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

In the modern live broadcast room, many netizens couldn't help but gasp as they listened to Zhu Dijun's account of the three major fires during his southern tour, and the barrage of comments scrolled by densely.

"Having gone through something so life-or-death, I'd become a severe social phobia person too!"

"Who the hell would dare go out like this? I'm surrounded by officials and eunuchs who want to kill me!"

"Especially after the complete falling out with the civil service group over the Great Rites Controversy, these Jiangnan scholar-officials absolutely had a motive to kill Jiajing and install a more compliant new emperor!"

"Now I understand Jiajing's cultivation of immortality; he was essentially building himself an absolutely safe fortress in the Western Garden!"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the podium, looking at the public screen, a deeply sarcastic smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Family members, do you really think that Jiajing hid in the West Garden every day, striking the chime and refining elixirs, just to avoid assassination and act like a coward?"

He suddenly grabbed the blackboard eraser and wiped the four characters "Southern Inspection of the Emperor" off the whiteboard. Then, with a red marker, he drew a blood-dripping dagger.

"Wrong! Utterly wrong! This power monster, who had survived a brush with death, felt increasingly uneasy after returning to the capital! He understood that if he didn't completely crush the arrogance of those civil officials and smuggling rings in Jiangnan, sooner or later he would be poisoned in his food or strangled to death in his sleep!"

"Therefore, Jiajing launched an extremely ruthless counterattack!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers flew across the keyboard, and on the map on the big screen, a red dot located in the heart of Jiangnan flashed wildly—[Changzhou]!

"Jiajing's first target was the treasury of Jiangnan! He set his sights on Changzhou! To be more precise, he wanted to squeeze the Changzhou textile bureau and local taxes dry! You have money, don't you? You're colluding with smuggling gangs to hide silver, aren't you? Pay me taxes! Heavy taxes!"

"but!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hands on the podium.

"These officials and gentry in Jiangnan have not disappointed you! Faced with the emperor's extreme pressure, they have staged an utterly absurd and shameless exposé of officialdom, a spectacle worthy of being recorded in the annals of the Ming Dynasty's most shameless history!"

"This case was even recorded in the Ming Dynasty's 'Changzhou Prefecture Gazetteer'!"

Five large, blood-stained characters were slammed onto the center of the public screen—【Changzhou Snake Infestation Case】!

A flurry of question marks instantly filled the live stream chat.

As Zhu Dijun zoomed in on the camera, every word he uttered exuded an extreme absurdity.

"Family members, let's examine just how outrageous this 'biological hoax' orchestrated by officials and gentry in Changzhou was, by combining historical records!"

"Around the nineteenth year of the Jiajing reign! At that time, Jiajing was living deep in the Western Garden. The construction of temples and palaces required money; in addition, the Right Wing of the Mongols, Altan Khan, frequently invaded from the north, and military expenditures were like a black hole! The Ministry of Revenue directly treated Changzhou, this 'land of fish and rice,' as an ATM with no bottom line, increasing tax quotas year after year, as if they wanted to scrape the land three layers deep!"

He pulled out a terrible data cable.

"When the local officials in Changzhou saw the tax quotas assigned by the Ministry of Revenue, they were terrified! In the Ming Dynasty, failing to meet tax revenue targets was a serious crime! At best, one would lose their post; at worst, they would be imprisoned or beheaded! And what about the Jiangnan gentry of Changzhou? Would these old foxes, who held enormous amounts of silver, willingly let the court cut off their own flesh?"

"Absolutely impossible! Local officials have repeatedly petitioned the Ministry of Revenue, pleading poverty and requesting tax reductions, but all their requests have been firmly rejected by the Ministry of Revenue on the grounds of 'urgent need at the border'! Normal administrative communication has completely failed!"

"Since the normal route was blocked, the local officials and gentry conspired and formed an extremely shameless alliance—if you want grain, then we'll make sure the land doesn't grow any!"

Zhu Dijun turned around and wrote four large characters heavily on the whiteboard: "[Physical Disaster Creation]".

"This is not some verbal lie! This is an organized, premeditated, and costly biological warfare operation!"

A bizarre scene appeared on the large screen: countless venomous snakes slithering wildly through the paddy fields of southern China.

"Step 1: Buy snakes to create a disaster! To make the charade more believable, the gentry and officials of Changzhou directly allocated a large sum of money to send people to the deep mountains and forests to frantically buy up huge quantities of live and venomous snakes at exorbitant prices!"

"Step Two: Professional Release! They actually hired professional 'releasers'! Under the cover of darkness, they secretly scattered baskets and baskets of live snakes into the fields and ditches outside Changzhou city, and even threw them directly into the wells at the village entrances!"

"The third step: and also the most insane one, is called precise mine clearance!"

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

"The placement of snakes was highly 'technically sophisticated'! They specifically chose locations near official roads, places most easily seen by imperial censors coming down from the capital for inspection, and threw snakes in large quantities to create an extremely terrifying visual impact! And what about in the private fields of the gentry in Jiangnan?"

He drew an X on the whiteboard with a red pen.

"They cleaned it up completely! Not a single loach could be found! They even put up a sign outside the private fields that read 'Serious Snake Infestation, No Trespassing' to avoid attracting attention!"

The live stream chat exploded with comments.

"Holy crap?! They're developing biological weapons just to evade taxes?!"

"These civil officials have some truly brilliant ideas! If they had put this much effort into fighting Altan Khan, the Ming Dynasty would have already swept through Siberia!"

"I'm stunned! They can even artificially create natural disasters!"

"This isn't over yet!" Judy Jun waved his hand dismissively. "They're going to go all the way! They even hired professional extras!"

In the video, several elderly, weak, sick, and disabled people are seen lying at the village entrance, wailing in pain.

"To make the disaster scene appear impeccable, they paid elderly villagers to stage a dramatic scene of being 'bitten by snakes' on the main road! The big trees at the village entrance were covered with snake skins they had bought as evidence!"

"These officials and gentry have created a climate of fear in Changzhou. The real farmers are too scared to work in the fields and can only watch helplessly as their crops rot!"

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair and sat down, his whole body enveloped in the dim red light, his eyes revealing a deathly stillness that had seen through the true nature of the feudal dynasty.

"Family members, do you understand the extremely insidious logic behind this?"

"By creating a 'force majeure' snake plague, large areas of land in Changzhou were left uncultivated. What is this called? In the laws of the Ming Dynasty, this is called 'natural disaster'! No matter how much the imperial court pressured for taxes, according to ancestral laws, it was rightfully entitled to grant huge tax reductions!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the sky, his eyes so red they seemed to be bleeding.

"Beasts...a bunch of deceitful beasts!" He kicked over the imperial desk in front of him, letting out a wild roar.

"For a few taels of silver in taxes, they actually harmed the people, abandoned farmland, and even boasted about such disgraceful deeds in the local chronicles?! These pedantic scholars of Jiangnan deserve to die! Their entire families should be executed!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun picked up his water glass, took a sip, and coldly announced the ending.

"Can such a large-scale forgery be concealed from the public? Of course not!"

"Although Emperor Jiajing did not attend court, he held the power of the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Censor! When the censor went to Changzhou to investigate, he immediately discovered the truth! When this fig leaf was ruthlessly torn away, the entire court was in uproar!"

"The censor was shocked to discover that this wasn't some snake infestation that had angered both heaven and man; it was a complete man-made disaster!"

Zhu Dijun slammed the water glass heavily onto the table.

"But what's most ironic is that this matter was ultimately left unresolved. The gentry of Changzhou were at most given a few reprimands, and they still couldn't collect a single penny in taxes! This incident was even recorded in the 'Changzhou Prefecture Annals' as a 'glorious deed' of local resistance against central government financial extraction!"

"Family members, what does this mean?"

He stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and wrote four breathtaking characters: "[System Collapse]".

"This shows that by the mid-to-late Jiajing period, the grassroots government of the Ming Dynasty had become utterly corrupt and alienated! Local officials were no longer the government's shepherds of the people; they had completely colluded with the powerful clans of Jiangnan!"

"The central government and local authorities have become sworn enemies! The emperor needs money to defend the borders, and the local authorities, in order to protect their own money, are even resorting to the despicable tactic of raising snakes to create disaster and wipe out their own families!"

The studio lights gradually dimmed, and Zhu Dijun's face appeared extremely cold in the shadows.

"The tax base of the Ming Dynasty has been completely hollowed out by these insects in Jiangnan."

"Jiajing held an empty Ministry of Revenue account book in his hand, listened to the Embroidered Uniform Guard's report on the snake infestation in Changzhou, and let out an extremely bleak and cold laugh in front of the alchemy furnace in the West Garden."

"Since we can't get our hands on the money from Jiangnan, we can't distribute military rations to the north."

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and pointed it sharply at due north on the map.

"When the Ming Dynasty's internal financial system was completely locked down by the absurd scam of the snake infestation in Changzhou, the prairie wolf outside the Great Wall, which had long coveted the glamorous world of the Central Plains, finally smelled the bloody scent of the Ming Empire's weakness and decay."

"Family members, are you ready?"

His voice suddenly lowered, like the last rumble of thunder before a storm.

"This was the most humiliating and incompetent national crisis in the history of the Ming Dynasty in the face of the Mongols, and it also completely exposed the weakness and bottom line of the entire court."