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

The studio lights suddenly went out, leaving only a scarlet spotlight shining intently on the podium.

"Family members! At the end of that video, I told you about an extremely perverted and eccentric figure in Ming Dynasty history who took corruption to an unprecedented level, to the point that even Yan Song had to call him 'father'!"

Judy slammed his hands on the table, leaned forward, and his eyes gleamed with a chilling fervor.

"Do you think I'm talking about Yan Song's son, Yan Shifan? Or that corrupt official Yan Maoqing who later went south to extort money from the people?"

He let out a loud laugh that could have blown off the roof, and casually threw the blackboard eraser to the ground.

"Wrong! This isn't a single person at all! It's an account book! A 'Financial Inventory of the Beijing Garrison' concocted in December of the 24th year of the Jiajing reign by the Ming Dynasty's civil officials, military generals, and nobles from the capital region!"

On the big screen, countless yellowed copies of the "Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming" and the "Collected Statutes of the Ming Dynasty" crashed down, the dense numbers like a death knell occupying everyone's field of vision.

"Let's settle this messy debt that would make even the Ming Dynasty's ancestors furious!" Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and frantically wrote down calculations on the whiteboard.

According to records in Volumes 305 and 306 of the Veritable Records, in December of the 24th year of the Jiajing reign, the imperial court issued an edict to reorganize the Beijing Garrison! The goal was to weed out the old and weak and replenish the strong and able-bodied! The original strength of the Beijing Garrison was 107,000 men, but only 50,000 to 60,000 were actually capable of training! The court ordered the recruitment of 20,000 new soldiers from Beizhili, Shandong, and Henan, and also ordered the issuance of new clothing, armor, and weapons to all soldiers in the garrison!

The first bar was drawn heavily on the whiteboard with a red pen.

"The first expense! Military uniforms for recruiting soldiers! It was customary during the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty to provide each recruit with three to five taels of silver for settling down and travel expenses! Recruiting 20,000 people would cost between 60,000 and 100,000 taels!"

The second bar.

"The second expense! Re-issuance of military equipment and armor! Assuming there are 50,000 to 60,000 men in the camp. At that time, the cost of a suit of armor from the Ordnance Bureau and the Armor Factory was eight to ten taels! Add a waist knife and bow and arrows, and it would cost five to seven taels! The standard equipment for an infantryman would cost fifteen taels of silver! Re-equipping all 60,000 men would require a total of 750,000 to 900,000 taels!"

The third bar.

"The third expense! Routine maintenance! The monthly salary and rations for the Beijing garrison in December, plus the 120,000 taels of silver for horse feed recorded in the official records each year, amount to 70,000 to 80,000 taels per month! Add to that the miscellaneous expenses of dismissing redundant officials and rewarding generals, which amount to 10,000 to 20,000 taels!"

Zhu Dijun turned around and used a marker to draw a huge circle at the end of those numbers, writing an extremely glaring sum inside!

"Nine hundred thousand to one million one hundred thousand taels of silver!"

His voice ripped apart instantly, echoing throughout the studio.

"Family members! In the twenty-fourth year of the Jiajing reign, the Ming Dynasty's treasury was emptied beyond repair, and the people suffered from a severe drought, leading to the tragedy of cannibalism. Meanwhile, in the Beijing Garrison at the foot of the Forbidden City, the Ministry of War and military officers embezzled one million taels of silver for a mere month of 'paperwork'!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the enormous number of millions on the sky, his eyelids cracked, and blood streamed down his cheeks.

"One million taels...one million taels per month..."

Trembling, he drew the Emperor's sword from his waist and cleaved the imperial desk in two with a single stroke.

"Our Great Ming's annual agricultural tax is barely a few coins! These thieves in their scarlet robes and python robes are practically robbing the very lifeblood of the Ming!"

"With over a million taels of silver spent, is the capital's defense now invincible?"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back, a highly sarcastic smile curving his lips.

"I'll tear this fig leaf to shreds! This rectification campaign of the 24th year of the Jiajing reign was nothing but a blatant, superficial, and utterly ineffective sham!"

Five large, blood-red characters slammed onto the center of the screen—【Fake Rectification of Five Levels】!

"First level! Eliminating the old and weak is a pretense; the real purpose is to replenish the imaginary numbers!"

Zhu Dijun pointed his pointer directly at the screen.

"A group of old and weak soldiers were dismissed, and 20,000 were recruited, finally bringing the official troop strength to over 80,000! But can these 80,000 men fight?! The Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming clearly state: only 20,000 to 30,000 are actually capable of fighting! Where did the remaining 50,000 go?! They were all taken back to the mansions of nobles, eunuchs, and high-ranking officers to become household slaves, cultivate private land, and build houses! The court spent a fortune to buy nothing more than a bunch of dead characters filled in the ledgers!"

"Second layer! The root of the poison hasn't been eradicated!"

Zhu Dijun stared coldly at the camera.

"I mentioned earlier that Xia Yan took the opportunity to oust some of the loyal eunuch commanders and eunuchs. But were the cancerous tumors of eunuchs controlling the capital garrison and military supervisors interfering with military power removed? Not at all! This is just a redistribution of territory between civil officials and eunuchs! Military officers who want to climb the ranks still have to curry favor with the eunuchs and bribe them! Training troops and selecting generals is all about who can flatter them the most! The army isn't training in battle formations, but in how to suck up to their superiors!"

"The third layer! The rotten system hasn't been touched! The Ming Dynasty's Beijing Garrison used a twelve-battalion structure! The battalion system overlapped, and the responsibilities were extremely chaotic! Once a war broke out, everyone would pass the buck, and you couldn't even find a single person to give unified command! Twenty-four years of reorganization didn't dare touch the core interests of the noble warlords; they only cared about issuing armor and silver! This army wasn't a field army at all; it was just a bunch of security guards and tenant farmers in iron armor!"

In a parallel Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao crushed the wine cup in his hand, oblivious to the shards digging into his flesh. He sneered at the pale-faced Ministry of War officials beside him: "Did you hear that? This is the invincible capital you self-proclaimed pillars of the nation have built! You're ruthless with money in peacetime, but a complete bunch of useless idiots when it comes to war!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's analysis was like a sharp scalpel, penetrating layer by layer.

"The fourth level is even more outrageous! What on earth did they recruit?!"

He slammed his fist on the podium.

"As I mentioned before, it takes the Ming Dynasty more than half a year to train a fully-fledged soldier capable of fighting on the battlefield, costing thirty to forty taels of silver in rations and ammunition! But what about the twenty thousand men recruited this time? They were given some travel expenses, and they haven't even touched a matchlock gun or a mandarin duck formation. They were just dressed up and stuffed into the barracks to make up the numbers! This group of street ruffians and vagrants has absolutely no discipline! If they encounter a Tatar cavalry charge, as long as a dozen or so die, the twenty thousand men will definitely scatter and run away on the spot!"

"The most fatal flaw is the fifth layer! Border defense coordination has completely collapsed!"

Zhu Dijun frantically drew crosses on the holographic map, marking all nine border defense lines with death signs.

"The imperial court only focuses on spending money on the capital garrison, neglecting to repair the border walls or reorganize the defenses of Xuanfu, Datong, Jizhou, and Liaodong! There isn't even enough firewood for the beacon towers to burn for signal fires! Anda Khan of the Mongols outside the Great Wall, looking at the Ming Dynasty's dilapidated, paper-thin defense line, laughed so hard on the grasslands that he could barely hold his scimitar!"

The studio lights went out instantly, leaving only a suffocating, eerie blue.

Judy pulled up a chair and sat down heavily. He raised his head in the shadows, his eyes like those of a grim reaper who had seen through the empire's end.

"Family members, connect this one million tael ledger with all the conspiracies I mentioned earlier. Do you understand this ultimate dead end?"

He drew several directions in the air with his finger.

"In the northwest, someone is demanding exorbitant military funds from the court under the pretext of recovering the Hetao region! In the capital, civil officials and the Ministry of War are swindling a million taels of silver in a single month under the guise of reorganizing the Beijing garrison! Along the southeast coast, smuggling rings have joined forces with Japanese pirates, requiring a huge sum of money to quell the rebellion and fill the gaps! And then there's the extremely bizarre theft of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver from the East City God Temple!"

"This is not simply corruption!"

Judy Jun suddenly stood up, his roar causing the microphone to emit a piercing echo.

"At this juncture, all interest groups have reached an extremely tacit consensus of madness! They are draining the pond to catch all the fish! They are using legitimate military and political means to carry out the most vicious 'malicious short-selling' of the Ming Dynasty's official finances!"

The live stream chat was completely flooded with comments at that moment.

"Shorting the Ming Dynasty! That's an absolutely brilliant phrase! Those bastards!"

"Everyone's just cashing out! Nobody cares about the country's fate!"

"These hypocrites who took the money but didn't train the troops deserve to have their entire families executed!"

"Short selling like this will be punished by heaven." Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly turned low, carrying a deathly stillness as if a building was about to collapse. He turned around and, with a pure black marker, wrote a blood-red year in the very center of the whiteboard.

[The Gengxu Incident of the 29th Year of the Jiajing Reign]!

"There are no 'what ifs' in the history of the Ming Dynasty, but karma always comes at the most precise time."

Zhu Dijun's coaching baton struck heavily on this year.

"What did the sham reforms of the 24th year of the Jiajing reign bring? Five years of utter military corruption! Extreme financial overspending! Years of natural disasters in North China! Yan Song's complete disruption of the government!"

The screen background suddenly changed, transforming into a scene of carnage and bloodshed outside Beijing.

"In the 29th year of the Jiajing reign! The national treasury was completely depleted! Millions of refugees were scattered throughout the Central Plains! And Altan Khan's Mongol cavalry, as if entering an empty land, directly trampled through the ruins of the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty and plunged headlong into the heart of the Ming Empire!"

"Anda's army burned, killed, and looted outside the capital for eight days and eight nights! Inside the Forbidden City, the emperor was so frightened that he sought divine intervention. Ding Rukui, the Minister of War, stood on the city wall, looking at the Mongol army's camp stretching for dozens of miles outside the city, and then issued an extremely ridiculous and tragic order—[Fortify the walls and clear the fields, close the gates and do not fight]!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes filled with extreme, gleeful mockery.

"Not fighting? Does it mean they don't want to fight? It means they simply can't fight! The 80,000-strong capital garrison, which cost one million taels of silver to build up five years ago, can't even muster 30,000 soldiers who dare to leave the city and hold their spears steady!"

"In the 29th year of the Jiajing reign, the backbone of the Ming Empire was broken by the civil service group and the autocratic emperor! From that year onwards, the Ming Dynasty officially entered a stage of incurable, slow death, with no possibility of recovery."

Zhu Dijun casually tossed the blackboard eraser onto the table.

"Isn't this the very essence of the Ming Dynasty? Rotting at its core, dying because of money—this is true of the end of every dynasty we know of! It keeps repeating itself!"