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 podium, looking at the dense barrage of comments on the live stream screen, a chilling sneer curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Family members, let's continue!"

He grabbed the blackboard eraser and roughly wiped away the words "Nine-sided Black Hole" and "Jiajing's Deposed Empress" from the whiteboard. Then, with a red marker, he drew a huge, glaring arrow pointing eastward.

"I just talked about the second Datong Mutiny. To quell the unrest, the imperial court issued a pardon to those traitorous generals who colluded with the Mongols. Do you think that's the end of it?"

Zhu Dijun's eyes were as sharp as a knife, closing in on the camera.

"The Ming Dynasty's officialdom is an enormous and leaky mouthpiece! What those warlords in Datong did will soon spread throughout the nine key border towns of the Ming Dynasty! When the commanders on other defense lines see this, they'll think, 'Holy crap? Those guys in Datong killed the governor and invited the Tartars, and not only did they not lose their heads, the court even has to fawn over them?'"

"So, as long as you have troops and cause enough trouble, the imperial court is just a lump of dough that can be easily manipulated!"

Four blood-stained characters crashed onto the center of the large screen—【Liaodong Mutiny】!

"From the twelfth to the fourteenth year of the Jiajing reign! The extremely egregious demonstration effect of the Datong Mutiny finally triggered nuclear fission! The aftershocks spread wildly eastward, directly igniting another powder keg of the Ming Empire—the Liaodong defense line!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the four characters "Liaodong Mutiny" on the sky, his eye muscles twitching violently.

"Has Liaodong rebelled too?"

His voice was hoarse, like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

"Is there even a clean place along the nine borders of our Great Ming?! These damned traitors, they all think Zhu Houcong is weak and easy to bully, they all want to ride on the emperor's neck and shit on him!"

On the screen, Zhu Dijun sneered, pointing to a portrait of a civil official in a scarlet robe that appeared on the screen.

[Lu Jing, Governor of Liaodong].

"Why was Liaodong bombed? It's because this governor, Lü Jing, wanted to carry out a thorough military reform on this land that had been completely privatized by warlords!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers furiously tapped the keyboard, pinning two shocking reform proposals to the screen.

"Lu Jing did two things. The first was called 'Searching the Horse-Raising Fields'! It was the same tactic Zhang Fujing used when investigating the estates of nobles in the capital! These warlords and hereditary military officers in Liaodong had secretly seized large tracts of fertile land that the court used to raise warhorses, turning public assets into their own private property. As soon as Lu Jing took office, he took the account books and demanded that all of it be investigated and returned!"

"The second thing is called 'reducing the surplus labor force'! The Ming army supports countless dependents, the elderly, the infirm, and even 'surplus laborers' who serve as unpaid tenants for generals. These people don't fight but receive the court's rations and salaries. Lü Jing ordered their complete elimination; no more idle people should be supported!"

In the modern live streaming room, comments flooded the screen.

"This governor is a good official who gets things done!"

"If this were today, they would absolutely be swift and decisive anti-corruption pioneers!"

"But if he's embezzling other people's money, can he survive?"

"A good official? One who gets things done?"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the table and let out an extremely desolate sigh.

"Fellow family members, in this rotten Ming Dynasty system, without absolute military backing and the strongest support from the central government, carrying out reforms at the local level is tantamount to digging your own grave!"

He suddenly wrote a fatal date on the whiteboard—[February of the fourteenth year of Jiajing]!

"Do you remember Zhang Fujing, the Grand Secretary, who was the most vicious dog in the Ming Dynasty's cabinet and the sharpest knife in the hands of the Jiajing Emperor?"

"Just as Liaodong Governor Lü Jing was preparing to forcefully implement the reforms, in the capital, Zhang Fujing faced a fierce backlash from officials and nobles across the country because his reforms had affected the interests of too many people. Adding to this was the superstitious controversy surrounding the death of the emperor's eldest son. In February of the fourteenth year of the Jiajing reign, this Grand Secretary, who had spearheaded the early Ming Dynasty's reforms, completely lost the Jiajing Emperor's trust, resigned in disgrace, and returned to his hometown of Wenzhou!"

On the big screen, Zhang Fujing's hunched back as he left the Forbidden City looked incredibly desolate.

"Zhang Fujing's departure marked a temporary retreat of the radical reformist forces that had prevailed since the 'Great Rites Controversy,' and the court entered an extremely conservative period of adjustment!"

Zhu Dijun roared at the top of his lungs, his voice like thunder, "The reformist patron in the capital has fallen! What will those Liaodong warlords, who have long hated Lü Jing, do when this news reaches Liaodong?!"

"March of the fourteenth year of the Jiajing reign!"

"Just one month after Zhang Fujing was ousted, the military leaders in Liaodong seized the opportunity, inciting the unemployed lower-ranking soldiers and directly triggering a mutiny!"

The large screen was instantly engulfed by the towering flames.

"This is not a mutiny at all; it's an armed uprising by warlords using others as pawns to kill, openly defying the imperial decrees! These soldiers, paid by the court, smashed the gates of the governor's office like mad dogs! They stormed into the mansion and imprisoned Lu Jing, a high-ranking official of the second rank, on the spot!"

The Weiyang Palace of the Han Dynasty.

Emperor Wu of Han, Liu Che, suddenly kicked over the bronze wine vessel in front of him, spilling wine all over the ground.

"Arrogant! Overbearing! They dare to arrest even a town governor without warning?!"

Liu Che's eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at the sky.

"Does the border of this Ming Dynasty belong to the Zhu family emperors or to these military leaders?!"

"How did the Ming Dynasty court handle this?"

Extreme mockery appeared in Zhu Dijun's eyes. He grabbed the pointer and pointed to another name on the screen—[Imperial Inspector Zeng Xian].

"With such a major incident, the imperial court could no longer sit idly by. The Imperial Inspector Zeng Xian intervened! What kind of person was Zeng Xian? He was one of the few men of unwavering integrity and true courage in the later Ming Dynasty! He knew that if the Ming Dynasty continued to compromise like it did in Datong, it would completely lose its rule in Liaodong."

"Upon arriving in Liaodong, Zeng Xian didn't waste any words. He didn't bring a massive amount of silver from the imperial treasury to obtain some kind of pardon; instead, he directly mobilized reliable troops and suppressed the mutiny with extremely harsh and ruthless methods! He arrested the ringleaders on the spot and beheaded dozens of people! Dozens of bloody heads were hung high on the city walls of the Liaodong border town as a warning!"

On the screen, on the frontier city wall where the cold wind howls, a row of heads covered with ice sway in the wind.

This scene finally allowed the viewers in the live broadcast room, who had been holding back for so long, to breathe a sigh of relief. Zeng Xian's tough stance salvaged the last shred of dignity for the Ming Dynasty's military and political forces in Liaodong.

But there was no joy on Judy Jun's face. He dropped the pointer and looked at the corpse as if it were already rotting and stinking.

"The rebellion has been quelled. The military commander has been beheaded. Logically, shouldn't Governor Lü Jing, who suffered so much injustice and wanted to implement reforms in Liaodong, be commended by the court and allowed to continue his beneficial military reforms?"

As Zhu Dijun leaned closer to the camera, every word he uttered exuded extreme coldness and cruelty.

"Wrong! Utterly wrong! My family, this is the Ming Dynasty! It's a stagnant pool that only knows how to maintain political balance and can no longer tolerate any radical reforms!"

An extremely absurd phantom imperial edict slowly unfolded on the screen.

"In the fourteenth year of the Jiajing reign, the imperial court issued an edict: although the mutiny had been quelled, Lü Jing, as the governor, had incited unrest among the troops, a crime he could not forgive! He was immediately stripped of his official post and exiled to the frontier!"

boom!

The hearts of viewers across the internet felt as if they had been struck by a heavy hammer, and the barrage of comments exploded instantly.

"Holy crap?! The troublemaker is dead, and the person who wanted to do the job has been exiled?!"

"What kind of insane logic is this?! Lü Jing is surveying land and saving money for the imperial court!"

"Heartbreaking! Utterly heartbreaking! Who the hell would dare to do anything practical for the Ming Dynasty after this?!"

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

Zhu Youjian looked at the four large characters "Exiled to the Frontier" on the sky, covered his face, and let out an extremely mournful laugh.

"Yes...that's exactly it! In the Ming Dynasty's officialdom, they never ask about right or wrong, only about the beginning and the end! Whoever causes trouble is the sinner! Those who want to get things done end up being exiled or imprisoned, leaving behind only a bunch of traitors who try to smooth things over!"

"Family members, did you understand this extremely disgusting scene?"

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair, sat down heavily, and was enveloped in the dim red light.

"This is the Ming Dynasty in the fourteenth year of the Jiajing reign! In the provinces, Lü Jing was imprisoned by a mutiny and eventually exiled to the frontier because he investigated the interests of warlords. In the central government, Zhang Fujing was betrayed by the civil service group for investigating the estates of powerful officials and eventually retired in disgrace."

He took out a piece of paper and tore it to shreds right in front of the camera.

"In this year, the extremely vigorous flame of reform that emerged in the early Jiajing period, attempting to save the empire from crisis by reforming itself within the system, was completely extinguished by the bureaucratic interest groups of the Ming Dynasty and the emperor's extremely selfish compromises!"

"Jiajing finally understood. He realized that no matter how hard he tried, whether he used Yang Yiqing or Zhang Fujing, it was all useless. These civil officials and warlords would even sell out the country for their own interests!"

"Furthermore, family members, do you really think this is just a mutiny in Liaodong?"

"If it were just a simple mutiny in Liaodong, Jiajing would not have backed down. However, in order to force Jiajing to compromise, the civil official group used the Jiangnan smuggling groups along the southeast coast in the 14th year of Jiajing's reign to use a borrowed knife to kill Jiajing and the so-called neutral faction, forcing them to obey or face certain death."

"That was the rebellion of Guo Lao, the pirate from Chaozhou!"