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

Zhu Dijun stood in front of the large screen and roughly erased the markings of the Datong imperial clan rebellion from the whiteboard. He grabbed a pure black marker and wrote four large characters in the center of the screen.

[The Great Thief of the Silver Vault].

"Family members, let's move on to the second core reason why Xia Yan had to die! This also happened in the twenty-fourth year of the Jiajing reign. In this incredibly surreal year, the Ming Dynasty not only suffered from the Mongol knives and the betrayal of the imperial family, but was also slapped hard across the face right under the Forbidden City!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer slammed heavily on the screen, displaying a line of glaring information.

"This is historically known as the 'Jiajing Silver Treasury Robbery Case'! Does this case sound familiar?"

He moved closer to the camera, a chilling, utterly absurd smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Back when Emperor Wuzong of Ming, Zhu Houzhao, had just ascended the throne, he wanted to hold a funeral for his father. He went to the imperial treasury and found it so empty that even a mouse would weep if it went in! The exact same routine was repeated during the Jiajing reign!"

The live stream chat went silent for a moment, then erupted like a volcano.

[“Holy crap?! Not again? Is the Ming Dynasty's treasury a public toilet? You can just walk in and take whatever you want?”]

"Do these civil servants even know anything about history? They're just exploiting one particular person relentlessly!"

"Incredible! Zhu Houzhao went crazy and overturned the table back then because he was broke, and now the same thing is happening again in the 24th year of Jiajing's reign. These rats must have a heart of stone!"

In a parallel Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Leopard Room.

Zhu Houzhao kicked over the rosewood table in front of him. The gold and jade wine vessel rolled to the ground, spilling wine everywhere. He drew his embroidered spring knife from his waist and stared intently at the sky.

"This is outrageous!"

Zhu Houzhao, his eyes bloodshot, roared through gritted teeth, "When I searched the imperial treasury back then, I couldn't find a single account. Now, Zhu Houcong has been on the throne for over twenty years, and these beasts still manage to smuggle silver out right under our noses? The officials the Ming Dynasty employs are all petty thieves!"

On the screen above, Zhu Dijun's voice, like a gust of cold wind, dispelled the oppressive atmosphere of the studio.

"Family members, let's take a look at the details of this extremely outrageous case."

On the large screen, a map of Beijing appeared. A red marker exploded near the East City God Temple.

"The timeframe is concentrated in the 24th year of the Jiajing reign (1555). The location is the Ministry of Revenue's treasury near the City God Temple in the eastern part of Beijing!"

"What was the scale of the theft? Hundreds of thousands of taels of silver! Vanished into thin air! Mysteriously disappeared!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly against the podium.

"Converted to weight, this is tens of thousands of catties of silver! This isn't something you can carry away with a few copper coins in your sleeve! This is an enormous amount of wealth that would require a whole host of carriages to transport through the streets of the capital!"

The screen then cuts to a gloomy and oppressive warehouse.

"What truly broke Jiajing's spirits was the method of the crime. The Minister of Revenue was so desperate he wanted to hang himself, and the Embroidered Uniform Guards turned the scene upside down. They found that the heavy locks on the storeroom doors were intact! There were no signs of forced entry on the windows! There wasn't even a single muddy footprint on the ground!"

Zhu Dijun frantically tapped on the keyboard, and a lone prop enlarged in the center of the screen.

"The only clue was a small copper coin found in a very hidden corner of the storeroom! What do you call this, folks?! This is an extremely hardcore locked-room theft case from ancient China! Undoubtedly an inside job!"

"Jiajing was furious."

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair and sat down, his entire body enveloped in the cool blue overhead light.

"The loss of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver right under the emperor's nose is worse than death. The emperor directly appointed Zhang Yusi, a censor known for his keen insight, to investigate this case thoroughly!"

Zhang Yusi's portrait was dragged onto the screen.

"Zhang Yusi didn't go outside the city to catch the hooligans, nor did he interrogate the thieves in the capital. He led his men into the treasury and stared intently at the large, undamaged padlock. He crouched down and peered into the keyhole."

Zhu Dijun drew a key shape on the whiteboard with a red pen in his hand.

"Zhang Yusi discovered the key to breaking the deadlock! There was extremely fresh metallic dust inside the keyhole! This means that the lock wasn't pried open, but rather someone used an extremely sophisticated cloned key to open the door openly!"

"What followed was extremely simple and brutal. Zhang Yusi directly accessed the treasury's monthly shift schedule and access control records."

Two names were prominently displayed on the screen: [Guard Captain Liu Dayong] and [Vault Manager Zhao Wenzhong].

"Suspect identified! On the night of the incident, Liu Dayong repeatedly left his post without reason, falsely claiming he was going to report the night patrol situation to his superiors. In reality, he was acting as a lookout and cover for the thieves! And Zhao Wenzhong, who was in charge of the keys, appeared extremely flustered in the days leading up to the incident, repeatedly entering and leaving the warehouse under the pretext of checking accounts!"

Without a word, Zhang Yusi arrested the two men. Under severe torture, they confessed everything. This was a shocking case of collusion between the treasury official and the guards, who abused their positions to steal silver from the national treasury!

The screen was flooded with praise, with many praising Zhang Yusi's swift resolution of the case.

But there was no smile on Zhu Dijun's face. He suddenly stood up and slammed his hand on the podium. The loud impact startled all the audience members.

"Family members, do you really think that arresting Liu Dayong and Zhao Wenzhong, these low-level officials, will close this case?" Zhu Dijun approached the camera, his eyes revealing an extreme chilling insight into the cannibalistic nature of officialdom.

"Use your brains! Even if you gave those gatekeepers and key handlers ten times the guts, would they dare to empty the Ministry of Revenue of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in one go?! Do they even have the channels to launder and spend that tens of thousands of pounds of silver?! This huge sum of money is absolutely not something these few vermin can swallow!"

On the whiteboard, he linked the words "hundreds of thousands of taels of silver" with another name—[Xia Yan].

"The timing is too fatal! The 24th year of the Jiajing reign! This is precisely the heated stage in the Ming Dynasty court, where Xia Yan has returned to the position of Grand Secretary for the third time, firmly suppressing Yan Song!"

Zhu Dijun loosened his tie and strode to the screen.

"What is Xia Yan doing? He and the civil service group he supports are pushing hard for the 'Fourteen Strategies for Defending the Borders'! He's banging on the table in the cabinet every day, forcing the Ministry of Revenue to pay military salaries and allocate huge sums of money to border generals like Zeng Xian in Shaanxi, Datong, and Xuanfu, so they can go and recover the Hetao region!"

"Just at this critical moment when the Ministry of Revenue needed to make a huge financial drain, its treasury was robbed! Hundreds of thousands of taels of military funds are gone!"

Yan Song's gloomy and withered old face appeared faintly in the shadows of the screen.

"Yan Song has been lying low for so long, and seeing this case, he's practically laughing out loud in his bed!"

Zhu Dijun drew heavy circles on Yan Song's portrait with his finger.

"The theft of the treasury, ostensibly a security issue, is actually a deadly weapon in the vicious power struggles of the court! Yan Song and his cronies pounced on it like ghouls smelling blood. Instead of investigating where the silver went, they turned their guns directly on the cabinet and the Ministry of Revenue led by Xia Yan!"

"Yan Song's memorial was submitted to the Western Garden, each word piercing the heart: Your Majesty, the Ministry of Revenue's oversight has been ineffective, resulting in an empty treasury. These hundreds of thousands of taels of silver have vanished without a trace. Were they stolen, or were they secretly transferred by certain ministers with ulterior motives to border generals who command significant troops?!"

In a parallel Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Wuyi Hall, wisps of smoke rose from the sandalwood incense burner.

As the aged Jiajing Emperor listened to the analysis on the celestial screen, the veins on the back of his withered hands bulged.

He remembered. That year, the treasury was empty. And Xia Yan was forcing him every day to use money from the imperial treasury to fill the gaps at the border.

"My money..."

A chilling laugh escaped Jiajing's throat. "So they were stealing my money to support their private armies of civil officials in Jiangnan. What a clever collusion between insiders and outsiders."

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice was already suppressed to the extreme.

"This is the political logic behind Xia Yan's inevitable death! The disappearance of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver has driven Xia Yan into an extremely desperate corner. Even if he didn't take the money, as long as Zeng Xian, whom he admires, asks for money in Datong, Yan Song can pin the blame on him!"

"Combined with what we discussed earlier about the Chu vassal killing his father and the Dai vassal colluding with the Mongols, the current Jiajing Emperor looks at the empty treasury and at Xia Yan, who is still frantically demanding military and financial power."

Zhu Dijun gripped the table tightly with both hands, staring directly at the emperor of the myriad worlds and timelines.

"Jiajing not only felt that his imperial power was threatened, but he also felt that his purse strings were about to be emptied by the civil service group to fund a rebellion! Under the combined pressure of extreme panic and extreme rage, Xia Yan, the tough Grand Secretary, had already been sentenced to death countless times in Jiajing's mind!"

"Even if he was once a comrade-in-arms of Jiajing, he must die now!"

The studio lights dimmed all at once, leaving only a dim, cold glow.

"The case did indeed end with the execution of the low-ranking official involved."

Zhu Dijun stepped back to the podium, his voice low and somber, like the tolling of a death knell.

"But this was not a victory for the rule of law. Starting with this case, Jiajing completely lost hope in the financial oversight of the civil service system."

"To prevent the national treasury from being emptied by civil officials again, Jiajing embarked on an extremely twisted path. He further strengthened the power of the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the eunuchs in the inner court. He sent eunuchs to supervise taxes and the treasury. He wanted to use his household servants to expose these greedy officials."

"However, the system of eunuchs controlling officials intimidated the Ministry of Revenue in the short term. In the long run, it planted an even deeper and more unpredictable bomb of corruption for the mining tax disaster during the Wanli era. The Ming Dynasty's finances were rapidly drained of their last drop of blood amidst the extremely ugly infighting between civil officials and eunuchs."

Zhu Dijun casually tossed the blackboard eraser into the drawer, making a dull thud.

He looked at the camera, a chilling, sinister smile slowly spreading across his lips.

"The rebellion of the imperial clan made the emperor suspicious of military power, and the thief of the treasury made him resent the loss of financial control. Xia Yan stepped on these two landmines and is already half dead. But his family..."

He tapped his fingers heavily on the whiteboard twice.

"If it were only these things, Xia Yan would at most be dismissed from his post, exiled to the army, and die in prison. Why would he suffer the extreme punishment of 'public execution,' which is extremely rare for civil officials since the founding of the Ming Dynasty? In addition to military power and money, Xia Yan also inadvertently touched the most extreme inferiority complex and the most unforgivable sore spot in the Jiajing Emperor's bones."

Three large, dark characters appeared faintly in the depths of the screen.

"Are you ready? The third reason. That is, the real guillotine that will send Xia Yan straight to the guillotine."