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

Inside the live stream, the barrage of comments questioning Xu Jie was like an avalanche, completely covering the screen.

In most viewers' historical understanding, the court struggles of the late Ming Dynasty are clearly divided: Yan Song was a powerful and treacherous minister, while Xu Jie was a loyal minister who endured hardship and bided his time for twenty years before finally overthrowing Yan's faction; and the Taoist priests like Shao Yuanjie and Tao Zhongwen were charlatans who flattered the emperor and wreaked havoc on the court. How could a leader of the upright officials like Xu Jie be involved in a shocking assassination attempt in the inner palace? And how could he possibly be in cahoots with the sorcerers?

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the big screen, watching the rapidly scrolling comments, and suddenly burst into laughter.

"Hahaha!"

Laughter echoed in the dimly lit green studio, revealing an extreme arrogance that seemed to have shattered the mask of hypocrisy in history.

"I know many of you don't believe it! In the embellished fragments of history you've received, civil officials are civil officials, and Taoist priests are Taoist priests—loyalty and treachery are clearly distinguished, right?"

He abruptly stopped laughing, grabbed a red laser pointer, pushed the portrait of Xu Jie on the big screen aside, and then dragged out three other half-length portraits dressed in Bagua Taoist robes.

"Since you believe that civil officials and Taoist priests are irreconcilable enemies, then I'll tell you an ultimate detail that's deliberately downplayed in official historical records, yet it completely exposes the dark side of the Ming Dynasty court!"

Three large characters landed on the center of the screen like a thunderclap: 【Check Place of Origin】!

"The politics of the Ming Dynasty was never a contest of academic schools of thought, but rather a naked struggle between geopolitics and vested interests! Let's first look at the first Grand Master of Taoism during the Jiajing reign!"

Zhu Dijun lashed the first Taoist portrait hard with the pointer in his hand.

"Shao Yuanjie!"

A row of pale white information immediately appeared next to it.

"Identity: A Taoist priest of the Zhengyi sect from Longhu Mountain, ordained at Shangqing Palace. His place of origin: Guixi, Jiangxi!"

Zhu Dijun zoomed in on the camera, his eyes sharp as a hawk's. "Family! I just told you in previous chapters, where is Xia Yan, who was recently kicked out of the cabinet by Jiajing, from? Jiangxi! Where is Yan Song, the Grand Secretary who is about to dominate the court, from? Also from Jiangxi! In this huge political faction where half of the officials are from Jiangxi, a Jiangxi native and Taoist priest has infiltrated, serving as the emperor's spiritual mentor! Is this a coincidence?"

Before the audience could react, the pointer struck the second portrait again.

"The second one! Also around the time of the Renyin Palace Coup, he had just succeeded Shao Yuanjie as Jiajing's most trusted divine mentor—Tao Zhongwen! His original name was Tao Dianzhen. He was initially a clerk in Huangmei County, and later became a student of Shao Yuanjie! Where was his hometown? Huanggang, Huguang!"

"Even their household registrations were transferred from low-level officials in the county government! Are these people immortals who have severed all ties with the mortal world? No! They have more experience than anyone else in the treacherous world of Ming Dynasty officialdom!"

Zhu Dijun abruptly pulled the timeline back, pointing to the third portrait.

"If you think the first two aren't obvious enough, then I'll give you a spoiler: the ultimate sorcerer who enters the palace in the thirty-fourth year of the Jiajing reign and ultimately becomes the absolute key to bringing down Yan Song—Lan Daoxing!"

On the screen, Lan Daoxing's information was magnified infinitely.

"Nicknamed 'Blue Immortal'! A Shandong native! Besides being a Taoist priest, he has an extremely terrifying hidden identity—he's also well-versed in Yangming's philosophy of mind! He's a disciple of the Taizhou School! What is the Taizhou School? It's the academic stronghold of the Jiangnan civil official group!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand heavily on the podium, making a loud bang.

"The most fatal flaw is, who recommended this Lan Daoxing to the palace to tell Jiajing's fortune? It was none other than Xu Jie, the obsequious and righteous man in your eyes! Xu Jie personally placed a Taoist priest full of Wang Yangming's philosophy into the emperor's side!"

At that moment, viewers across the internet felt their scalps tingle. The originally clearly defined political camps, interwoven with these origins and schools of thought, had become a chilling spider web.

"After Tao Zhongwen's death, Lan Daoxing became Jiajing Emperor's most trusted 'spirit medium'! How did he help Xu Jie bring down Yan Song?"

Judy Jun let out a cold, extremely sarcastic laugh.

"He pretended to be a deity, writing on the sand table and falsely claiming to be a divine decree telling Jiajing: the world is in chaos because Yan Song is a treacherous minister and Xu Jie is a virtuous minister! This old Jiajing, obsessed with cultivating immortality and demonic possession, didn't even believe the cabinet's words, but instead believed the deity's words and directly dealt with Yan Song!"

A parallel universe set in the late Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Wuyi Hall in the West Garden.

The Jiajing Emperor, who had just taken a red lead elixir, stared intently at Lan Daoxing's information on the sky, letting out a series of violent gasps as if a bellows were bursting.

His withered fingers trembled as he pointed at the sky, not even noticing the whisk in his hand fall to the ground.

"Lan Daoxing... Xu Jie... are they in cahoots?!"

Jiajing felt a sudden dizziness, his vision blurring with stars. He thought he had used the sorcerer to escape the surveillance of the civil officials and firmly grasp power in his own hands. Turns out, the deity he trusted most was actually a fortune teller sent by Xu Jie to infiltrate his ranks?!

"Traitors...all traitors!"

Emperor Jiajing spat a mouthful of black blood directly onto the Bagua diagram in front of him, and collapsed like a limp rag. Huang Jin was terrified and desperately called for the imperial physician.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's narration was like a boning knife, peeling away the festering sores of the Ming Dynasty's imperial power layer by layer.

"Did you understand, family members? From the moment Jiajing began cultivating immortality and intending to use Taoism to fight against the civil official group, the Jiangnan civil official group had already deduced the emperor's trump card! They didn't try to forcefully resist cultivating immortality; instead, they chose the most insidious tactic—if they couldn't beat you, they'd directly infiltrate your ranks!"

A massive web of relationships between characters unfolds dramatically on the screen.

Shao Yuanjie, Tao Zhongwen, Lan Daoxing, Xu Jie, Xia Yan, Yan Song, and the Jiangnan civil official group and smuggling tycoons hidden behind the scenes. The red dotted line stitches these seemingly unrelated people together tightly.

"Shao Yuanjie and Tao Zhongwen were not only leaders of Taoism, but Emperor Jiajing also appointed them Ministers of Rites to elevate their status! Tao Zhongwen was even granted the title of 'Three Dukes' and the title of Earl of Gongcheng! Taoists becoming ministers—isn't this just stealing food from the pot of the civil service? Why should the civil service tolerate them?"

Zhu Dijun stared intently at the camera, each word spoken with resounding force.

"Because they had already secretly reached an agreement on a deal! Taoist priests are human too! They don't eat grains, but don't their extended families want to buy land and enjoy wealth and status?! All the emperor can offer is a vague title and a few hundred taels of silver. But what the Jiangnan civil official group and the smuggling tycoons can offer is a fortune in silver that rivals that of a nation, and the protection of generations of prosperous land!"

"In this terrifying network of exchanges of benefits, the civil official group offered more than Jiajing himself, so of course the Taoists would choose the civil official group! Every word Jiajing uttered in his sleep while refining elixirs in the Western Garden, which concubine he met that night, and how he planned to cut military spending on the nine border regions tomorrow—these Taoists leaked every single one of it to Xu Jie and the high-ranking civil officials!"

The studio lights turned completely blood red.

"The secrets of the Ming Dynasty court were spilled onto the Jiangnan financial magnates like a sieve! So, let's return to the Renyin Palace Coup!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly turned around and drew two crossed blood blades heavily on the whiteboard.

"In the palace, there is no good or evil, only profit and loss! In the court, there is no righteousness or wickedness, only interests! All the grudges, affections, and power struggles, all the talk of Confucian righteousness and ancestral laws, are just slogans to fool the common people and cannon fodder at the grassroots level! Behind them are extremely dirty calculations of power and interests!"

"Leave aside morality to examine human nature, and peel back the layers to look at self-interest. This group of civil officials is the largest and most greedy swarm of parasites on the Ming Empire! Don't believe in right or wrong, just look at who benefits and who suffers!"

The live chat fell silent at that moment. Everyone's worldview was shattered by this chillingly cold historical logic.

"After the Renyin Palace Coup, why did Jiajing Emperor completely move out of the Forbidden City and relocate to the Western Garden?"

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair and sat down, his whole body enveloped in a dim halo.

"It's simple. Because he's afraid! He's afraid to the core!"

"For him, the Forbidden City was no longer a symbol of imperial power, but a super morgue that could kill him at any moment! The women in the harem could strangle him with knotted ropes, and the civil officials of the previous dynasty could collude with border generals to lure the Tartars into the pass."

In a parallel timeline of the Ming Dynasty, during the third year of the Zhengde reign.

Inside the Leopard Chamber, Emperor Zhu Houzhao of the Ming Dynasty, who was watching the play while holding a wine cup, suddenly shivered.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice drifted into his ears like a ghost.

"Jiajing feared a repeat of the palace maid assassination attempt. He was even more afraid that if he continued to stay in the Forbidden City, he would end up like his cousin Zhu Houzhao, who disobeyed the civil officials, and would inexplicably fall into the lake while boating, dying without leaving any descendants!"

The luminous cup in Zhu Houzhao's hand fell to the ground with a "crack" and shattered. The nonchalant look on his face vanished instantly, replaced by extreme fear and rage.

"I...I'll drown myself someday?! Was it those civil officials who did it?!"

Tianmu completely ignored the fury of the parallel universe and casually erased all the contents of the whiteboard.

"The emperor hid in the fortress of the Western Garden, attempting to build a final moat with the help of sorcerers. But he had no idea that the moat was filled with crocodiles raised by the civil official group."

Zhu Dijun stood up and walked to the front of the big screen. He looked at the camera, a sneer of utter absurdity creeping onto his lips.

"Family members. You think this is the darkest moment for the Ming Dynasty? This is just the power struggle at the top. At the grassroots level, on the meat grinders that truly determine the survival of the empire, a final harvest on a much larger scale, with more deaths and more shameless deceptions, is about to begin!"

He pointed his pointer sharply at the southeastern coast of the map, then at the heart of Jiangnan.

"In the history of the Ming Dynasty, those who appeared to be mortal enemies were actually, in reality, a community of interest sharing the spoils!"

Two terms were suddenly displayed on the screen: "[Japanese pirate group & coastal smuggling officials and gentry]!" and "[Jiangnan gentry & local officials]!"

"The Japanese pirate raids during the Jiajing reign were a double-dealing scheme! The local conflicts during the Ming Dynasty lasted for a century! In these two meat grinders, the Ming Dynasty's border troops died, the coastal people died, and the wealthy Jiangnan gentry got all the rich!"

Judy leaned forward slightly, her eyes filled with a chilling mockery.

"I see people in the comments section still defending certain so-called loyal historical figures. My friends, do you really think that replacing them with someone who claims to be a paragon of virtue can save the Ming Dynasty? You've been fooled by those erroneous historical records like fools. You've really been protected too well."

"To understand this cannibalistic history of the latter half of the Ming Dynasty, one must understand how these civil officials pushed the Ming Dynasty into the abyss."

A suffocating darkness churned in Judy Jun's eyes.

"You guys really should go to Xida University and experience what true 'iron will' is like!"

"Go and get a brutal beating that will completely shatter your values, you socialist spoiled brats!"