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

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the big screen, watching the barrage of insults directed at the Datong rebels and collaborators, and took a big gulp of tea.

"Well said. But family members, after we've finished venting, we must face an extremely real and disgusting problem."

He slammed the teacup down on the table.

"Let's continue examining the economic issues behind the Second Datong Mutiny!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser and wiped the "Nine-Sided Map" he had just drawn flat, leaving only three large, blood-red characters in the middle—"Money and Grain".

"In the final analysis, any mutiny stems from the complete collapse of the economic foundation. Why did these border generals dare to rebel? Why were those ordinary soldiers at the bottom willing to follow them in their madness, even leading the Mongols astray?"

"Because they're starving to death!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his fingers tapping loudly on the podium.

"In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of this military system, once boasted to the whole world with great pride: 'I can support a million soldiers without costing the people a single grain of rice!'"

On the large screen, a reconstruction of a military settlement from the Hongwu era appeared. Half the people were training, and the other half were farming.

"This is the military-agricultural colony system! The state gives you land, you grow your own food, and when you're not busy, you train troops for war. The concept is absolutely perfect, isn't it?"

Judy Jun let out a cold laugh that could have blown the roof off.

"But by the Jiajing era, this once-proud military-agricultural system had been completely devoured by the Ming Dynasty's officials and warlords, leaving not a trace!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang's originally pale face turned purple with suppressed anger. Hearing the phrase "not a single grain of rice wasted from the people" felt like a resounding slap across his old face, spanning two hundred years.

"Our military settlement..."

Zhu Yuanzhang gripped the imperial desk tightly with both hands, his teeth grinding together.

"That's the foundation of our nation! Who dares to touch our military farms?!"

Zhu Dijun said quietly in the live broadcast room:

"The memorials in the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming' clearly state that large tracts of military farmland in Datong, Xuanfu, and other places were forcibly seized by generals at all levels, local imperial family members, and powerful officials and gentry! All the good and fertile land was enclosed in the private estates of local nobles, large landowners, and civil officials!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and drew a glaring arrow on the whiteboard.

"The land was seized, so where did the original owners of this land—the regular garrison soldiers of the Ming Dynasty—go? They went from being the emperor's personal guards, receiving salaries from the court, to becoming the private tenants of those generals and powerful families!"

"Not only did they have to farm and pay rent for the generals, but they also had to endure inhuman exploitation! They couldn't even guarantee their most basic food and clothing; their weapons were rusted, and their mandarin duck battle jackets were tattered like beggar's rags!"

Inside the modern live stream room, the barrage of comments began to flood the screen.

"Holy crap, soldiers who are defending our country have been forced into serfdom?"

"Who the hell has the mind to fight a war for you now?!"

"They seize other people's land and then make them risk their lives for them; these warlords are blacker than coal!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the whiteboard.

"This isn't even the most desperate situation! Family, the military farms are gone, but the imperial court must still pay the soldiers' salaries, right?"

He turned around and slammed a key on the computer keyboard.

A line of shocking historical text appeared on the big screen like drops of blood.

[No monthly rations for thirteen years].

"What does this mean? This was the ultimate desperate situation faced by some of the soldiers in the Datong garrison at that time!" Zhu Dijun stared intently at the screen.

"Thirteen years! How many thirteen-year periods does a person have? For over a decade, we didn't receive a single penny of grain from the imperial court! We had no food to eat, no clothes to wear, and our wives and children were skin and bones from hunger!"

"Family members, put yourselves in their shoes!" Judy Jun roared at the top of her lungs.

"You are a soldier guarding the front lines of the Ming Dynasty. Every day you face the scimitars of the Mongols, and when you look back, you see your land seized by your generals, where not a single coin is paid. At this moment, someone jumps out and says:"

"Let's go! Follow me! Get our money back! Let's rob the treasury!" Or, "Let's open the city gates and let the Mongols in to rob the officials!"

"What will you choose?! You won't rebel? You won't collude with the Tartars? If you don't do it, you'll starve to death at the foot of the Great Wall!"

The myriad realms and timelines were deathly silent.

At the Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty, Liu Che's raging anger, fueled by the Ming army's collusion with the Mongols, froze instantly upon hearing these words. He slumped back onto his dragon throne, the sword in his hand clattering to the ground.

If that's the case... Liu Che closed his eyes. Let alone the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty, even the most elite orphans of the Han Dynasty, after starving for over a decade, would not hesitate to draw their swords and chop down their superiors.

This isn't just a case of rotten soldiers; it's a diseased nation, a disease that's terminal.

"Here's the problem."

Zhu Dijun took a deep breath, his tone becoming extremely cold.

"Was the Ming Dynasty really so poor that it couldn't pay its soldiers for over a decade? Was Emperor Jiajing and his cabinet ministers, including Zhang Fujing, really just pretending to be blind?"

He wrote three large characters heavily on the whiteboard: "Taicang Silver".

"Wrong! Utterly wrong! In order to appease the arrogant and fierce generals of the Nine Garrisons and to block the incursions of the Mongols, the Ming Dynasty not only distributed money, but it distributed it like water flowing out! Every year, the vast majority of the national treasury's tax revenue was converted into real gold and silver in the Taicang Treasury, which was then transported to the Nine Garrisons by the cartload!"

Zhu Dijun frantically poked at the whiteboard with his finger.

"Where's the money?! Where the hell did the money go?!"

A giant black hole totem slowly rotates on the screen.

"We've stumbled into a bottomless financial black hole for border defense, jointly constructed by powerful Ming Dynasty officials and frontier warlords!"

"Family members, this involves the most disgusting power-monetization rules in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty. How did a general or deputy commander of one of the nine border regions rise to such a position?" A hint of mockery flashed in Zhu Dijun's eyes as he wrote two words on the whiteboard with a red marker—[bribery].

"These military leaders in Datong, including people like Wang Fusheng and Xi Yong, and even the generals of the entire Nine Garrisons, had to use massive amounts of gold and silver to bribe the Grand Secretaries and Ministers of War in the Forbidden City to secure their positions or to climb the ranks! They had to bribe powerful ministers like Yan Song, who were either rising to power or already wielding considerable influence!"

The live stream chat exploded instantly.

Using military funds for bribery? This is absolutely outrageous!

"The money comes from the people; if the officials are corrupt, it's the lowly soldiers who suffer in the end."

The Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Yan Song, who had just joined the cabinet and was preparing to make great strides, was startled to hear his name called from the sky. His legs went weak, and he knelt on the bluestone slabs of his residence. His face was deathly pale as he stared in the direction of the West Garden, fearing that the Jiajing Emperor was watching him at that moment.

In the sky, Zhu Dijun mercilessly dissects this sinister chain of interests.

"The general took the money to the capital to buy an official position! He has to recoup the money he gave away, right? How will he do that?"

"Receiving salaries without working! Withholding military pay!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the podium, making a dull thud.

"The imperial court allocated 100,000 taels of silver from the imperial granary. The general first withheld 30,000 taels to bribe powerful officials in the capital; he then embezzled another 30,000 taels for himself; and the lower-ranking officers and guerrillas each received 10,000 taels. In the end, what actually reached the hands of those low-ranking soldiers guarding the city walls, who couldn't even get enough to eat, was less than 3,000 taels!"

The black hole totem on the big screen began to frantically devour the light spots representing silver.

"This is a completely closed-loop death spiral!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and drew a blood-red circular pattern on the whiteboard.

"The imperial court distributes money—powerful officials and border generals divide it up—low-ranking soldiers go hungry and mutiny—border generals take the opportunity to exaggerate the enemy situation, claiming 'the enemy has invaded'—the imperial court has to distribute even more money to quell the rebellion—the border generals continue to embezzle!"

"These warlords have treated the Ming Dynasty's border defenses as their generation-old ATM! As long as the Mongols exist, as long as rebellions continue, they will have endless reasons to demand money from the imperial court!"

"What was the final result? Eight words: 'Border supplies increase daily, border defenses deteriorate daily!'"

"The imperial court allocated more and more military funds to the nine border regions every year, completely emptying the national treasury. Meanwhile, the Ming Dynasty's border defenses deteriorated, and the regular army couldn't even cut off the heads of four hundred Mongol cavalrymen. In the end, they could only rely on compromise and concessions to maintain that fragile facade!"

Zhu Dijun dropped his pointer, placed his hands on the table, and looked at the table as if it were a rotting corpse.

"It wasn't that Jiajing didn't want to manage it, it was that he couldn't. He investigated the estates and killed Yang Yiqing, but he couldn't investigate the entire vast ecosystem that stretched from the capital to the frontier. Because once this chain was truly broken, even without the Mongols invading, the hundreds of thousands of Ming Dynasty border troops could level the Forbidden City themselves."

In a certain era of the Chongzhen Emperor during the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, bit his lip hard, blood trickling down his lips. He understood all too well. Wasn't this the same situation he faced when confronting the Guan-Ning cavalry of Liaodong and Yuan Chonghuan's group? Millions of taels of Liaodong military funds were poured in, yet not a ripple was heard; they all enriched the private pockets of those military leaders.

The Ming Dynasty never died at the hands of bandits, but in this bottomless black hole.

In modern live streaming rooms, the barrage of comments is so intense it's suffocating.

"This isn't the Ming Dynasty; this is a scene of utter chaos and doom."

"No wonder the Ming Dynasty perished; with such an economic and military environment, even a god would kneel before it."

Zhu Dijun straightened up, picked up the now-cold tea, and drank it all in one gulp.

The nine-sided image and black hole on the big screen disappeared instantly, and the entire studio was enveloped in a blood-red glow.

He picked up a rag and slowly wiped away the words "Taicang Silver" and "bribery" from the whiteboard.

"Family members. The Datong Mutiny has ended with the imperial court admitting defeat, but the hole on the border is getting bigger and bigger." Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly lowered, revealing a chilling calm.

"But have you considered this? The Nine Garrisons are a bottomless pit; the imperial court's money has long been exhausted. Yet Jiajing must continue to be emperor, and the Ming Dynasty must continue to run its course."

Zhu Dijun suddenly leaned closer to the camera, his eyes flashing a terrifying darkness under the red light.

"Since we can no longer squeeze any more benefits from the powerful and wealthy, or rather, we are powerless to resist them. Since the northern defense line has been completely destroyed."

"How will this enormous deficit of the Ming Dynasty ultimately fall upon whose head?"