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

Inside the modern live stream room, the chat was still flooded with comments about Xia Yan being dismissed from his post because of a fragrant leaf crown.

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the large screen, looking at the screen full of "a bloody incident caused by a hat," a cold, extremely amused smile curling at the corner of his mouth. He grabbed the blackboard eraser and slammed it down on the whiteboard twice, chalk dust flying in the red laser light.

"Family members, do you really think that the Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty is more than just someone who participated in smuggling by the border troops and started a war without authorization? You're too naive! That was just the last fig leaf Jiajing used to cover up his crimes! Today, let's rewind a little and peel back the veil of hypocrisy in the Ming Dynasty's officialdom to see how Xia Yan and Yan Song, these two fellow Jiangxi natives, orchestrated the most extreme workplace manipulation and backstabbing scheme in the Ming court!"

The screen suddenly switched to two portraits of people wearing scarlet official robes, which were pinned side by side in the center of the whiteboard.

"Yan Song and Xia Yan were both from Jiangxi. When Xia Yan entered the cabinet, he felt he lacked a compliant henchman in the court, so he strongly recommended Yan Song to succeed him as Minister of Rites! In Xia Yan's eyes, Yan Song was nothing more than a dog he kept!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer lashed hard against Yan Song's portrait.

"How arrogant is Xia Yan? He treats Yan Song like his personal retainer, summoning him at will and dismissing him at will, and verbally abusing him to his face at the slightest provocation!"

How did Yan Song react?

As Judy Jun approached the camera, a chilling darkness shone in his eyes.

"He endured it! On the surface, he was extremely respectful to Xia Yan. When Xia Yan scolded him, he lowered his head and smiled obsequiously; he carried out Xia Yan's orders flawlessly. But in secret, this old viper had already sharpened his fangs to a gleaming shine, just waiting to bite his master's throat!"

A timeline unfolds at the bottom of the screen.

"In April of the nineteenth year of the Jiajing reign! Xia Yan encountered trouble. Marquis Guo Xun of Wuding was a tough nut to crack. He disliked Xia Yan and directly befriended Huo Tao, Xia Yan's mortal enemy, preparing to join forces to bring Xia Yan down."

Judy Jun drew a huge X on the whiteboard with a red marker in her hand.

"What kind of temper does Xia Yan have? He's a honey badger! He immediately unleashed his vicious dog—his confidant and censor Gao Shi—who exposed over a dozen of Guo Xun's capital crimes of embezzlement and corruption!"

"On September 12th! When Jiajing saw that Guo Xun refused to admit his mistakes, he threw Guo Xun into the Imperial Guard's prison in a fit of rage! By October, it was as if the heavens were paving the way for Xia Yan, as his mortal enemies Gu Dingchen and Huo Tao died of illness one after another! Without saying a word, Jiajing directly restored Xia Yan to all his official positions, including Junior Tutor, Minister of Rites, and Grand Secretary of the Wuying Hall!"

Zhu Dijun let out an extremely grating sneer. "At this time, Xia Yan wields absolute power! Even when he's sick and on leave at home, the cabinet's case files still have to be delivered to his bedside for review! How Guo Xun was interrogated in the imperial prison was all remotely directed by Xia Yan from his home!"

In a parallel Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao took a swig of strong liquor in the Leopard Chamber, looked at Xia Yan, who held absolute power on the screen, and sneered, "What a display of power. Even the cabinet has moved into their own bedroom. The civil service is indeed the civil service; even though they were once part of the Emperor's faction, they will still stand on the side of the civil service in the future!"

"But family!"

Zhu Dijun gripped the podium tightly with both hands, his voice suddenly rising in pitch, as if it were a proclamation before death. "By the spring of the twenty-first year of the Jiajing reign, Xia Yan had completely lost his way! He had been at the pinnacle of power for too long, and had forgotten his own limitations! He began a suicidal act of reckless abandon, a feat worthy of being called a historical event in the Ming Dynasty, a relentless and utter blunder that repeatedly crossed the emperor's bottom line!"

Six bloody scrolls of indictments were smashed onto the big screen.

"First! Double-dealing! Jiajing originally thought that Guo Xun's two years of imprisonment was enough and ordered his release. After all, Guo Xun had supported his ascension to the throne, and this was a lesson for him, as well as an explanation to the outside world. But what did Xia Yan do? He not only falsely conveyed the imperial edict saying that this decree did not need to be obeyed, but also tried every means to continue fabricating charges against Guo Xun in an attempt to kill him! This directly led Jiajing to suspect that the previous impeachments of Guo Xun by the censors were all orchestrated by you, Xia Yan, behind the scenes to manipulate factional struggles!"

"The second point, and one that the Ming emperor absolutely could not cross—collusion between internal and external forces!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the podium.

"Xia Yan felt that the outer court wasn't enough for him to make his mark, so he actually went to befriend Gao Zhong, the emperor's personal eunuch! First, Gao Zhong sent jade artifacts to the emperor as a birthday gift on Xia Yan's behalf, and then Xia Yan secretly leaked the top-secret imperial edict that the Jiajing Emperor did not need to write an imperial decree to build the Daxing Hall to the eunuch!"

A parallel Hongwu timeline.

Zhu Yuanzhang sat slumped on the dragon throne. When he saw the words "collusion between insiders and outsiders," a terrifying murderous intent suddenly flashed in his eyes.

"How dare they... When our Great Ming Dynasty was founded, an iron plaque was erected prohibiting eunuchs from interfering in politics! This pedantic scholar, as the Grand Secretary, actually dared to collude with the eunuchs to spy on the Emperor's whereabouts? If Zhu Houcong doesn't kill him, he's not worthy of sitting on this dragon throne!"

"You think that's all?"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's words came down in rapid succession, like a barrage of machine gun fire.

"Third offense! Overstepping his bounds! Xia Yan didn't even want to walk; he rode in a sedan chair directly in the royal forbidden area of ​​the West Garden! In the Ming Dynasty, this was a capital offense, punishable by death!"

"Fourthly, resisting the emperor's will! Jiajing ordered his ministers to tie their hair with scented leaf towels and wear leather-lined shoes. Xia Yan invoked ancestral etiquette and refused to wear them no matter what! Yan Song, however, specially added a cover and treated them like an ancestor! The contrast is stark!"

"Fifth, extreme passivity and shirking of duty! The emperor is cultivating immortality and doesn't hold court, so Xia Yan actually thinks, 'Then I won't go to the cabinet either.' He just lies at home and works every day, treating the cabinet like his Xia family's private school!"

Zhu Dijun took a half step back, disappearing into the cold shadows of the studio lights, leaving only a pair of mocking eyes.

"Jiajing was a vicious wolf suffering from severe paranoia, a consequence of the fire. Xia Yan forged imperial edicts, manipulated officials, befriended eunuchs, and rode in a sedan chair in the Western Garden. Each and every one of these actions was a provocation against imperial power. The murderous intent in Jiajing's heart had reached the brink of explosion!"

Everything on the screen.

Yan Song's gloomy and withered old face was magnified infinitely.

"That old viper Yan Song has smelled blood!" Zhu Dijun's fingers flew across the keyboard.

Yan Song knew he couldn't bring down Xia Yan on his own. He cleverly bypassed the outer court and went directly to the inner palace to find Tao Zhongwen, the most trusted Taoist priest of the Jiajing Emperor! The two hit it off immediately and began whispering eerie words in the Jiajing Emperor's ear every day!

"Xia Yan is a honey badger, with an incredibly sharp sense of smell! He discovered Yan Song's underhanded tactics, and without hesitation, he immediately ordered his subordinate censors to launch a frenzied impeachment campaign against Yan Song! He wanted to take Yan Song down in one fell swoop!"

"But at this point, Yan Song displayed the most terrifying and deadly skill in the Ming Dynasty's officialdom—crying before the emperor!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and pointed at the screen.

"Yan Song ran straight to Jiajing, knelt down with a thud, and cried his heart out! His face was covered in snot and tears as he tearfully accused Xia Yan of how he had humiliated and oppressed him, and also revealed all the irrefutable evidence of Xia Yan's tyranny and collusion with outsiders!"

"Jiajing looked at Yan Song, who was crying like a dog, and then thought of Xia Yan, who always looked down on everyone and wouldn't even wear clothes he designed. The scales tipped completely!"

The entire universe was deathly silent.

All the Ming Dynasty civil officials watching Yan Song's actions on the screen felt their stomachs churning. A high-ranking official of the first rank, resorting to the tactic of a shrew's complaint—he had utterly disgraced scholars.

"June of the 21st year of the Jiajing reign!"

Zhu Dijun roared at the top of his lungs, and a dazzling red light cleaved through the darkness on the big screen.

"Jiajing completely broke off relations, personally wrote an imperial edict and issued it to the Ministry of Rites, publicly berating Xia Yan for his crimes in front of the entire nation! Xia Yan was terrified and quickly submitted a memorial confessing his guilt and begging to retire to his hometown!"

"But that's not enough! To remove a deeply entrenched prime minister, we need an absolutely irrefutable pretext!"

Zhu Dijun drew a huge black circle heavily on the whiteboard, completely obscuring the screen.

"Eight days later, on the first day of the seventh lunar month! Heaven, in harmony with the darkness of the Ming Dynasty court, is granting us ample favor!"

【eclipse】!

"A solar eclipse! What was this called in ancient times? It was called the collapse of the Heavenly Way, an ominous sign of inferiors disrespecting superiors! Without saying a word, Jiajing used the solar eclipse as a pretext to order Xia Yan's complete dismissal and retirement!"

Zhu Dijun's finger pointed at the group of officials on the whiteboard.

"Xia Yan has fallen. Can the pack of 'biting dogs' he raised survive? On the same day, censor Qiao You, supervising secretary Shen Liangcai, and other opportunistic officials immediately submitted a memorial impeaching Xia Yan and took the opportunity to request their dismissal, hoping to gain a reputation as upright officials and leave the government safely."

"But who is Jiajing? He directly demoted and exiled all thirteen officials who had spoken out against him! Gao Shi, who had helped Xia Yan kill Guo Xun back then, was even more severely demoted by Jiajing and exiled to a remote, desolate place to eat sand! Xia Yan's political power was uprooted by Jiajing in a single day!"

The live stream chat was scrolling wildly.

"Holy crap, that combo was so smooth!"

["Solar Eclipse: I'll take the blame!"]

"Xia Yan was actually killed by the combined forces of his own pet dog and the tyrannical ruler he looked down upon!"

"Yan Song's tactic of playing dumb to outwit his opponent is practically a textbook example of workplace intrigue!"

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair and sat down heavily. The entire studio was bathed in a layer of eerie green light, like poisonous gas. He picked up his water glass, staring at the tea leaves floating inside, his eyes as cold as ice.

"In August of the twenty-first year of the Jiajing reign, stepping over Xia Yan's corpse, Yan Song officially replaced the Grand Secretary and entered the cabinet. The Ming court thus entered a twenty-year period of Yan Song's faction's dictatorship."

He slowly raised his head, looked directly at the camera, and his voice was so deep it sent chills down your spine.

"The emperor thought that by eliminating the powerful minister, the court would be stable; Yan Song thought that by defeating his cousin, he could monopolize the government. They were both gloating over their share of the Ming Dynasty."

The image on the large screen suddenly zoomed northward, revealing the Great Wall. Beyond the wall stretched the vast grasslands with Mongol cavalry, their blades gleaming with a bloodthirsty coldness under the grassland sunlight.

"But they forgot about the border guards who were completely paralyzed by the high-level political reshuffle; and the steppe wolves who were completely enraged by the greed of the smuggling groups."

An uncontrollable sense of oppression churned in Zhu Dijun's eyes as he lightly tapped the table, creating a countdown rhythm.