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

The studio's cold lights were suddenly cut off, leaving only a blinding scarlet spotlight that shone directly on Judy Jun's head.

"Family members! In the last chapter, we exposed the economic realities of the 25th year of the Jiajing Emperor's reign. The entire Ming Dynasty had been pushed to the brink of collapse by the policy of converting mulberry trees to paper mulberry cultivation, the shortage of silver and money, and land annexation!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser and slapped it onto the whiteboard, erasing all the disaster-related words.

With a flick of his wrist, he used a pure black marker to write a year in the very center with extreme force—[the 26th year of the Jiajing reign]!

"At this most desperate moment for the Ming Dynasty, shouldn't these civil officials stop and think about how to provide disaster relief? How to raise money to pay the soldiers' salaries? How to appease the people?"

Judy Jun approached the camera, a cruelly mocking smile playing on her lips.

"Let me tell you, not only have they not stopped, but at this critical juncture of bankruptcy, they've directly presented the Jiajing Emperor with a super-deadly bill that will terrify the entire world!"

Four large characters crashed onto the holographic screen: "[The Discussion on the Hetao Region]!"

"In this ultimate strategic debate that determined the reshuffling of power at the top of the Ming Dynasty, let's first take a look at the state's internal affairs at that time!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer struck the screen heavily.

"The Taicang Treasury! That is, the central treasury of the Ming Dynasty! In the 26th year of Jiajing's reign, how much did it receive annually? Approximately two million taels of silver! But what about its expenditures? Three million four hundred and seventy thousand taels! A net deficit of one million four hundred and seventy thousand taels per year!"

He turned around abruptly and stared intently at the camera.

"It's like you earn two thousand a month, but you have to pay a mortgage of three thousand five hundred! You're literally living off high-interest loans! This kind of national finance isn't just riddled with holes, it's completely shattered!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang sat on the dragon throne, his face contorted with wrinkles.

"Annual revenue of two million, deficit of one million four hundred and seventy thousand..."

The founding emperor gritted his teeth, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.

"The Ming Dynasty's treasury has been emptied by these rats to the point that even a mouse would weep upon entering! How can we fight a war now? What will we use to fight?!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice was like a whirlwind from hell.

"But even in this darkest hour when the whole country was struggling to make ends meet, Zeng Xian, the Governor-General of the Three Border Regions of Shaanxi, who was also the closest ally of Grand Secretary Xia Yan on the frontier, actually launched the second, third, and fourth court meetings in the twenty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign!"

A portrait of a resolute military general appears on the left side of the screen.

"Zeng Xian strongly advocated in court a proactive attack to recover the Hetao region occupied by the Mongols! He proposed an extremely large and detailed strategic plan! It included purchasing warhorses, building warships, allocating military funds, and funding ten years of border defense construction!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers flew across the keyboard, and a huge set of red numbers instantly filled the entire studio screen!

"The budget is in, everyone! Zeng Xian reported to the Jiajing Emperor that the total cost of recovering the Hetao region is—[22.4 million taels of silver]!"

boom!

After a half-second of dead silence, the live stream chat exploded like a nuclear blast!

"Twenty-two million four hundred thousand taels?! Holy crap! Holy crap! Holy crap!"

[“During the 26th year of the Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty, there was constant warfare, followed by natural disasters and man-made calamities. The annual revenue was only two million! Is this going to drain the entire government's revenue for twelve years without spending a single penny?!”]

"This isn't just asking for money! This is forcing the Ming Dynasty to self-destruct at knifepoint!"

"Now I finally understand why Xia Yan was abandoned in the city! The fact that Jiajing Emperor didn't immediately draw his sword and behead someone in the Fengtian Hall just for daring to submit this budget shows he's cultivated some self-restraint!"

"Yes, and they didn't promise a guaranteed win, when it would end, how many heads would be taken, or how the Mongols would be pacified. Isn't this a classic scam?"

"Do you understand this calculation now?!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the chair next to him away, his voice hoarse and strained from extreme excitement.

"Twenty-two million four hundred thousand taels! If that's spread over ten years, that's two million two hundred and forty thousand taels of silver per year! That means that not a single penny of the entire Ming Dynasty's legal income for a year can be spent! It all has to be put into sacks and sent to Zeng Xian! And sent to Datong and Shaanxi!"

He grabbed a red marker and started drawing crosses on the whiteboard like crazy.

"What will the emperor use for his Taoist practices? What will the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the other nine border garrisons eat? How will the salaries of tens of thousands of civil and military officials across the country be paid?! Where will the military funds for pacifying the Japanese pirates in Jiangnan come from? Xia Yan and Zeng Xian are openly forcing the emperor to abdicate in the court! They are using the absolute political correctness of recovering lost territory to carry out an unprecedented and ultimate plunder of the Ming Dynasty's treasury!"

A parallel Yongle era in the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Di slammed the imperial desk to pieces with a single slap.

"Over twenty million taels! What an enormous appetite!"

Zhu Di's eyes turned bloodshot, and he laughed in extreme anger.

"When I led five northern expeditions against the Mongols, hundreds of thousands of troops were eating, drinking, and relieving themselves, yet I never went so far as to so recklessly demand money from the national treasury! If a general like Zeng Xian were in the Yongle era, I would have executed his entire clan on the spot!"

Zhu Gaoxu, who was standing to the side, was so shocked that his jaw almost dropped to the ground.

Good heavens, these civil officials are even more audacious than Bi Yao in his greed for money! If this enormous sum of silver is really allocated, what role will the emperor play in the military and political power of the entire Ming Dynasty?! He might as well just give it to Xia Yan to be the chairman of the Ming Dynasty!

The image on the large screen quickly switched to the Wuyi Hall in the West Garden.

The Jiajing Emperor's unpredictable face was faintly visible through the swirling smoke.

What was Jiajing's initial attitude?

Zhu Dijun walked back to the podium with a cold smile.

"At first, he actually praised them! Because the emperor also wanted to win and drive the Mongols out! He even ordered the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Revenue to discuss and implement a plan!"

"But when this death bill of over twenty million taels was actually placed before Jiajing, the emperor was completely awakened, and what followed was an extreme panic that seeped into his very bones!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the table, his eyes sharp as knives.

"What if this money really goes to Zeng Xian, and he raises a private army in the Northwest that is not under the control of the imperial court? What if Xia Yan's Jiangxi gang embezzles all the money on the way, forcing the people of the whole country to revolt?!"

"Jiajing hasn't forgotten his cousin, nor the mutinies caused by smuggling by border troops during his own reign—and there were two of them! Who can guarantee there won't be a third?"

Yan Song's withered and sinister face, like a venomous snake, loomed eerily in the shadows of the screen.

"At this absolutely fatal moment, when imperial power was teetering wildly and Jiajing's suspicions had reached a critical point, Yan Song, the most astute old viper in the Ming court who knew how to read his boss's mind, struck with extreme precision!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer slammed hard into Yan Song's portrait.

"Yan Song didn't even bother debating whether or not to retake the Hetao region! That was politically correct; debating would have led you into Xia Yan's trap! Yan Song simply circled around behind them and delivered a fatal blow to Zeng Xian and Xia Yan's vital arteries!"

Four large, black characters were slammed onto the whiteboard: "[Exhaustive Military Aggression]!"

"Yan Song's memorial was delivered to the Western Garden, each word piercing the heart: Your Majesty! The national treasury is short by more than a million taels, and the people are resorting to cannibalism. To spend twenty million taels to fight a war with an uncertain outcome is to squander the nation's wealth and exhaust its lives! Zeng Xian is ambitious and greedy, gambling the Ming Dynasty's future for his own selfish interests!"

Zhu Dijun's voice grew increasingly low, carrying the bloody undertones of a top-level political struggle.

"That's not all! The trump card Yan Song is about to unleash is the ultimate nuclear bomb that will send Xia Yan and Zeng Xian to the guillotine!"

Yan Song told Jiajing: "How dare Zeng Xian, an outsider, propose such an outrageous plan? It's because Grand Secretary Xia Yan is strongly supporting him behind the scenes! The two of them are colluding to empty the national treasury and seize military power! Your Majesty, do you remember the Renyin Palace Coup? Do you remember the border generals' dealings with the palace attendants?"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back and slammed his hand on the podium!

"The kill is done!"

"In Jiajing's eyes, the military expenditure of 20 million taels of silver, the border generals who commanded heavy troops, and the Grand Secretary who held immense power in the court—these three factors combined constituted a bloodless coup d'état!"

The studio lights went out instantly, leaving only the raging fire on the screen reflecting in Judy Jun's cold eyes.

"For a staggering budget of 22.4 million taels of silver, in the 27th year of the Jiajing reign, Zeng Xian was beheaded in the marketplace, and his wife was exiled two thousand li away! The only commander in the Northwest of the Ming Dynasty who dared to venture beyond the Great Wall and launch a proactive attack was beheaded by his own people like a stray dog!"

"Xia Yan, the Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty! Dressed in plain clothes, he was escorted by the Imperial Guards to the West Market and publicly beheaded! He became the first Grand Secretary in the history of the Ming Dynasty to be directly beheaded!"

"With two bloody heads falling to the ground, the Hetao proposal was completely aborted. The Ming Dynasty's northwest defense line was thus reduced to an extremely passive tortoise defense. Altan Khan of the Mongols completely lost his last scruples, paving the final bloody path for the Gengxu Incident two years later, when 100,000 iron cavalrymen besieged Beijing."

The live stream chat was flooded with endless sighs.

In the end, this bloody political debt was settled, and the soldiers on the border lost, the people who were slaughtered lost, and the Ming Empire was cut off from both arms, falling into the abyss.

Standing in the dim, cold light, Judy Jun casually tossed a red marker onto the table.

He watched silently as Yan Song, stepping on Xia Yan's bones, slowly ascended to the throne of Grand Secretary on the holographic screen.

"Family members, Xia Yan is dead. Yan Song has seized power and become the most powerful and infamous Grand Secretary in the history of the Ming Dynasty. The Jiajing Emperor also feels that he has finally eliminated his biggest threat and can now peacefully cultivate his path to immortality in the Western Garden."

Zhu Dijun leaned forward slightly, a chilling, eerie smile appearing in his eyes.

"But do you really think that's the end of it? At this time, it was the 26th year of the Jiajing reign, and other parts of the Ming Dynasty were also at war. The Jiajing reign at this time was like the human Empire in the Warhammer game. After entering the 42nd millennium, there was war everywhere, and not a moment to catch your breath!"