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

The studio's pale blue overhead lights flickered twice before going completely dark, leaving only a crimson spotlight, like one from the underworld, shining intently on the center of the holographic screen.

The four large, dark characters—【Crown Prince's Sudden Death】—exuded an intense, almost unbearable stench of death against the backdrop of blood.

"Alright, everyone!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly against the podium, his chest heaving violently. He grabbed a bottle of ice water and gulped down two mouthfuls, water droplets dripping from his chin onto the black tabletop.

"Regarding the death of this fourteen-year-old crown prince during the Jiajing reign, if you only look at the *Ming Shilu* (Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty), it's said he died from a sudden illness, vomiting blood. But if I use the ultimate logic of conspiracy theories to speculate, the conclusion I reach will absolutely scare you so much you won't be able to sleep at night!"

He grabbed a red marker and drew the first thick bloodstain heavily on the whiteboard.

[The ultimate weapon of a powerful minister: eliminate all traces!]

"Let's settle the first bloody political score! Who is this Crown Prince Zhu Zaiyi's teacher?! It's Xia Yan, the previous Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty, who was just beheaded by Jiajing in the West Market!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his knuckles pounding the podium with a loud thud.

"Xia Yan was the core protector of the so-called Crown Prince Party! He's dead, but as long as Zhu Zai Rui ascends the throne, the winds of reversal will inevitably blow! At that time, Yan Song and his gang of power-hungry old dogs who sent Xia Yan to the guillotine, along with our 'pure stream leader' Xu Jie, who was hiding behind the scenes and was full of wicked and immoral thoughts, will all be executed along with their entire families!"

On the large screen, the busts of Yan Song and Xu Jie were projected side by side in shadow.

"To eliminate any future trouble, these powerful ministers could kill the governor-general of the three border regions in the court. Wouldn't they dare kill a future emperor who hasn't fully consolidated his power in the palace?! The two days after the coming-of-age ceremony are a crucial period for the crown prince's transition from 'heir apparent' to 'new emperor.' Killing him would ensure the vested interests of the Ming court would never have to worry about being purged! Some have even uncovered that Zhang Juzheng and his cronies were among the young officials planted around the crown prince at the time! What role did they play in this closed loop of surveillance and poisoning?!"

A parallel Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty.

The laughter in the study of the Yan family abruptly stopped. The mutton-fat jade walnut in Yan Shifan's hand fell to the ground with a "crack" and shattered into pieces. He turned his head sharply to look at Yan Song, his one eye trembling violently with extreme terror.

"father……"

Yan Shifan's throat was dry.

"This whole mess... they're even blaming us for it?"

Yan Song's gaunt face was completely devoid of color. He gripped the armrests of the grand chair tightly, his knuckles white. This was a huge accusation, big enough for Jiajing to immediately issue an edict to execute the entire Yan family. Even if the Crown Prince's death was truly just an illness, as long as the emperor believed this logic, the Yan faction would be nothing but a pile of dead flesh tomorrow!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel had already made a second, deeper cut.

He wrote several large characters on the whiteboard: "[The money that smuggling tycoons use to buy their lives]".

"This is the second wave of ghouls that will take the Crown Prince's life! Family members, do you remember Zhu Wan, who was driven to the brink of despair in the 27th year of the Jiajing reign? Crown Prince Zhu Zai Rui was extremely strong-willed, and he strongly supported Zhu Wan's efforts to quell the rebellion and resist the Japanese pirates along the southeast coast!"

The holographic map instantly switched to the turbulent southeastern sea, where gold and silver treasures were piled up like mountains on smuggling ships.

"What does this mean? It means that once this new emperor ascends the throne, he will inevitably emulate the iron-fisted methods of the early Jiajing Emperor and thoroughly eradicate the smuggling groups in Jiangnan! That's cutting off their livelihood! In the Ming Dynasty's officialdom, cutting off someone's livelihood is even more blood-curdling than killing their parents!"

Judy Jun let out a chilling laugh.

"To protect this money-making machine at sea, the gentry, smuggling magnates, and their protectors in the court had every motive to amass enormous sums of gold and silver! They could bribe the eunuchs in the inner court! They could bribe the imperial physicians in the Imperial Hospital! By adding a little something to the Crown Prince's food, to the tea he drank at his coming-of-age ceremony, a so-called sudden death from an acute illness could occur so naturally!"

The chat room was already reeling from the shock of this impeccable chain of profit-driven killing.

"That makes sense! Why were all the anti-Japanese generals killed, and even the crown prince who supported the resistance died!"

"These vested interest groups dare to empty the national treasury, they even kill the emperor, so what's killing the crown prince now!"

"Even more disgusting is the third layer of the trap!" Judy Jun slammed his pointer heavily on a corner of the screen, where several portraits of court women appeared.

"The struggle for the throne in the harem! Crown Prince Zhu Zai Rui is the eldest son. As long as he lives, Prince Yu Zhu Zai Ji and Prince Jing Zhu Zai Zhen will forever be useless princes! The concubines in the harem are more ruthless than you can imagine in their quest for their own sons' throne! At the most chaotic and vulnerable time in the palace, such as the coming-of-age ceremony, using others to do one's dirty work is practically a required course for survival in the harem!"

He pulled up a chair and sat down heavily, his whole body hidden in the dim light.

"Did you understand the perfect ending to this death feast? With the Crown Prince dead, Yan Song and Xu Jie, those powerful ministers, are safe! The money from the Jiangnan smuggling ring is saved! The other princes in the harem see hope for ascending the throne! Only a fourteen-year-old boy died in the whole world, and everyone else except his father, Zhu Houcong, is celebrating wildly!"

Inside the Wuyi Hall.

The Jiajing Emperor stared intently at the sky, his withered body trembling violently like a candle flickering in the wind. He suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood, which splattered onto the Bagua diagram in front of him.

"My son..."

Jiajing's voice was as shrill as a night owl.

He recalled the Crown Prince struggling to bow to the north before his death, saying to him, "My son is gone."

He had always believed it was the will of Heaven, a punishment from the gods. But now his descendants were telling him that it was very likely a poisoning orchestrated by the loyal ministers, the upright officials, and the eunuchs around him who had been cultivating him in the court!

But Zhu Dijun's voice at that moment severed all of Jiajing's anger, plunging him into an abyss of no return.

"What did Jiajing do after the Crown Prince's death? Did he conduct a thorough investigation? Did he execute anyone?"

Zhu Dijun shook his head frantically in front of the screen, his face filled with utter absurdity.

A memorial covered with talismans appeared on the large screen—a secret memorial from the sorcerer Tao Zhongwen.

"Family members, the most outrageous thing has happened. This self-proclaimed intelligent immortal emperor, in this extreme grief, not only didn't question those civil officials, but instead concocted an utterly bizarre theory!"

Four large characters, imbued with a strong Taoist eeriness, crashed onto the screen: "Two dragons cannot meet!"

Tao Zhongwen told Jiajing, "Your Majesty, you are a true dragon, and the Crown Prince is a hidden dragon. Your fates clash, and if you meet, one of you will die!" The Crown Prince died, and Jiajing not only believed it, but he was absolutely convinced! He wept bitterly before the Crown Prince's body, saying that if he had listened to the advice of the sorcerer and not held a coming-of-age ceremony or allowed his son to pay his respects, his son would not have been killed!

The live stream was instantly flooded with comments like "perverted" and "gone mad".

"From this moment on, this curse completely destroyed any remaining humanity in Jiajing Emperor's reign!"

Judy Jun suddenly stood up, ripped open his collar, and roared.

"He felt like he was a poison that would kill his own son! He not only completely severed his feelings for the crown prince, but also vented this extreme fear on his only two remaining sons—Prince Yu and Prince Jing!"

The scene shifts to a dilapidated and desolate royal palace.

"Jiajing Emperor was utterly hostile to his two sons! He ordered them to be banished from the palace and forbade them from ever entering to pay their respects! Even on holidays, father and sons were absolutely forbidden from seeing each other! Not only were they forbidden from seeing each other, but the very phrase 'establishing an heir' became an absolute death sentence in the Ming court! Anyone who dared to petition the emperor to establish Prince Yu as the crown prince would be executed by Jiajing on the spot!"

A parallel Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the dilapidated Prince Yu's mansion, Prince Yu, Zhu Zaiji, gazed at the sky, closed his eyes in despair, and tears streamed down his face. He had long known that his father disliked him, but he never imagined that he would be completely deprived of even the right to see his own father by a ridiculous Taoist prophecy.

"What is an even more absurd reality?"

Zhu Dijun's fingers made a harsh sound as they traced patterns on the podium.

"Prince Yu, a dignified prince of the Ming Dynasty and the future emperor, was abandoned outside the palace by his own father to fend for himself! He was so poor that he didn't even have money to buy coal for a fire! He could only send his eunuchs, in an extremely humiliating manner, to bribe the son of the Grand Secretary—that one-eyed Yan Shifan—to beg the Yan family to be lenient and pay Prince Yu's overdue salary!"

"The crown prince of the Ming Dynasty bribed the son of a corrupt official to get his salary! This is the ultimate political spectacle after the 28th year of the Jiajing Emperor's reign!"

"However, I believe that Jiajing was not insane. This was a helpless compromise with reality and the civil service group! We, his descendants, all know that Jiajing had eight sons, but they all died one after another. Only the future Longqing Emperor, Zhu Zaiji, survived. He reigned for six years, cracking down on land annexation and curbing smuggling groups in Jiangnan, before he also died."

The studio lights went out in a flash. Judy Jun turned around and used the blackboard eraser to wipe away all the names and conspiracies on the whiteboard.

He turned around, his eyes as cold as death.

"Empress Fang is dead, and the harem has lost its pillar of support. Zhu Wan is dead, and the coastal defenses are completely rotten. Zeng Xian and Xia Yan are dead, and the military forces in the northwest are completely blunted. Now, even the last crown prince and the foundation of the Ming Dynasty have been severed. Jiajing has completely degenerated into a lonely, paranoid, suspicious, and utterly heartless monster."

He slowly walked to the front of the camera, a bloodthirsty smile curving his lips.

"This political meat grinder, which devoured countless loyal ministers and generals of the Ming Dynasty, has finally quelled all internal threats. But do you think the wolves outside will give them time to divide the spoils?"

The large screen suddenly lit up, and a huge and menacing skull pirate flag fluttered in the wind.

"In the 28th year of the Jiajing reign, after the Wokou (Japanese pirates) threat along the coast was no longer suppressed, an epic outbreak occurred! Wang Zhi, the maritime overlord known as the 'Master of the Five Peaks,' led his ultimate pirate army, equipped with matchlock guns and Japanese ronin, and completely knocked on the door of wealth in Jiangnan. The true blood and flesh mill of the Ming Dynasty had been started."