 'Compilation and Review of Corvée Labor'! They tried to directly incorporate the extremely heavy corvée labor burdens on the common people into the land tax! Landlords with more land paid more taxes, while poor people with less land paid less!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the table, his voice carrying an extreme penetrating force.

"Those of you who understand history should realize this by now! This is the very early precursor to the famous 'Single Whip Law' implemented by Zhang Juzheng during the Wanli reign! In the mid-Ming Dynasty, Jiajing and his cabinet were already attempting to salvage the crumbling empire's finances through this low-budget version of land reform!"

Viewers in the live stream exclaimed in surprise that the foundation of the Single Whip Method had already been laid during the Jiajing era.

However, there was no joy on Judy Jun's face. He straightened up, grabbed the blackboard eraser, and ruthlessly wiped away all the glorious achievements that had just been written on the whiteboard.

"Family members, doesn't it look amazing? Jiajing is displaying his might, beating up powerful officials, filling the national treasury, and the revival of the Ming Dynasty is in sight?"

He turned around abruptly and drew a huge exclamation mark in red pen.

"But this is the Ming Dynasty! A feudal apocalypse where the entire court is filled with cannibalistic monsters and local warlords are completely privatized!"

"Do you really think these nobles whose estates have been seized, these civil officials stripped of their tax-exempt privileges, and these local warlords who can no longer profit from smuggling will obediently offer their necks to Jiajing for beheading?!"

The image on the large screen suddenly switched from the extremely oppressive imperial court in the Forbidden City to the howling winds of the northwestern border.

Amidst the red sandstorm, a tattered banner bearing the character "Ming" fluttered violently in the cold wind.

"As we mentioned earlier, Jiajing compromised and spared the lives of those local generals who held considerable military power in order to protect the Datong defense line. However, his series of drastic measures to regulate the economy and investigate land ownership plunged all those who had vested interests into extreme panic and madness!"

"Jiajing poured all the pressure onto the already war-torn frontier!"

Zhu Dijun lowered his voice, each word like a match lighting a fuse.

"Jiajing wanted to repair this dilapidated house, but he wielded his knife too ruthlessly and chopped down the load-bearing wall."

Three large, blood-stained characters exploded on the public screen: "[Datong Town]".

"Family members, prepare yourselves. The most surreal, the most heinous, and the most devastating coup since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, which has stripped the entire military and political system bare, is finally about to erupt."

"The Datong Mutiny of the Jiajing Reign—the one that utterly humiliated the Jiajing Emperor and caused the complete collapse of the Ming Dynasty's northwestern defenses!"

----split line----

There were two mutinies in Datong during the Jiajing era in history, one in the third year of Jiajing's reign and the other in the twelfth year of Jiajing's reign.