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

Inside the modern livestream room, the barrage of comments had completely subsided, abandoning the previous jokes and celebrations. Instead, a tense, almost oppressive atmosphere filled the air.

The 25th year of the Jiajing reign. This year, which seems unremarkable in the history of the Ming Dynasty, was transformed into a hellish battlefield that chilled the souls of all Chinese people under Zhu Dijun's extremely violent scalpel.

"Fighting on three fronts! This is practically flirting with national annihilation!"

"The Northwest was breached by the Mongols, the Northeast was driven into rebellion by the Doyan Three Guards, and along the Southeast coast, our own officials led Japanese pirates to kill civilians! Is this any way for a human being to live?"

"Compared to the 14-year War of Resistance against Japan in modern times, our ancestors during the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty lived in even greater despair! Because in modern times we knew where the enemy was, but the common people of the Ming Dynasty were bound together and subjected to slow slicing by their own government, army, gentry, and foreign enemies!"

The studio's overhead lights were switched to an extremely cold, incandescent beam, shining on Judy Jun's expressionless face.

He watched the messages scrolling rapidly on the screen, his fingers tapping lightly on the podium.

"Family members, are you scared?"

Zhu Dijun's voice was steady, yet it carried a chilling coldness that could pierce to the bone.

"What I just revealed to you was only the military disaster that the Ming Dynasty faced in the 25th year of the Jiajing reign. But as I said, war is merely a continuation of politics. And the underlying nature of politics is always economics."

He grabbed the blackboard eraser and slapped it onto the whiteboard.

"The economy determines the political landscape, political conflicts are ultimately resolved through war, and after the war devastates the country, it in turn reshapes the economy!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly turned around and used a red marker to draw a huge ledger icon in the center of the whiteboard.

"Today, we won't discuss those nonsensical court ethics; we'll examine this blood-stained ledger of the Ming Dynasty's treasury from the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign!"

The large screen suddenly shook violently, and countless numbers cascaded down like a waterfall.

"The national accounts!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his pointer heavily on the screen. "Family members! Let's calculate the Taicang granary of the Ming Dynasty! In the mid-to-late Jiajing period, what was the annual formal fiscal revenue of the entire Ming Dynasty, that is, the Taicang granary's annual income?"

Three extremely tragic numbers were highlighted and enlarged.

"Two to two million taels of silver!"

Judy Jun let out a burst of laughter that could have blown the roof off.

"That's all the money! The total tax revenue collected from the two capitals and thirteen provinces of the entire Ming Dynasty wouldn't even be enough to fill the bed of a notorious corrupt official in later generations!"

The pointer was moved to the other side.

"What about expenditures?! We're only counting the nine border defense lines! In the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign, due to Altan Khan's rampant invasion and the rebellion of the Doyan Three Guards, how much did the Ming Dynasty's military expenditures in the north skyrocket?"

The enormous red number hit everyone's retinas like a bombshell—[400 million - 600 million taels]!

"Did you understand this addition and subtraction?!"

Judy Jun ripped open the buttons on his collar and roared at the camera.

"Two million in revenue! Six million just for fighting in the north! Not a single penny was spent on the royal family's cultivation of immortality, not a single penny on officials' salaries, yet the Ming Dynasty's treasury is already completely bankrupt, owing a damn three or four million taels!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the two vastly different numbers on the screen. His hands, which had once swept across the land, trembled violently on his desk.

Where did the Ming Dynasty's money go? Back then, he set agricultural taxes, which, although low, should not have resulted in a vast empire collecting only two million taels of silver a year!

It was taken over by the gentry in Jiangnan who had tax-free privileges! It was embezzled by the military officers on the border who were drawing salaries without working! It was chewed up like termites by the royal family members in their palaces who were just loafing around!

"The Ming Dynasty..."

Zhu Yuanzhang clenched his fist tightly, his knuckles cracking with a sharp sound.

"They've actually fallen so low!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's trial continued.

"With such a huge deficit in the national treasury, how are those ministers in the Ministry of Revenue, who shout about patriotism every day, filling this hole? Are they collecting taxes from those incredibly wealthy salt merchants in Jiangnan? Are they confiscating the assets of corrupt officials?"

Judy shook her head with a cold laugh. "They did something extremely easy, extremely malicious—[additional spending]!"

On the whiteboard, the words "additional" were heavily circled.

"In the twenty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign! The Ministry of Revenue issued an official document to impose military expenses on the people of the whole country! In addition to the regular taxes, an extra 'three fen of silver' would be levied per mu of land! That is, 0.03 taels!"

Zhu Dijun approached the camera, his eyes filled with hostility.

"Three cents a mu of land—it doesn't sound like much, right? But back then, it was like pushing the poorest farmers straight into a meat grinder! The Ming Dynasty court called this extremely shameless temporary tax increase 'Tibian' (提编)!"

In a parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, who had become numb from the previous events, suddenly jumped up from his throne like a cat whose tail had been stepped on the moment he heard the words "additional troop deployment" and "promotion".

"No……"

Emperor Chongzhen's eyes were bloodshot, and he covered his head tightly with both hands.

He knew all too well what this was. Before he hanged himself, the "Liaodong tax," "suppression tax," and "training tax" he created in order to fight the Jurchens and Li Zicheng drove the people of the whole country to revolt!

He always thought it was a bad idea he had invented. In fact, this bomb that would shatter the Ming Dynasty had been planted by these civil officials themselves as early as the Jiajing era!

"Once the reorganization is announced, chaos will ensue!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers tapped rapidly on the podium.

"What will the common people do if they can't afford these three cents?! They'll sell their pots and pans! They'll sell their cattle! They'll sell their children! But even if they sold their own daughters to landlords as maids, it still wouldn't be enough to raise this blood-stained military expenditure!"

The studio lights turned a somber gray-white.

A dilapidated ancient rural landscape painting appeared on the large screen. The fields were barren, and starving people, barely clothed, ate grass roots by the roadside.

"Why can't you even scrape together three cents?" Judy Jun's voice suddenly lowered, revealing an extremely suppressed cruelty.

"This leads to another major economic crisis in the Ming Dynasty during the 25th year of the Jiajing Emperor's reign—the currency crisis!"

He grabbed a photocopy of a banknote bearing the inscription "Da Ming Tongxing Baochao" (Great Ming Circulating Treasure Note) and tore it to shreds in front of the camera.

"The paper money created at the founding of the Ming Dynasty was a hard currency during the reigns of the powerful Emperor Taizu and Emperor Chengzu. However, by the Jiajing era, it had completely degenerated into worthless paper, not even good enough to wipe one's bottom! The common people didn't recognize it at all, and all transactions in the private sector relied on silver and copper coins! The imperial court was also forced to recognize the legal tender status of silver!"

Paper scraps fluttered and fell onto the podium.

"But the critical issue was that the Ming Dynasty was extremely short of silver! And at this time, in the 25th year of the Jiajing reign, the Iwami Ginzan in Japan had only recently been discovered, and silver from the Americas was still on Spanish colonists' ships. The famous Longqing opening of trade hadn't even begun!"

Zhu Dijun slammed three large characters onto the whiteboard: "Cash Shortage!"

"There simply isn't that much silver circulating in the market! The common people toil a year in the fields, their homes are stocked with grain, and their looms are laden with cloth. But when the imperial court comes to collect the extra taxes, they only accept cash! They don't want Ming Dynasty paper money, they don't want grain!"

Zhu Dijun gripped the table tightly with both hands, his eyes seeming to see through the ultimate means of capitalism's exploitation of people over the past few centuries.

"Family members, do you know what happened when you exchanged goods for silver in ancient times when silver was extremely scarce? This was the bloodiest form of financial plunder in ancient times—the price scissors!"

On the left and right sides of the screen, a scale with an extremely unequal balance appeared. On one side were a few grains of silver, and on the other side were mountains of grain.

"Silver is expensive and money is cheap! In order to scrape together the three cents of silver per mu of land for tax, ordinary people have no choice but to haul their grain to the county town to sell! Normally, one tael of silver can buy one shi of rice. But at the crucial moment of tax payment, those merchants and landlords who control the price of silver collude to drive down the price!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the podium.

"They're only willing to pay one or two taels of silver to buy three, four, or even more bushels of rice from the common people! You won't sell? If you don't sell, the yamen runners will come tomorrow to whip you and chain you up to go to jail!"

"This price scissors effect is not a matter of market forces at all. It's a legal, covert massacre of the self-sufficient farmers by the Ming Dynasty's officials, merchants, and gentry in collusion!"

The chat room exploded at that moment, filled with curses.

"This is just like how farmers grow vegetables that rot in the fields for a few cents a pound, while supermarkets sell them for several dollars a pound! The middlemen pocket all the profits!"

"It's a bloodless killing! On the surface, it's just three cents of silver per acre, but in reality, the common people have to pay five or ten times the price!"

"The landlord class deserves to die! They're leaving no way out for anyone!"

"The people's grain was emptied at rock-bottom prices, leaving them with only a few meager scraps of silver to pay taxes. And then what?"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back and looked coldly at the camera.

"When winter came, the family ran out of food. They had no choice but to borrow money from the landlord at exorbitant interest rates to buy expensive grain. Unable to repay the debt the following year, they mortgaged their remaining land to the landlord. The whole family became tenant farmers and slaves of the landlord, no longer having to pay a single penny of tax to the Ming Dynasty!"

On the holographic map, the green dots representing the self-cultivating farmers of the Ming Dynasty are being rapidly devoured by the black patches representing the gentry and powerful at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"The country is getting poorer and poorer, military spending is getting higher and higher, and levies are being increased more and more drastically. Large numbers of ordinary people are going bankrupt and fleeing. Meanwhile, the gentry of Jiangnan, the princes and nobles, and the military generals on the frontier, who don't have to pay taxes, have cellars overflowing with moldy silver!"

Zhu Dijun pulled over a chair and sat down heavily.

The lights in the entire studio dimmed simultaneously, leaving only a blinding spotlight shining on him.

"This is the true face of the 25th year of the Jiajing reign. While blood was being shed and war was raging on the front lines, the rear was exploiting the financial scissors to bleed the marrow dry. This extremely sophisticated and massive cannibalistic machine was completely draining the last bit of vitality from the Ming Empire."

He leaned forward slightly, a dangerously smirk playing on his lips.

"The country had no money, the emperor had no money, and the common people had even less money. So where did all this vast wealth go? If we dig along the flow of silver, we will encounter a group of extremely unique and extremely arrogant rentiers in the history of the Ming Dynasty."