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

"Family members, I just mentioned the Changzhou biochemical snake infestation, a case of local officials and Jiangnan gentry colluding to resist taxes and staging their own scheme. Do you think this is the limit of the Ming Dynasty's civil service and smuggling tycoons?"

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the podium, the red laser light shining on his profile, outlining an extremely cold and menacing figure.

"Wrong! The snake infestation in Changzhou was merely a localized, passive resistance by these people to protect their own pockets. But faced with an extremely paranoid tyrant like Jiajing, who could wield his sword at any moment, the civil officials in Jiangnan felt that this level of counterattack was far from sufficient!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser and roughly wiped away the four characters "Changzhou Snake Infestation" from the whiteboard. He then used a bright red marker to draw a huge flame symbol in the center.

"They wanted to completely break Jiajing's backbone! They wanted to imprison imperial power back into the iron cage made by the civil service! So, after the three great fires during the Southern Tour of Chengtian failed to kill Jiajing, these parasites immediately adjusted their strategy. Since eliminating the emperor physically was too risky, they would give him an unprecedented ultimate nuclear strike on his spirit and faith!"

On the screen, four blood-red characters crashed down—【Nine Temples Fire】!

The chat in the modern live stream froze for a second, then exploded with tons of question marks.

"April of the 20th year of the Jiajing reign!"

Judy Jun slammed the pointer in her hand onto the screen.

"This is a terrifying point in time that silenced the entire Ming Dynasty and prevented even later historical records from delving into it! The so-called Nine Temples refers to the Imperial Ancestral Temple in Beijing during the Ming Dynasty! It enshrines the ancestral tablets of the Ming emperors and is the most central and sacred symbol of the Ming Empire's imperial power and patriarchal system!"

"I've mentioned this before, but I didn't go into detail, so I'll repeat it here."

The image on the large screen suddenly changed.

On the evening of the fifth day of the fourth lunar month, the once clear sky over Beijing was suddenly covered with dark clouds. Immediately afterwards, extremely violent thunder split the sky, and hailstones the size of fists, mixed with torrential rain, poured down wildly.

"Look at this weather! It's as if God is angry! But family, God never kills people when He's angry; those who kill are all mortals who use God's name!"

Zhu Dijun roared at the top of his lungs.

"After nightfall! In the heavily guarded Imperial Ancestral Temple complex, surrounded by layers upon layers of imperial guards, a fire suddenly broke out!"

A red line representing the fire spread wildly across the map.

"The fire originated from the Temple of Emperor Renzong! That is, the temple of Emperor Renzong of Ming, Zhu Gaochi! Fueled by the wind, the fire instantly transformed into an unstoppable fire dragon, directly engulfing the Zhaomu Temple complex within the Imperial Ancestral Temple!"

"How far did this fire spread? Except for one temple, all the other temples were burned down! The ancestral tablets of all the legitimate emperors of the Ming Dynasty, including Emperor Yongle (Zhu Di) and Emperor Renzong (Zhu Gaochi), were all reduced to ashes overnight!"

In the myriad worlds and timelines, there exists a parallel Yongle era within the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall during the Yongle reign, Emperor Chengzu of Ming, Zhu Di, sat on his dragon throne. Upon seeing the rows of ancestral tablets reduced to ashes on the ceiling, he abruptly stood up, his entire body trembling violently.

"Outrageous! Outrageous!! The Imperial Ancestral Temple, a sacred place, where my memorial tablet... the tablets of all my ancestors, were just burned to ashes?!"

Zhu Di suddenly drew the Emperor's Sword from his waist and cleaved the imperial desk in front of him in two.

"Where are the Imperial Guards who were supposed to be defending the city?! Where are the eunuchs who were supposed to be putting out the fire?! This is clearly arson, an attempt to deceive my descendants into believing I am incompetent!"

The Hongwu Dynasty in a certain parallel universe

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes were bloodshot, and he gripped the armrests of the dragon throne tightly, letting out a roar like that of a wild beast.

"This is outrageous! ...These traitors have truly rebelled! They dare to burn down the Ming Dynasty's Imperial Ancestral Temple; they're digging up our Zhu family's ancestral graves!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's eyes revealed extreme mockery. He slammed his hand on the podium, interrupting the rage of the parallel universe.

"But family members, the most bizarre and insulting thing about this fire isn't the fire itself, but the debris left behind!"

Judy Jun's fingers flew across the keyboard, pinning a floor plan of the fire-ravaged ruins to the center of the screen. Amidst the charred ashes, one building stood alone, unscathed.

Three large red characters flashed wildly above the building: [Ryeojong Temple].

"They're all burned to ashes! All our ancestors have been reduced to ashes! Only the temple of the Prince of Xingxian, the very man Jiajing forcibly placed in the Imperial Ancestral Temple—a man who never even served as emperor but was forced there through a palace coup during the 'Great Rites Controversy'—survived the storm and the fire!"

The live stream chat exploded with comments.

"Holy crap?! This is a directional explosion?!"

"Has this fire grown eyes? Automatically recognizing the legitimate emperor and precisely burning him down?"

"This is definitely man-made! This isn't a fire; it's a blatant mockery of Emperor Jiajing!"

["The logic is crystal clear: the civil service group wanted to use this fire to tell Jiajing that his father didn't deserve to be in the Imperial Ancestral Temple! Even Heaven (or we) couldn't stand it anymore!"]

"Netizens have discerning eyes!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a half-used piece of chalk and wrote the three large characters "Theory of Divine Retribution" heavily on the whiteboard.

"This was not a natural disaster at all; it was a politically motivated arson attack that was extremely well-organized and timed with precision! What's even more alarming is that, days before the fire, strange rumors about 'the burning of ancestral temples' had already begun circulating throughout Beijing!"

Zhu Dijun zoomed in on the camera, each word like a knife stabbing into the bottom line of feudal bureaucracy.

"How could it be such a coincidence?! First, they spread rumors to create panic, then used the torrential rain and hail as cover to precisely set fire to the Renzong Temple, and finally deliberately left the Ruizong Temple unburned! The civil service group's purpose is extremely malicious—they want to firmly pin this fire on the divine retribution of the 'Great Rites Controversy'!"

"During the Great Rites Controversy, Jiajing used court beatings to trample the civil official group's face underfoot for eighteen years. Now, the civil official group used a great fire to burn Jiajing's ancestral tablets to ashes, to prove: You, Zhu Houcong, forcibly placed your own father in the Imperial Ancestral Temple, angering Heaven! This is the cycle of Heaven's retribution!"

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

"So, faced with this ultimate political intimidation that dares to defecate on the emperor's head, what was the reaction of our Jiajing Emperor, who even dared to return to the capital to sulk after a fire broke out during his southern tour?"

A portrait of someone dressed in a simple Taoist robe appeared on the screen.

"Jiajing was afraid. Or rather, faced with this nationally significant 'natural disaster,' and under the extremely oppressive atmosphere of a coup within the entire bureaucracy, this most autocratic emperor of the Ming Dynasty chose a temporary, tactical kneeling retreat!"

"After the fire in April, Jiajing immediately concluded that it was a warning from Heaven! He personally went to the inner palace to comfort the gods, and then issued an extremely poignant edict of self-reproach to the whole country! He admitted his moral failings, dressed in mourning clothes and avoided the palace, even refusing to eat meat, and ordered his officials to rectify the situation and avert disaster!"

"Upon seeing this, the entire court realized, 'Oh dear, the emperor has backed down?' They immediately pressed their advantage, submitting a memorial demanding the cessation of all major construction projects at the Western Garden! Without a word, Jiajing Emperor directly approved it in red ink: 'Adopted! All non-urgent projects, including those at the Western Garden, are suspended to alleviate the burden on the people!'"

The era of the Zhenguan reign of the Tang Dynasty. Li Shimin gazed at the sky, his fingers lightly tapping the tabletop:

"A strategic retreat. Jiajing understood that the forces behind this fire were unfathomable. If he were to forcibly go against the civil officials' momentum and thoroughly investigate the arson, it would only drive them to desperation. Issuing an edict of self-reproach to quell public anger and halting construction to save his life was an extremely clever tactic for self-preservation."

"But!" Judy Jun's voice suddenly rose, and he ripped open the tarpaulin on the whiteboard, revealing another picture underneath.

Deep within the palace of the Western Garden, the alchemy furnace still burned with a ghostly blue flame, and a group of Taoist priests dressed in robes moved about inside.

"Family members, do you really think Jiajing has been completely tamed by this fire? Do you really think he will obediently listen to the civil officials and give up his cultivation of immortality? You are sorely mistaken! This monster of power knows perfectly well that the project can be stopped, and the edict of self-reproach can be written, but these are merely means to temporarily avoid the brunt of the attack. His absolute core desire—cultivating Taoism, refining elixirs, and indulging in rituals—has not changed a single word!"

"This disaster only triggered a very short period of self-reflection for Emperor Jiajing. Once the storm had passed, the court immediately began preparations to rebuild the Imperial Ancestral Temple! In November of the twenty-third year of Jiajing's reign, the reconstruction of the Imperial Ancestral Temple officially began, and just over half a year later, in June of the twenty-fourth year of Jiajing's reign, the project was completed in a flash! Jiajing directly ordered the restoration of the old system of 'separate chambers within the same hall.' The ancestral tablets that had been burned were remade, and his father, Emperor Ruizong, was still sitting steadily inside!"

Judy Jun let out an extremely desolate cold laugh and casually tossed the chalk onto the table.

"The civil service, after much scheming, orchestrated the 'Nine Temples Fire,' a plot designed to wipe out the emperor's lineage. In the end, not only did they fail to remove Emperor Ruizong's memorial tablet, but they also made Jiajing's imperial power even more unbreakable in this test. After this incident, everyone in the court knew what the fire was about, knew it was divine retribution for the Great Rites Controversy, but throughout the entire country, not a single person dared to stand up and investigate the arson case!"

"The emperor and the civil officials were completely trapped in a terrifying balance that was extremely morbid and hypocritical."

The light on the big screen gradually dimmed, leaving only the lonely Ruizong Temple in the ruins, which looked extremely eerie in the darkness.

"The civil service group discovered that the three great fires during the Southern Tour could not kill him, nor could the burning of the Imperial Ancestral Temple frighten him. Jiajing was like an ancient demon hiding in the solid tortoise shell of the Western Garden, impervious to reason."

A tangible darkness surfaced in Zhu Dijun's eyes.

"Since Heaven's will can't scare you, political intimidation is useless. Those people in Jiangnan understand that if they don't kill this emperor immediately, once Jiajing recovers and wields the swords of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Imperial Guard, the Jiangnan financial magnates of the Ming Dynasty will definitely die without a burial place."

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and pointed it directly at the camera, each word sounding like a death countdown squeezed out from between his teeth.

"Family members, the familiar historical scenario of inviting invaders into the country is playing out once again!"