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

On the holographic screen of a modern live streaming room, the barrage of comments is like a dense downpour, instantly splitting into two completely opposing camps.

"Here it comes, here it comes, Brother Jun's Ming Dynasty conspiracy theory, my absolute favorite!"

"Yes, we just analyzed 'Fourteen Strategies for Defending the Borders' using conspiracy theories. Now let's look at the connections; perhaps this is the truth!"

"Sigh, whether it's a conspiracy theory or not, I feel that the people of the Ming Dynasty suffered terribly. Not only were they burdened with heavy taxes, but they were also sacrificed by various interest groups for their own pockets!"

The supportive fans were enthusiastically commenting, but the history critics and traditional fact-checkers lurking in the live stream immediately launched a fierce counterattack.

"Zhu Dijun is spouting nonsense! What conspiracy theory? He's just trying to whitewash Jiajing Zhu Houcong, that beastly emperor hiding in the Western Garden!"

"Exactly! If there were so many conspiracies, the Ming Dynasty's royal family would have been wiped out long ago. How could they have survived until the Chongzhen Emperor's reign?"

["Good heavens, you've used the *Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming* and the *Guo Que* as toilet paper, haven't you? You're making up nothing but nonsense! Yan Song killed Xia Yan clearly to seize power!"]

The cold blue overhead light in the studio shone on Judy Jun's shoulder. He didn't get angry; he just glanced coldly at the wildly fluctuating number of online viewers in the upper right corner, then casually grabbed the thermos on the table and took a sip of water.

"Family members, the haters are getting anxious, which means we've hit a nerve."

Zhu Dijun spoke softly, a highly amused smile curving his lips.

"Well then, let me put on a show first. What I'm about to say is just for fun. After all, there's no solid evidence. Neither the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming' nor the 'National Records,' these historical books that were frantically altered and embellished by the Ming Dynasty's civil official group, would record this extremely horrifying logic."

He slammed his thermos on the table, grabbed his pointer, and pointed it at the big screen.

"Listen carefully, everyone. If we connect Xia Yan, the national treasury crisis of the 24th year of the Jiajing reign, and the major Japanese pirates like Wang Zhi and Xu Dong on the southern seas, you will see an extremely dark, logically consistent script for the ultimate transfer of benefits!"

Four large, blood-red characters were slammed onto the whiteboard: "Maritime Protection Umbrella!"

"Let's look at the geopolitical situation!"

Zhu Dijun's red marker flew across the map, drawing circles that tightly bound Jiangxi and Huizhou together.

"Where was Xia Yan from? Guixi, Jiangxi! He was the absolute leader of the Jiangxi clique of civil officials! And where were Xu Dong and Wang Zhi, the biggest smuggling bosses on the southeast coast at the time? Huizhou!"

A thick arrowhead pierces straight from Huizhou into Jiangxi.

"During the Ming Dynasty, Jiangxi and Huizhou were geographically very close, with the Gan River, Poyang Lake, and the Yangtze River forming an extremely vast network of trade routes! Xia Yan constantly advocated for a maritime ban in court, but what did he do in private? He most likely used officials from Jiangxi to secretly provide absolute political protection to these armed smuggling tycoons! In exchange, he obtained enormous sums of silver to cover the deficit incurred by the Jiajing Emperor's construction of Taoist temples and to maintain the Jiangxi clique's extravagant spending in court!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the red arrow on the sky that represented the smuggling waterway, and slammed his withered hand on the imperial desk.

"Good! On the surface, they spout all sorts of benevolence and morality, but behind our backs, they use the rivers and waterways of our Great Ming Dynasty to transport money and grain for pirates! These scholars from Jiangxi have wasted all their education!"

"Let's look at the first key link in this conspiracy chain!"

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Zhu Dijun slapped his hand on the podium.

"In the second year of the Jiajing reign (1523), the Ningbo Tribute Dispute erupted! Two Japanese delegations in Zhejiang Province drew their swords and attacked each other in the street over a dispute over legitimate trading rights!"

A slick businessman's portrait appeared on the screen—Song Suqing.

"The key figure in this incident, Song Suqing, the deputy envoy representing the Hosokawa clan of Japan, was a native of Ningbo! But how was he able to win over Lai En, the eunuch of the Maritime Trade Office of the Ming Dynasty at the time? Because he knew the rules! He was willing to spend money!"

Zhu Dijun approached the camera with a cold smile.

"Behind Song Suqing, there is definitely the shadow of a powerful figure in the imperial court! Xia Yan, as a high-ranking official from Jiangxi who was rising rapidly at the time, was very close to Ningbo. The so-called competition for tribute was not for the diplomatic face of the Ming Dynasty at all; it was these officials and merchants from the interior vying for absolute control of the profits from smuggling channels!"

The comment section erupted in uproar, and the curses from the haters were instantly suppressed.

"Think that's too far-fetched? Then let's fast forward to the 24th year of the Jiajing reign!"

Zhu Dijun loosened his tie, strode to the whiteboard, and wrote down an extremely tragic name—[Zhu Wan]!

"That year, Zhu Wan was appointed Governor of Zhejiang! He was a true pragmatist! Upon arriving in the province, he acted swiftly and decisively, directly sealing off Shuangyu Port, the smuggling hub, and forcibly executing Li Guangtou and a group of other vicious smuggling tycoons!"

On the screen, swords flashed and flames roared as Shuangyu Port was engulfed in fire.

"Logically, this should have been doing the country a favor, right? But what was the result?!"

Judy Jun's voice suddenly ripped apart, filled with endless sorrow.

"The result was that the entire court, especially those officials who constantly proclaimed their loyalty to the emperor and their love for the country, jumped out like mad dogs to collectively impeach Zhu Wan! They practically drove this hero who fought against the Japanese pirates to commit suicide by swallowing poison!"

A bloodstained suicide note was suddenly enlarged in the center of the holographic screen.

"Before Zhu Wan died, he wrote a sentence in his final memorial that was filled with tears and blood, a scathing denunciation of the Ming Dynasty's officialdom!" Zhu Dijun roared, enunciating each word clearly: "[It's easy to steal from foreign countries, but difficult to steal from China; it's even more difficult to steal from the Chinese elite!]"

"What do you mean by 'clothing thieves'?! They're those beasts who wear the crimson robes of the Ming Dynasty, sit on grand chairs, and divide their loot!"

The pointer in Zhu Dijun's hand almost shattered the screen.

"Zhu Wan didn't just fight ordinary pirates; he completely severed the ultimate source of wealth for the Jiangxi gang and the Huizhou merchants! Xia Yan outwardly supported the maritime ban for political correctness, but secretly he had long allowed his subordinates to sabotage Zhu Wan relentlessly! Zhu Wan's death was a ruthless act of murder by Xia Yan's interest group to protect their maritime cash cow!"

In a parallel Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao gritted his teeth and kicked over the brazier beside him.

"What a hypocrite! The entire court is full of traitors! I should lead the army and kill them all, instead of worrying about finding evidence!"

The red lights in the studio were flashing wildly.

"Now that Zhu Wan has been killed and the maritime merchants protected, the smuggling ring must pay protection money on time!"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back and refocused his gaze on Xia Yan.

"At this point, if we look back at Xia Yan's 'Fourteen Strategies for Defending the Borders,' which he strongly advocated in court, and support Zeng Xian's recapture of the Hetao region, then we have a completely new solution!"

Two military generals' faces appeared simultaneously on the left and right sides of the screen. On the left was Wang Zhi, the notorious Japanese pirate, and on the right was Zeng Xian, a border general.

"The national treasury is so empty it's practically overflowing, yet Jiajing Emperor needs money to pursue immortality. Xia Yan wants to raise hundreds of thousands of troops to retake the Tao, but where will this enormous military expenditure come from?! By squeezing out those impoverished common people?"

Judy Jun let out a laugh that could have blown the roof off. "The only quick money is maritime smuggling!"

He drew an extremely terrifying black triangle on the whiteboard, tightly connecting Xia Yan, Wang Zhi, and Zeng Xian together.

"Wang Zhi rose to power rapidly around the 24th year of the Jiajing reign, and even later went to Kyushu Island in Japan to establish the Great Song Kingdom, calling himself the King of Hui! For a pirate to operate on such a large scale, without the tacit approval of the Ming court, he would have been wiped out long ago! This is simply an earth-shattering power-money transaction!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, his eyes fixed on the camera.

"Xia Yan and his crony Zeng Xian likely formed an extremely secretive closed loop with Wang Zhi: the imperial court, under the pretext of weak coastal defense, wouldn't send a large army to eliminate you, Wang Zhi. You, Wang Zhi, laundered the tens of thousands of catties of silver you earned from smuggling through channels in Jiangnan, turning it into 'donations' for officials, which were then directly converted into military funds for the recapture of the Hetao region!"

The live stream chat exploded at that moment, with the screen filled with rows of "Holy crap!"

"Do you think Yan Song can just stand by and watch? Absolutely not!" Yan Song's sinister face covered half the screen.

"Yan Song saw this closed loop. He not only wanted to kill Xia Yan, but he also wanted to completely eradicate Xia Yan's maritime financial resources! He later instructed Zhao Wenhua to go to Jiangnan to supervise the military and impeach the anti-Japanese generals Zhang Jing and Li Tianchong, under the pretext that they were cowardly in battle, but in reality, he wanted to eliminate Xia Yan's remaining smuggling agents along the coast!"

"The year is now the twenty-seventh year of the Jiajing reign! This grand drama has finally reached its bloodiest conclusion!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly grabbed the blackboard eraser and erased half of the black triangle.

"The conflict of interest has broken down! Perhaps Xia Yan's protection fee for the recapture of the mines was too high, and Wang Zhi refused to pay; or perhaps Wang Zhi's power is too great, and this vicious dog has completely lost control, starting to bite back at the Ming Dynasty's coastal areas! The truth can't be hidden any longer!"

"At this extremely critical juncture, Yan Song rushed into the Wuyi Hall of the Western Garden! He knelt before the Jiajing Emperor and revealed the ultimate trump card that could drive any feudal emperor mad!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was extremely suppressed, as if it were a pronouncement from the eighteenth level of hell.

Yan Song told Jiajing: "Your Majesty! Xia Yan's so-called 'recapture' is all an excuse! He is colluding with Japanese pirates! He has Wang Zhi's invincible fleet as his private army along the southeast coast, and Zeng Xian's 100,000 border troops as his private army in Datong in the north! He is trying to sell the Ming Dynasty to pirates and then become emperor himself!!!"

boom!

As Judy Jun roared, the studio lights instantly switched to a blinding blood red.

"What do you think was Jiajing's reaction after hearing this?"

Zhu Dijun slumped into a chair with a cold laugh.

"Colluding with Japanese pirates! Deceiving the emperor! Adding to the previous charges, let alone recovering the Hetao region, Jiajing couldn't wait even a second longer! He directly issued an edict: Xia Yan was executed in the marketplace! Zeng Xian was imprisoned and beheaded! In the aftermath of this great purge, Zhu Wan, because he knew too much, was also forced to his death by a coalition of various forces!"

On the screen, the portraits of Xia Yan, Zeng Xian, and Zhu Wan went dark one by one. Only Wang Zhi's arrogant face remained, magnified infinitely in the waves of the East China Sea.

"Family members, in this extremely dark conspiracy theory scenario, the Southern Japanese pirates are not simply pirates at all; they are the overseas ATMs of the entire Jiangxi clique and the Jiangnan civil official group!"

Zhu Dijun casually tossed a red marker onto the table, making a dull thud. He looked at the camera and began the final roll call to set the tone.

"Xia Yan is the black glove, responsible for shielding the court from the wind and rain; Zeng Xian is the white glove, responsible for laundering funds at the border; Wang Zhi is the executor, responsible for killing and robbing at sea; and Zhu Wan, the lone whistleblower, tried to cut off this rotten chain of interests, but was ultimately stabbed to death in the back by his own people."

The bloodstains in the studio gradually dissipated, turning into an endless, deathly silence of night.

"Xia Yan is dead, and Yan Song has risen to power by stepping on his corpse. The Ming court is undergoing a new reshuffle. But these scheming insects sitting in the Forbidden City have no idea that when they personally cut off the coastal defense line for power, Wang Zhi, the vicious dog that has completely lost its collar, has brought real hell and knocked on the gates of southeastern Ming."

Zhu Dijun leaned forward slightly, his eyes reflecting a cold, dark light.

"These are all just my guesses; just treat them as a bit of entertainment, like listening to a story."