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

The studio lights suddenly flickered, and Zhu Dijun abruptly erased the timeline of the Gengxu Incident in the 29th year of the Jiajing reign from the big screen.

He grabbed a red marker and redrawn a very imposing time reversal line on the whiteboard.

"Family members, let's continue with the backward calculation!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, staring directly into the camera.

"Xia Yan was beheaded and his body displayed in the marketplace in the 27th year of the Jiajing reign. Everyone knows what kind of scheme the civil official group pulled in the Beijing garrison to defraud the military of funds in the 24th year of the Jiajing reign. So what happened in the Ming Dynasty in the 25th year of the Jiajing reign, which was sandwiched in between?!"

"Let's continue talking about the North! Using reverse logic, this year was the most frenzied peak of Xia Yan's entire political career, and also the starting point where he himself dug that ultimate mass grave!"

On the screen, Xia Yan's portrait, dressed in a crimson robe of a first-rank official, was magnified infinitely, his eyes looking down with extreme arrogance.

"In the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign! After Xia Yan's third comeback, he completely monopolized the power of the cabinet!"

Judy Jun's voice echoed in the hall, carrying an extremely strong sense of sarcasm.

"How arrogant was Xia Yan at this time? His old rival, Yan Song, that insidious chief minister, was so suppressed at this stage that he couldn't even breathe!"

"History records clearly state that Yan Song, in an effort to curry favor with Xia Yan, specially prepared an extremely lavish banquet for him at his residence. And what happened? Xia Yan didn't even give him a second glance and refused to attend! Left with no other option, to save his official position and even his own life, Yan Song took his son to Xia Yan's house, knelt on the ground with a thud, and begged for mercy, weeping bitterly!"

Zhu Dijun slapped the picture of Yan Song kneeling on the ground.

"The Second Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty kneels and kowtows to the Grand Secretary! What does this mean? This is an absolute power struggle within the civil service! At this moment, Xia Yan's ego reached its peak. He felt he could control the court, influence the emperor, and even decide the life and death of hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the border with his pen!"

"So, in that year, he launched the biggest political gamble of his life—the recapture of the Hetao region!"

Four large, blood-red characters crashed onto the center of the screen like meteorites.

"Xia Yan promoted his close friend Zeng Xian to the position of Governor-General of the Three Border Regions of Shaanxi, and fully supported Zeng Xian's 'Three-Year Recapture of the Ordos' military adventure plan! This plan sounded incredibly exciting, as if the Ming Dynasty could drink from the Yellow River tomorrow and drive the Mongols back to their homeland!"

"But what's the reality? War requires money! It costs lives! It requires strength!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly stood up, loosened his tie, and strode to the holographic screen.

"Since the civil officials have praised Zeng Xian so highly, let's see what extraordinary feats this famous general who resisted the Mongols actually accomplished in the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign!"

The large screen quickly switched to a topographical map of the northwestern border region.

"In the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign, Zeng Xian did indeed take the initiative to attack. He changed the Ming army's long-standing tactic of cowering behind the Great Wall, and led his troops out of the Great Wall to attack the Mongol tribes."

Zhu Dijun's fingers flew across the keyboard, and a battle report from the Ministry of War of the Ming Dynasty was highlighted in the center of the screen.

"In places like the Ma Liang Mountains, Zeng Xian led his troops to destroy several Mongol camps! The battle was extremely fierce, and the Ming army won a great victory!"

Zhu Dijun deliberately dragged out his words, but the mockery in his eyes grew stronger.

"And then? When this news of victory was sent to the Western Garden in Beijing, the Jiajing Emperor was overjoyed and immediately issued an edict to reward him handsomely! All the civil officials in the court were like they had been injected with chicken blood, praising Zeng Xian as a reincarnation of Wei Qing every day in the court! Xia Yan even regarded this military achievement as the absolute proof that he had led the 'Recapture the Tao' plan!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly stopped. The entire studio fell into a deathly silence.

Two seconds later, he grabbed the pointer and slammed it hard and violently into the last four words of the battle report!

The entire screen shook violently, and four stark white numbers almost overflowed from the screen—[Over a hundred beheaded]!

"Family members, look carefully!" Zhu Dijun's roar pierced through the dimensional barrier, filled with earth-shattering rage. "Over a hundred heads severed! More than a hundred lives taken! This is the unparalleled victory that the Ming Dynasty court boasts about to the heavens!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the four characters on the sky, his eye muscles twitching uncontrollably. Thinking he was seeing things, he rubbed his eyes and stared again, but the same four characters remained.

"More than a hundred..." The founding emperor laughed in anger, his laughter laced with chilling murderous intent. "Back then, when we sent Xu Da on the northern expedition, we captured tens of thousands of Mongol cavalrymen in a single battle! Xia Yan went to such great lengths, demanding enormous sums of money and provisions from the court, mobilizing the elite troops from the three border regions, and all he got was a hundred-odd heads? These good-for-nothings dare to claim credit in court?!"

The chat room exploded with comments.

"Holy crap? I thought we'd beheaded a hundred thousand people!"

"More than a hundred people... Even a brawl at the village entrance would have killed more than that!"

"Is this the legendary three-year regeneration? At this rate, it would take three hundred years to finish!"

Zhu Dijun kicked aside the chair next to the podium and moved closer to the camera.

"Let's not talk about the founding of the Ming Dynasty! Let's just talk about the Zhengde era of Emperor Wuzong!" he shouted angrily. "Back then, civil officials like Yang Yiqing smeared the great victory at Yingzhou, which Emperor Wuzong personally led the troops to, by claiming that sixteen people were beheaded! But what is the real historical truth?! That battle broke the backbone of the Mongol Tatars, deterring them from advancing south for several years, until Emperor Wuzong passed away before they dared to test the waters again!"

"And now?! Zeng Xian spent real money, used the best firearms and troops, and achieved a record of beheading over a hundred people! To put it extremely bluntly, if the Mongols and Tatars on the grasslands were to encounter a snowstorm, the number of people who would freeze to death in a single winter would be far greater than that!"

In a parallel Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Leopard Chamber, Zhu Houzhao cleaved the wine table in front of him in two with a single stroke, sending wood chips flying.

"A bunch of deceitful bastards!" Zhu Houzhao roared like an enraged lion, his eyes bloodshot. "I risked my life in Yingzhou, and their civil officials wrote in the history books that I had sixteen heads beheaded. Now their own people have chopped off a hundred heads, and they dare to ask for imperial rewards! I wish I could chop off all the heads of these Jiangxi folks to make up the number!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's trial continued.

"In the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign, this seemingly comedic victory did not bring about the surrender of the Mongols. It brought about an extremely bloody and utter annihilation!"

The background of the large screen instantly transformed into a sea of ​​fire, and the deafening sound of horses' hooves echoed throughout the studio.

"Anda Khan is enraged! It's one thing for your Ming army to hide behind the Great Wall all the time, but now you dare to come out and raid my camp, and even dare to kill more than a hundred of my men to claim credit?"

An extremely thick red arrow, like a sharp scimitar, cleaved through the northwestern defense line of the Ming Dynasty.

"In the summer of the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign! Altan Khan directly assembled over 100,000 elite cavalry! 100,000 against 100! This is the account book they returned to the Ming Dynasty!"

Judy Jun frantically drew death crosses on the map with his finger.

"Didn't Zeng Xian deploy heavy troops on the front line? Anda didn't even bother with a head-on confrontation! 100,000 Mongol cavalry bypassed the area heavily guarded by Zeng Xian's troops, and from Ningsai Camp, which is near Zhidan County in Shaanxi Province today, they forcibly broke through the defense line and drove straight in!"

Three bloodstained names were smashed onto the screen.

"Yan'an! Qingyang! These crucial military strongholds and densely populated areas in the northwest of the Ming Dynasty have instantly become hell on earth! The Mongols are looting grain and slaughtering civilians! The Ming army simply cannot withstand this scale of cavalry charge!"

"Zeng Xian's men engaged in battle, and what was the result? Guerrilla General Gao Ji was killed on the spot! Deputy Commander-in-Chief Xiao Han suffered a complete rout!"

Zhu Dijun gripped the edge of the podium tightly with both hands, his knuckles turning white.

"From this moment on, the northern border defense line of the Ming Dynasty has become a complete battlefield! This is the price Xia Yan and Zeng Xian paid for their gamble! For the sake of power in the court, and to prove the correctness of the Futao plan, they stirred up a hornet's nest that could never be contained!"

The studio lights turned an extremely oppressive dark red.

Zhu Dijun suddenly turned around and heavily pasted a tattered ancient climate history document onto the whiteboard.

"Family members, do you remember what I just said? Let's use the coldest, hardest data to completely expose the true nature of these civil servants!"

Several shocking historical records were displayed on the large screen.

"In the fourth year of the Jingtai reign, which was 1453, Shandong, Henan, and Zhili provinces were covered in snow several feet deep, and the Huai River and the East China Sea were frozen for forty miles. Historical records state: 'Tens of thousands of people and livestock froze to death!'"

"In the first year of the Longqing reign, 1567, Beijing experienced an extreme blizzard. Within the city alone, over 170 people froze to death! In the surrounding counties and prefectures, thousands more perished!"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back and stared at the data with extremely cold eyes.

"Do you understand? In a typical, ordinary winter in nature, the number of people who freeze to death in the city far exceeds the number of Mongol heads that Zeng Guofan risked his life to bring back from beyond the Great Wall!"

He let out a chilling laugh and walked back towards the camera.

"The Jiajing Emperor was an extremely clever money-making expert. When he sat in the Wuyi Hall, he held in his left hand the double-entry military pay bill submitted by Xia Yan and the Ministry of Revenue, requesting an allocation of several million taels of silver. In his right hand, he held Zeng Xian's report of a great victory with 'more than a hundred heads taken,' followed by an urgent report of 'guerrillas killed and 100,000 Mongol troops entering the pass to plunder.'"

Zhu Dijun stretched out both hands and clapped them heavily in mid-air!

"Snapped!"

A burst of crisp applause erupted in the deathly silent studio.

"Jiajing briefly considered this calculation. He spent millions of taels of silver, beheaded a hundred people, and in return, had an army of 100,000 slaughter the city. This was the most lucrative deal that Grand Secretary Xia Yan had presented to the Ming Emperor!"

The live stream chat completely stopped, and all the viewers were speechless, stunned by the extreme absurdity and cruelty.

"From Jiajing's perspective, what would he think?" Zhu Dijun lowered his voice, like a demon's murmur.

"He'll think Xia Yan has gone mad. He'll think Zeng Xian is playing with the fate of the nation, using the Ming Dynasty's treasury as an ATM. Most importantly, once the 100,000-strong army breaks through Yan'an and Qingyang, won't they directly threaten the capital?! This isn't a simple ruse; it's clearly luring the Mongols in to destroy the country!"

Zhu Dijun casually tore off the climate history document, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it at his feet.

"In the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign, the northern border defense line of the Ming Dynasty was heading towards complete collapse in this distorted cycle filled with lies, false accounts, minor victories and tragic retaliations."

He looked up, and the beam of pale blue light shone on his face, making him appear extremely sinister.

"If Xia Yan doesn't die, who will?"

A cruel smile curled at the corner of Zhu Dijun's lips.

"However, if we shift our focus from the blood-soaked Great Wall to the seemingly solemn Ming Dynasty bureaucracy during the Jiajing era, we will find that these soldiers and civilians who died beyond the Great Wall were not even worthy of being the subject of these civil officials' arguments in court."