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

"Family members, Yan Song has finally stepped over Xia Yan's corpse and sat on the throne of the Grand Secretary that he has always dreamed of."

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the large screen, casually shrinking the portraits of Yan Song and Xia Yan and pushing them to the corner of the screen.

He grabbed the blackboard eraser and forcefully wiped away all the tedious details about court intrigues from the whiteboard, leaving only a bloody date—[the 21st year of the Jiajing reign].

"The civil officials in the capital are fighting tooth and nail for power. But my family, the borders of the Ming Dynasty wait for no one!"

The pointer in Zhu Dijun's hand was like a long knife, slashing fiercely at the Northwest map on the big screen.

"As we mentioned earlier, in July of the 20th year of the Jiajing reign (1541), the civil official group and the border general Long Dayou joined forces and used the extremely despicable method of killing the envoy to forcibly close the door to trade with Mongolia. Altan Khan's envoy's head was cut off and sent to the capital. This was like pouring a bucket of cold water directly into the boiling oil pot of the grasslands!"

The background sound effects on the screen suddenly became extremely mournful, with the neighing of warhorses and the clash of cold weapons exploding in the studio.

"Revenge! The ultimate revenge, without reservation! The time has come to June of the twenty-first year of the Jiajing reign!"

Zhu Dijun loosened his tie and pointed to the arrows spreading across the map like a black tide. "Altan Khan, with his Mongol cavalry, has completely torn apart the Ming Dynasty's defenses and launched a massive invasion of Shanxi! Without trade, there's only plunder! Since your Ming Dynasty lacks martial virtue, then the Mongols will show you what a true steppe meat grinder is!"

A long string of alarming battle damage data scrolled frantically across the screen.

"From June to July! In just two short months! Anda's army swept through the land like it was empty, slaughtering and plundering a total of thirty-eight prefectures and counties in Shanxi! Thirty-eight! My family! The northern defense line of the Ming Dynasty is as flimsy as paper! In July, the Mongol cavalry invaded Shuozhou and Yanmen Pass, and then drove straight in, threatening Taiyuan and Lu'an! Qinzhou, Fenzhou, Xiangyuan, Changzi and other places have all become battlefields!"

The live stream chat was instantly filled with a barrage of "Holy crap" and angry comments.

"Thirty-eight prefectures and counties! Have all the border guards of the Ming Dynasty perished?!"

"Several hundred thousand taels of silver a year for military expenses, and this is all they've produced—a bunch of useless spectators?"

"In the capital, Yan Song is covering the emperor's tattered hat with a gauze cover, while on the frontier, the people are being slaughtered by the Tartars like sheep. This is the Ming Dynasty!"

"Are all the border guards dead? That's a good question in the comments!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes were bloodshot. He slammed his hand on the podium, making a loud bang.

"Of course, not all of the Ming Dynasty's officers have died! Even in this extremely corrupt situation, the Ming Dynasty still has men of unwavering courage who dare to draw their swords and charge towards the elite Mongol troops!"

The black arrow on the big screen suddenly stopped, and a blinding red flame burst out in Qixian County.

Zhu Dijun wrote a name heavily on the whiteboard: "[Deputy Commander-in-Chief Zhang Shizhong]".

"In July! In the Qixian area of ​​Shanxi, the ground was littered with the bones of refugees and burning villages. While other Ming border generals cowered behind the city walls, trembling in fear, Deputy Commander-in-Chief Zhang Shizhong drew his sword and led his troops in an extremely tragic and desperate attack against the Altan Khan's army, which far outnumbered them!"

At that moment, the entire online audience held their breath.

In a parallel Zhenguan era of the Tang Dynasty.

Li Shimin suddenly stood up, staring intently at the sky, and uttered four words, one by one:

"Loyal Souls of the Ming Dynasty".

"Zhang Shizhong's surprise attack was extremely brave; he led his troops to directly break through the outer defenses of the Mongols. But he was no god; he had too few troops, and they were quickly surrounded by the main Mongol army, finding themselves in a hopeless situation!"

Zhu Dijun's voice became hoarse with extreme anger. He turned around abruptly and pointed to several blurry portraits of Ming generals at the edge of the screen.

"But family members, do you know if there were any allied forces from the Ming Dynasty around Zhang Shizhong at that time? Yes! And they were right next door!"

"The other Ming generals, led by General Zhang Da, are stationed in camps extremely close to the battlefield! Zhang Shizhong's messenger desperately broke through the encirclement and delivered the distress signal to them! If these men could send even a single cavalry unit to flank him, Zhang Shizhong could escape alive!"

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

"But what did they do?! Zhang Da and his border generals ordered the entire army to hold their ground! They closed the camp and refused to come out! They could only watch helplessly as Zhang Shizhong's banner fluttered forlornly within the Mongol encirclement, dozens of miles away, watching the deafening battle cries gradually fade away!"

The comments section has completely gone crazy, filled with profanity that could be censored by the system.

"Beasts! They're all beasts!"

"Failure to render aid is a capital offense under military law, punishable by immediate beheading!"

"Experts at internal strife, inept at external conflict! They're even more ruthless when their own people fight each other than the Tartars!"

"This is not just cowardice; it's an extremely malicious act of using someone else to do one's dirty work!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer struck Zhang Da's name hard.

"In the border army system of the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, this kind of thing was practically an unspoken rule! You, Zhang Shizhong, aren't you good at fighting? Aren't you stubborn? You lure the enemy over there, and we can just sit back and reap the benefits. We can also use the Mongols' sword to get rid of a troublemaker who doesn't get along with us!"

The scene is now frozen on the battlefield in Qixian.

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair and sat down. The lights in the entire studio were dimmed to almost no light, with only a pale spotlight shining on his face.

"Zhang Shizhong charged left and right, but no reinforcements from the Ming Dynasty arrived. He ran out of arrows and gunpowder. His warhorse was pierced by a spear and fell to the ground."

"This deputy commander of the Ming Dynasty pushed aside the corpse of his warhorse, stood up, drew his long sword from his waist, and began to fight on foot."

"He cut down three Mongol soldiers in front of him until a cold arrow pierced his skull with pinpoint accuracy."

Zhu Dijun's voice was so soft it sounded like he was reciting a eulogy.

"Zhang Shizhong died a heroic death. Another star general of the Ming Dynasty died not in a fair fight against the enemy, but from the extremely cold-blooded betrayal and seclusion of his own troops."

In a parallel universe of the Ming Dynasty, during the Hongwu reign.

Zhu Yuanzhang's withered hands gripped the armrests of the dragon throne so tightly that his fingernails snapped and bled from the force. His eyes were bloodshot, and a dying roar escaped his throat.

"Kill...skin these beasts who refuse to leave their homes! Skin them alive! Skin them all alive!!!"

Zhu Dijun casually tossed the chalk onto the table, his eyes revealing extreme desolation.

"Zhang Shizhong is dead, and dozens of prefectures and counties in Shanxi are in ruins. Surely these parasites in the court should react now? Minister of War Zhang Zan quickly jumped out and submitted a memorial requesting the strengthening of defenses in Shanxi, Jiliao and other places, and the reorganization of troops. The court also issued an extremely grand imperial edict, requiring a large-scale recruitment of soldiers in Zhili, Shandong, Henan and other places to strengthen the defense of the capital."

He spread his hands and gave a cold, sarcastic laugh.

"Family members, is it any use? It's all just a formality! The imperial edict has been issued, and the Ministry of War's plans are beautifully written. But the result in implementation can be summed up in one word—no money!"

The image on the large screen completely shattered, showing scorched earth in Shanxi on the left and the empty treasury of the Ming Dynasty on the right.

"The treasury is in dire straits! This is the ultimate black hole that will crush the camel that is the Ming Dynasty! In the twenty-first year of Jiajing's reign, the economic foundation of the Ming Dynasty was already on the verge of complete collapse!" Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and drew a huge funnel on the whiteboard.

"On the one hand, Altan Khan turned Shanxi into ruins. Large areas of land suffered crop failure, and people were displaced. Not only could the imperial court not collect taxes from the region, but in order to appease the people and prevent rebellion, it also had to reluctantly issue an edict in August to exempt the affected counties in Shanxi from land rent and to take money from the national treasury to provide relief to the disaster victims!"

He drew a big X at the bottom of the funnel.

"On the other hand, natural disasters and man-made calamities struck at this time. Floods and droughts were rampant throughout the capital region, Shaanxi, Henan, Fujian, and other places! Memorials from local officials flooded into the capital like snowflakes, demanding exemptions from taxes and grain rations! Fiscal revenue plummeted to an extremely alarming level!"

As Zhu Dijun drew close to the camera, every word he uttered exuded a suffocating sense of oppression.

"We're out of money. We can't even afford to pay for recruiting soldiers. All those defensive strategies Zhang Zan proposed have turned into empty promises!"

"But what was the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty doing at this crucial moment?"

Judy slapped the whiteboard.

"Jiajing is cultivating immortality! Building palaces! In April, to repair the Imperial Ancestral Temple that was burned down by a thunderstorm, the Ministry of Revenue turned the national treasury upside down, but still couldn't raise enough money for the repairs!"

Several portraits of princes wearing python robes appeared on the screen.

"How absurd is this? The restoration project of the Imperial Ancestral Temple actually had to rely on local princes and vassal kings, such as the Prince of Qin and the Prince of Zhou, to voluntarily contribute silver to subsidize the construction costs! The mighty central court of the Ming Dynasty can't even afford to repair the memorial tablets for its own ancestors, and has to rely on the savings of local vassal kings!"

"The Minister of Revenue was so anxious he lost all his hair. In February, they even submitted a memorial to the Emperor requesting the cessation of the 'anti-corruption land' system for border generals! They wanted to forcibly reclaim the land originally allocated to the generals for anti-corruption purposes and return it to the soldiers and civilians for cultivation, attempting to squeeze out some grain to fill the hole in military expenditures!"

Judy Jun let out an extremely harsh, cold laugh.

"Family members, do you think this tactic will work? Snatching meat from the soldiers' bowls and using it to cover the losses at the front lines is like throwing a torch into a powder keg! When the generals are pushed to the limit, they will only intensify their cuts on the ordinary soldiers' pay! The Ming Dynasty's military system, caught in this vicious cycle, has completely fallen into a dead end of despair."

All the lights in the studio were turned off, leaving only a cold, eerie glow on the large screen.

Judy Jun stood in the darkness, his voice so low it sounded like he was announcing a death countdown.

"With Altan Khan's iron cavalry probing fiercely from the outside, and the national treasury depleted and warlords hesitant to fight from within, while the civil official group colluded with foreign enemies, the Ming Empire was already standing on the edge of a precipice in the twenty-first year of the Jiajing reign. And Yan Song, this powerful and treacherous official who climbed to the position of Grand Secretary by virtue of a fragrant leaf crown, inherited such a mess riddled with problems."

He slowly raised his hand and pointed to a shadow that was gradually appearing on the screen.

"The emperor needs money to cultivate immortality, the nine border regions need money to fight wars, and the civil officials in Jiangnan need to protect their own purses. A penniless court has encountered a group of bloodsucking parasites and a group of covetous foreign enemies."

Zhu Dijun looked at the camera with extremely dark eyes.

"Family members, guess what kind of terrifying bloodshed will ensue in the capital of the Ming Dynasty when this pressure cooker completely explodes?"