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

"Family members, I just mentioned the death of the Crown Prince, and that wolf king of the sea has also bared his fangs. But don't rush to look at the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in the southeast." Zhu Dijun slammed his pointer heavily on the podium, making a loud bang.

The red lights in the studio were instantly cut off, replaced by a cold, piercing white halo.

"In a year of great collapse, war is always a consequence, never a cause!"

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the table, looking like a cheetah eyeing its prey.

"Let's shift our focus back to the heart of the Ming Dynasty and see what shameless tricks these corrupt officials sitting in the Forbidden City and the Grand Secretariat pulled in terms of economics and personnel in the 28th year of the Jiajing Emperor's reign!"

The large screen flashed suddenly, displaying portraits of several officials wearing bright red python robes.

"In the twenty-eighth year of the Jiajing reign, a bizarre reshuffling of power took place at the highest levels of the imperial court!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser and roughly wiped away the remaining information from the previous text, then wrote three large characters in reverse: "[Cake Cutting]".

In February, Zhang Zhi, the Minister of Personnel in Nanjing, was transferred to Beijing and appointed Minister of Rites and Grand Secretary of the Wenyuan Pavilion, officially joining the cabinet to participate in state affairs!

The pointer struck Zhang Zhi's name hard. "Is this Yan Song's scheme? No! This is Jiajing playing a game of checks and balances! Yan Song's faction is too powerful; the old emperor has to add some in. But this instigator can't stop the rise of another venomous snake!"

A red marker drew a heavy circle on the whiteboard.

"That year, Xu Jie! Our 'leader of the upright officials,' who was so fat and owned 240,000 mu of fertile land in Jiangnan, was officially promoted and secured the position of Minister of Rites!"

Zhu Dijun let out an extremely grating sneer. "Family members, look closely! What kind of image does Xu Jie project at this moment? He's acting like a grandson in front of Yan Song! If Yan Song coughs even once, he'd practically kneel down to catch the phlegm! He's even offering his own granddaughter to marry Yan Song's grandson! This is the future great hero who will overthrow the Yan faction! For power, he's even sold off the face of his ancestors!"

"Moreover, Xu Jie's granddaughter is also a tragic figure. After the purge of Yan Song and Yan Shifan, this grandson was directly abandoned as a pawn. They call him a member of the Yan family, but they don't even remember that it was Xu Jie who forcibly arranged this arrangement. Now that he has no use for them, they call him a member of the Yan family. Bah! Disgusting, absolutely disgusting!"

A parallel Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty. The study of the Yan family mansion.

Yan Shifan stared intently at the sky with his one eye, then kicked over the rosewood table in front of him, spilling tea and broken porcelain all over the floor.

"Xu Jie, you old bastard! I knew that old dog was up to no good, always so meek and submissive! Father, did you see that? The future generations on the heavenly screen are saying that he's a venomous snake ready to bite our throats at any moment!"

Yan Song sat in the grand chair, his gaunt face devoid of color. He gripped his cane tightly, his knuckles cracking. He knew Xu Jie was faking it, but he hadn't expected Xu Jie's future reckoning to be so ruthless.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's analytical scalpel had already cut towards its next target.

"While the court officials were fighting amongst themselves, what was Jiajing Emperor doing?"

A phantom image of a Taoist temple appeared on the holographic screen. "He's practicing cultivation to the point of demonic possession! After all, the country is in ruins, and his children have died tragically. He believes that only by successfully cultivating immortality can he save the Ming Dynasty. At this time, a stubborn and resolute man emerged from the Ming imperial family—Prince Zheng, Zhu Houwan!"

"This prince submitted a memorial advising Jiajing to stop his alchemy and pay more attention to the common people. And what was the result?"

Judy Jun spread his hands, his face full of mockery.

"In November, Emperor Jiajing issued an imperial edict, directly stripping this cousin of his title and reducing him to a commoner, imprisoning him within high walls! Anyone who dares to obstruct the emperor's path to immortality, even his own brother, will die!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang slammed his hand on the imperial desk, his eyes flashing with a murderous aura as if a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood had been slain.

"You scoundrel! Disregarding the legacy of our ancestors, you've become obsessed with heretical and unorthodox practices! Honest advice is hard to swallow, yet you've reduced your own flesh and blood to commoners! How can such a perverse beast be worthy of sitting on the dragon throne of our Great Ming!"

"When King Zheng was deposed, all the officials in the court immediately became mute."

Zhu Dijun's speech became faster and faster, revealing a kind of absurd and mocking tone.

"But in this deathly silent court, a young official from the Hanlin Academy seized the opportunity to submit a memorial that would go down in history! This person was none other than Zhang Juzheng, the regent of the Ming Dynasty, whom we discussed in the previous chapter—a prime minister for all time, whom we, the later generations, jokingly refer to!"

Four large, blood-red characters slammed onto the screen—【On Current Affairs】!

"At the age of twenty-five, Zhang Juzheng wrote a lengthy and eloquent article, pointing out the lack of cohesion and discipline within the court. Every word was precious and resounding!"

Zhu Dijun stopped, looking at the scrolling text on the screen, such as "Famous Minister of All Time" and "The Last Hope of the Ming Dynasty," and a dangerous smile appeared on his lips.

He suddenly grabbed a copy of the memorial and, in front of the camera, tore it to shreds!

As scraps of paper fell, the studio's cold lights instantly turned crimson!

"Stop getting all emotional!"

Judy Jun roared angrily.

"Look at this memorial again, combining it with the conspiracy theory about the 'Single Whip Law' I just mentioned! Is this a young person concerned about the country and its people? Wrong! This is the ultimate declaration of power to seize control, submitted by the new generation of leaders of the civil service!"

"He said the court was riddled with problems, which, to put it bluntly, meant that the emperor was meddling too much, and the privileges of local powerful families and gentry were not secure enough! He was laying the groundwork for turning the national treasury's grain reserves into silver and completely transferring control of the grassroots to the gentry of Jiangnan! This isn't saving the Ming Dynasty at all; it's clearly using a soft knife to slowly cut away at the Ming Dynasty's flesh!"

The scene abruptly shifts, and a massive warehouse overflowing with gold and silver crashes onto the center of the screen.

"Now that we've finished talking about the people, let's check the accounts! The most memorable scene of the Ming Dynasty's national finances in the 28th year of the Jiajing reign is about to unfold!"

Zhu Dijun's fingers furiously tapped the keyboard, and a huge string of golden numbers crashed onto the retinas of all the viewers—[2,957,116 taels of silver]!

"Family members! Look closely at this number! According to historical records, this is the absolute peak of the national treasury's total revenue under the old tax system of the Ming Dynasty! Nearly three million taels of silver were deposited into the treasury!"

Just as the live stream chat typed "Awesome!", Zhu Dijun's coaching pointer lashed out at the number, shattering it to pieces!

"You think you're very rich, right? You think the Ming Dynasty has been restored, right?"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes as cold as ice.

"Let me tell you how this nearly three million taels came about! At that time, there was no Single Whip Law, and there was no large influx of overseas silver. Every single tael of silver was squeezed from the very marrow of the common people!"

On the whiteboard, he wrote eight characters in black ink. These eight characters were like a curse, nailed to the pillar of shame in the history of the Ming Dynasty.

[Jiajing, Jiajing, may every household be clean and tidy!]

"This was the most popular folk song at the time! Silver was piled up like mountains in Taicang, and the common people outside even gnawed all the tree bark off the trees!"

Zhu Dijun pulled over a chair and sat down heavily, his chest heaving violently.

"Where did the money go? Jiajing spent millions of taels a year on Taoist temples and palaces! Hundreds of thousands of troops on the nine borders were starving, which cost another few million taels! Add to that the stipends for various princes and members of the imperial family, and the national treasury was practically emptied by these bloodsuckers the moment it came in!"

"To make up for these expenses, local governments frantically increased taxes in the two capitals and thirteen provinces! The 'levies' and 'taxes in silver' mentioned earlier were fully unleashed! Ordinary people sold their children to raise even a few cents of silver in taxes, and entire families hanged themselves, drowned themselves, or sold their heads as offerings, filling the official roads of Jiangnan and the north and south of the Yangtze River!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, looked at the four characters "Every household is clean" on the sky, and tears welled up in his eyes. He slumped onto his dragon throne, looking up at the sky with a bitter laugh.

"Every house is clean... So my empire was already drained dry by these people a hundred years ago! What I inherited when I ascended the throne was not a magnificent land, but a graveyard that had been gnawed clean, leaving not even bone fragments!"

"Faced with such abject poverty and imminent national collapse, does the imperial court have any remedial measures?"

Judy Jun's voice was laced with biting sarcasm. Two imperial edicts were displayed on the large screen.

"Yes! It's clearly written in the history books: in February, relief was provided for the famine in Shaanxi! In September and October, taxes were waived for areas in the capital region affected by disasters and those looted by enemy forces! Look how benevolent and boundless the Emperor's grace is!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly stood up and kicked over the chair next to him.

"That's all bullshit!"

He roared, veins bulging on his neck.

"Tax exemption? It's all taxes exempted from the gentry of Jiangnan and the nobles of the capital! The common people have already surrendered their land to the landlords, they don't enjoy a single penny of tax exemption! Moreover, even if the local government exempts taxes from above, the local government continues to collect them without fail, these tax exemptions all become profits for local officials to line their own pockets!"

"As for disaster relief?"

Zhu Dijun pointed his finger directly at the camera, his eyes filled with extreme horror.

"Go and look at the history of disaster relief in every dynasty! Of the 100,000 taels of silver allocated by the national treasury for disaster relief, 20,000 taels were lost by the Ministry of Revenue after leaving the imperial granary, and 50,000 taels were intercepted by the governor and provincial treasurer in Shaanxi Province. By the time it reached the affected counties, the county magistrate would take another 20,000 taels to make up for his previous deficits. In the end, the relief grain in the soup kitchens was mixed with sand, clay, and moldy bran!"

The red lights in the studio were flashing wildly, like the blood gushing out of the Ming Dynasty on its deathbed.

"This kind of disaster relief isn't about saving people's lives at all! It's a legal money-sharing party organized by the central government for corrupt local officials! The only way for ordinary people to survive in this dead end is to rebel! Or, become pirates!"

Zhu Dijun casually tossed the red marker onto the table with a dull thud. The disaster relief documents on the large screen were instantly engulfed in flames, transforming into a surging black ocean.

"Family members, the marrow inside our bodies has been completely drained by this distorted system."

He had his hands in his pockets, leaned slightly forward, and a chilling glint appeared in his eyes.

"In the 28th year of the Jiajing reign, the Ming Dynasty was rotten to the core. And at this time, because of Zhu Wan's death and the complete collapse of the coastal defenses, the monster that had been entrenched at sea for years, the so-called Prince Hui, the ship owner of the Wufeng ship Wang Zhi who led countless desperate bankrupt farmers of the Ming Dynasty and professional Japanese ronin, finally got the hunting moment he had been longing for the most."

On the big screen, a giant warship flying a black skull and crossbones flag cleaved through the waves, and countless ferocious-looking pirates raised their Japanese swords, heading straight for the wealthy Jiangnan coastline of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Dijun lowered his voice to an extremely low level, like a demon whispering in someone's ear.

"The bloodiest hand-to-hand combat in the history of the Ming Dynasty. Watch how these bloated civil officials personally sent millions of coastal people to the slaughterhouse during this horrific Japanese pirate raid."