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

The air in the studio seemed to freeze. Zhu Dijun stared at the glaring red bill on the big screen, casually loosened his tie, and let out a cold laugh that sounded unusually harsh in the quiet studio.

"More than twenty million taels? To give it or not to give it?"

He slammed his hands on the podium, his gaze sweeping across the camera like a razor's edge.

"Give it to them, and the Ming Dynasty will collapse completely, leaving nothing but its underwear! Don't give it to them, and the northwest defense line will be a sieve, allowing the Tatars to come and go as they please!"

The live stream chat exploded with comments, sending chills down the spines of countless viewers. This wasn't governing a country; it was a meticulously designed deadly trap, forcing the emperor to choose between "dying in poverty" and "the fall of the nation."

"This isn't just a prime minister; he's practically a devil who precisely controls the fate of the nation!"

"Brother Jun, in the twenty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign, apart from the mess in the Hetao region, were all other parts of the Ming Dynasty in a dead end?"

"Good question!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly stood up, grabbed the red pen on the table, and strode towards the map.

"Family members, if you only focus on this rotten city of Beijing, watching those insects in python robes tearing each other apart, the Ming Dynasty may indeed seem like a stagnant pool! But don't forget, on the fringes of this empire, in those barbaric corners where the power tentacles of the civil service haven't yet fully reached, the backbone of the Ming Dynasty hasn't been completely shattered!"

He slammed the red pen in his hand into the southwest corner of the holographic map, and a huge red circle instantly encircled the Sichuan Basin.

"In the twenty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign, on the southwestern battlefield! The Baicao Qiang people of northern Sichuan, these fierce bandits who had entrenched themselves here for many years and even dared to challenge the Ming Dynasty's imperial army, were completely subdued! Why? Because a true beast had arrived here—He Qing!"

The screen rapidly shifted to a vast, desolate mountain range where flames of war raged and thousands of watchtowers collapsed amidst the smoke and fire.

"He Qing, a renowned general relegated to a corner by mainstream history books, accomplished a feat in the twenty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign that those pedantic scholars in the court who only knew how to write eulogies could never have imagined!"

Zhu Dijun slammed the pointer in his hand hard into the spot on Zouma Ridge.

"The Great Victory at Zouma Ridge! Utilizing dense fog for a surprise attack, after eight days of fierce fighting, 47 villages were captured and nearly 5,000 watchtowers destroyed! What does this mean? This is a true head-on collision! This is a victory without any exaggeration!"

The live stream room erupted in uproar, with countless viewers holding their breath in shock at this sudden and impressive feat.

"Holy crap? This is what a great general looks like! Those cowards who boast about their victories after beheading over a hundred should all die!" "Is Sichuan also a muddy mess like the Nine Garrisons? How come there's such a huge difference?"

Zhu Dijun's eyes narrowed, and a mocking smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

"Because it's far away! Because the mountains are high and the emperor is far away! Because the lucrative opportunities in places like Sichuan are far too little in the eyes of those hypocritical thieves living in the capital and drooling over the silk trade in Jiangnan!"

He drew a harsh line on the map with his pointer, pointing from Sichuan straight to Fujian and Zhejiang.

"Those civil officials focused all their energy on controlling the imperial guards in the capital, monopolizing the salt tax in Jiangnan, and controlling maritime smuggling channels. They had no time to interfere with the military command of these peripheral battlefields! Therefore, Minister He could unleash his effective military formations to fight! He didn't have to deal with the Ministry of Revenue's demands for payment, nor did he have to worry about whether the censors impeached him for colluding with foreign barbarians!"

"So, family members, do you understand this absurd logic?"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his voice becoming extremely suppressed, "In the Jiajing era, those who could win battles were often those whom the court couldn't afford to pay attention to! It was because they were far away from that cannibalistic political center! As long as they entered Beijing, or entered the wealth trap of Jiangnan, even if they were gods descended to earth, they would be torn to pieces by those insects in crimson official robes!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang gazed at the iron army that had breached the Qiang village on the sky, his withered hands gripping the imperial desk tightly. His eyes, once filled with sweeping conquests, now held a complex and indescribable emotion.

"With mountains high and the emperor far away, it became the only way out for Ming Dynasty military generals..."

The founding emperor's voice was so hoarse it sounded like it was bleeding.

"What a mess our descendants of the Zhu family have made of the Ming Dynasty! Famous generals can only survive by being marginalized; only by distancing themselves from those scholars can the armies of our Ming Dynasty kill the enemy!"

Then I thought of the tragic deaths of Zhu Zhanji, Zhu Qizhen, Zhu Jianshen, Zhu Youcheng, and Zhu Houzhao, and their descendants. Did they not resist? No, they did resist the civil service group, but all of them ended in failure.

"Well, it's not entirely their fault. Without the century-long reign of regicide and obstruction by the civil service, the situation in the 26th year of the Jiajing reign wouldn't have deteriorated to such a state."

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's perspective shifted south in an instant, settling on the southeastern coast amidst raging winds and torrential rain.

"He Qing slaughtered his way through the southwest, leaving rivers of blood, while in the southeast, the man driven to the brink by the civil service clique also began his final act of madness!"

Dark clouds loom over the Zhejiang coast on the map.

"Zhu Wan! What did this Right Vice Censor-in-Chief face in Zhejiang in the twenty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign? He faced the butcher's knife of Japanese pirates from the outside and the sharp arrows of corrupt officials and gentry from within!"

Zhu Dijun brandished his red pen and drew countless dense defensive fortifications on the map.

"He had no time to deal with the officials who impeached him; he only had one thing to do: rebuild this crumbling coastal defense system before he was completely destroyed! In the twenty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign, he not only arrested pirates, but he also directly targeted the powerful figures who were providing cover for them!"

"Even in Ningbo, the stronghold of those maritime merchants who engaged in smuggling and trade with foreign countries, Zhu Wan organized government troops and joined forces with local people who were driven to desperation to launch an extremely brutal campaign of suppression! In this battle, about 500 Portuguese pirates were killed! Five hundred men! This was not just killing the enemy; it was Zhu Wan using five hundred heads to mourn his impending tragic life!"

The comment section erupted in excitement, with countless people expressing their "respect" to this loyal minister.

"Zhu Wan is having a really tough time! On one hand, she has to fight pirates, and on the other hand, she's being betrayed by treacherous officials in the court. How the hell is she supposed to win?"

"Five hundred Portuguese soldiers—that's the kind of powerful ships and cannons they had back in the day! How did Zhu Wan manage to win? Just how strong is he?!"

Zhu Dijun took two steps back, looking at the aged yet resolute portrait of Zhu Wan on the screen, a hint of undisguised admiration flashing in his eyes.

"What you've witnessed isn't just Zhu Wan's strength, but also the utter annihilation of this country by that gang of 'hypocritical thieves'! Did they win this battle? Yes! But it has completely exposed the true nature of those Jiangnan gentry who profit from smuggling! The more capable Zhu Wan is in battle, the more those people want to grind him to dust!"

The lighting in the studio suddenly became chaotic. Zhu Dijun turned around and heavily pasted a portrait of a young military general onto the whiteboard.

"Besides these two, in this 26th year of the Jiajing reign, there was another man who quietly rose to prominence on the southern border of the Ming Dynasty! His name was Yu Dayou!"

The screen switched to Tingzhou Prefecture, and a loud explosion echoed through the studio via holographic projection. "Yu Dayou, the unparalleled general who later struck fear into the hearts of the enemy on the anti-Japanese battlefield, had just been promoted to Vice Commander-in-Chief of the Guangdong Governor's Office this year for defeating the pirate Kang Lao!"

"Family members, did you notice the timeline? It's the 26th year of the Jiajing reign! It's the same time that He Qing achieved a great victory in the southwest, Zhu Wan was frantically killing Japanese pirates in Zhejiang, and Yu Dayou was also beginning his campaign in Guangdong!"

Zhu Dijun looked at the camera, a hint of extreme fervor flashing in his eyes.

"This was a year of explosive growth in military industry, and also the last attempt by the entire Ming Dynasty to save itself! Unfortunately, all these sparks were extinguished in the same place—the central government!"

"No matter how well He Qing fights in the Southwest, how much money does the court give him? He basically relies on robbery and extortion! No matter how hard Zhu Wan fights, how much support has the court given him behind the scenes? Apart from constant impeachments and reductions in power, almost nothing! Yu Dayou is making a name for himself in Guangdong and Guangxi, and Governor Zhang Yue is indeed a discerning judge of talent, but in another year, the flames of war in Annam will spread to him. How many obstacles will those bureaucrats who only know how to wield their pens throw at him then?"

In a parallel Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Houzhao stared intently at the sky, the embroidered spring knife in his hand carving deep cracks on the table.

"Those fighting on the front lines are shedding blood, while those dividing the spoils are drinking tea in the capital! Is this the kind of prosperous era that Yang Tinghe and Xia Yan created?! He Qing, Zhu Wan, Yu Dayou... If I were on the throne, I would definitely gather these three elite forces and chop all those gentry, powerful families, and Mongols who colluded with foreign powers into mincemeat!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's voice grew increasingly impassioned.

"My family, in the twenty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign, the Ming Dynasty wasn't entirely rotten. Those marginalized soldiers, those renowned generals who dared to step forward in this bloody vortex, were still shedding their last drop of blood for this empire. But the power system of this machine has broken down!"

"The money has been drained by the scoundrels of the capital; power has been manipulated at the mercy of treacherous officials in the court; even the simplest act of patriotism has become a bargaining chip for these hypocrites to profit!"

He picked up the blackboard eraser and fiercely wiped away the last bright spot on the map that represented the fate of the Ming Dynasty, leaving only a gloomy gray.

"So, don't blame these generals for their eventual defeat, and don't blame Zhu Wan for his despair and suicide. They didn't lose to the enemy; they lost to a feudal monster that was terminally ill and driven only by its insatiable greed!"

Zhu Dijun stopped, and the cold lights in the studio dimmed again, leaving only an eerie silence.

"Family members, we've finished talking about He Qing, Zhu Wan, and Yu Dayou, these heroes struggling on the margins. But there's another nightmare from the twenty-sixth year of Jiajing's reign, a nightmare that has been buried by history and terrified an entire generation of literati and officials—the final chapter of the complete destruction of the Ming Dynasty's finances."

He lowered his head, his gaze fixed on the floor beneath his feet with a sinister look, his voice hoarse.

"Do you dare to look? About that fatal tax law that was enough to nail this Ming Dynasty to the coffin of national demise."

The moment the last sentence fell, the studio screen flickered, revealing a tax report densely covered in blood-red numbers that flashed by in the darkness, as if foreshadowing an unstoppable imperial catastrophe. Zhu Dijun looked up, his eyes filled with a chilling premonition, as if the blood-red river leading to doomsday would explode at any moment. Viewers in the live stream felt a chill run down their spines. Behind this seemingly calm military review, the soon-to-be-revealed "deadly tax law" bill appeared to be the final straw that broke the back of the Ming Dynasty.

Before the audience could ask any questions in the comments, the screen abruptly cut off, leaving only a blinding blackness.