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

The crimson spotlight in the studio had just faded, and the Jiangnan sea area covered with skull and crossbones pirate flags on the holographic screen was about to zoom in. Zhu Dijun had already raised his pointer, ready to slam the names "Qi Jiguang" and "Hu Zongxian," names that had resonated throughout history, onto the whiteboard.

Just then, "Buzz—"

His phone, which was lying in the corner of the podium, suddenly and abruptly began vibrating wildly. The piercing ringtone of his personal phone abruptly cut off the tense and oppressive background noise in the studio.

Zhu Dijun's movement froze in mid-air, his brows furrowing in displeasure. He glanced down at the screen, his expression instantly changing.

The fervent ruthlessness that had just been pointing fingers and analyzing the century-old smuggling bureau receded, replaced by extreme speechlessness, absurdity, and a disgusting anger.

He grabbed the phone, swiped it quickly twice, and then slammed it down heavily on the black table with a thud.

"Dear family members, I'm sorry, the live stream needs to be paused immediately."

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the podium, staring directly at the camera, his eyes filled with undisguised contempt.

"Originally, we were supposed to cut straight into the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in the southeast to see how Qi Jiguang's army kicked those Japanese pirates' heads around like a football. But! Plans can't keep up with changes; an urgent mission to debunk rumors using real names has just been issued from above!"

The live stream chat was instantly flooded with question marks.

Zhu Dijun loosened his tie, his tone turning extremely cold and hard:

"Recently, there has been a surge of evil online, and those Manchu remnants and Qing supporters lurking in the shadows have started causing trouble again! As our program delves deeper into the finances and civil service of the Ming Dynasty, the momentum of the Han revival is getting stronger and stronger, and the unseen cultural war in various places has reached a fever pitch."

"These spineless scumbags, unable to win in a direct confrontation, have resorted to extremely disgusting and dirty tactics. A ton of outlandish fabrications about the Ming Dynasty are circulating wildly online, and a huge number of brain-dead idiots and morons are actually believing them!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the podium. "What kind of earth-shattering rumor did they spread?! They're saying that the monster raised on the blood of the Ming Dynasty's border troops in the Changbai Mountains of Liaodong—Nurhaci, the leader of the Buryat wild boars who possessed the Jianzhou Jurchens—is a descendant of the Ming Dynasty's Jianwen Emperor, Zhu Yunwen!"

The entire live stream chat exploded instantly.

"Holy crap?! Have these Manchu remnants gone mad? What kind of hellish joke is this?!"

"Wild boar skin is a descendant of Emperor Jianwen? Does this mean the Qing dynasty's replacement of the Ming dynasty was a family civil war within the Zhu family?!"

"I'm disgusted! To whitewash this invasion, they've really gone to any lengths, even disregarding the dignity of their ancestors!"

A parallel Yongle era in the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Di, who was still raging with anger after killing a group of civil officials involved in the case, was struck by lightning upon hearing these words from the sky and suddenly jumped up from his dragon throne.

"Outrageous! Utter nonsense! This is utterly ridiculous!"

Zhu Di's eyes widened, the murderous intent in them almost solidifying. Emperor Jianwen, Zhu Yunwen, was his lifelong demon! When he captured Yingtian Prefecture, the fire burned it completely, leaving no trace of the dead or alive. He sent Zheng He on voyages to the Western Ocean and dispatched Hu Ying to search the entire country, but they searched for over a decade without success!

Now, his descendants are telling him that someone spread rumors that Emperor Jianwen fled to Liaodong, gave birth to a bunch of Buryat wild boars with pig tails, and eventually destroyed the Ming Dynasty?!

"If I find out which vile scoundrels fabricated this heresy, I will exterminate their entire clan!"

Zhu Di kicked over the imperial desk in front of him. If this lie were true, wouldn't his Jingnan Campaign become the source of all evil? The Ming Dynasty falling into the hands of this boar would become the ultimate revenge of the Jianwen Emperor's lineage against his own!

This is not only an insult to the Ming Dynasty, it's like throwing sulfuric acid down Zhu Di's spine!

Zhu Gaochi, Zhu Zhanji, Zhu Gaoxu, and Zhu Gaosui, kneeling on the ground, were sweating profusely and dared not even breathe.

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang was still furious about the collusion between later civil officials and smuggling tycoons that harmed the Ming Dynasty. Upon hearing this, his old face turned as black as the bottom of a pot.

"Yunwen..."

Zhu Yuanzhang gritted his teeth, staring intently at the sky. Although he had just deposed Zhu Yunwen from his position as crown prince, that boy was, after all, Biao'er's son, a member of the Zhu family bloodline. Did those barbarians from beyond the borders, known as "wild boarskins," even deserve to be associated with the Zhu family's bloodline?

At this moment, Zhu Yunwen, imprisoned in the Imperial Clan Court's dungeon, looked at the sky and let out a desperate, bitter laugh. His life was ruined; he had lost his throne, and now even his posthumous reputation would be used as a chamber pot by these barbarians of later generations—a huge, unfounded accusation.

On the sky, Judy Jun's cold laughter pierced through the silence of all time and space.

"We don't just hurl insults; we present evidence to slap them in the face. Staying up-to-date, let's examine the so-called 'ironclad evidence' these Manchu remnants use to brainwash idiots!"

Zhu Dijun turned around and slammed his hand on the holographic keyboard.

The large screen suddenly lit up, and a widely circulated "comparison picture" was highlighted in the center.

On the left is the official portrait of Emperor Huizong of Ming, Zhu Yunwen. On the right is the official portrait of Emperor Taizu of Qing, Nurhaci.

These two faces were deliberately enlarged and placed side by side. The oval face shape, the almost identical drooping mustache, even the direction of facial fat with a hint of puffiness, and the slender eyes that exuded a certain "imperial majesty"—the similarity was an astonishing 70-80%!

If an ordinary person who doesn't know the truth were to take a look, they would definitely gasp and think that these two people are definitely related by blood!

"Looks alike, doesn't it? Don't you think they're extremely similar?"

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

"But this is precisely the most despicable and shameless cognitive warfare that those lackey scholars played when compiling the History of Ming and organizing portraits of the previous dynasty's imperial family after the Manchus entered the pass!"

Zhu Dijun drew a big red X on the whiteboard.

"What kind of thing was the Manchu Qing dynasty? A mere few hundred thousand Buryat people who slaughtered tens of millions of Han Chinese during the Ming dynasty! Their legitimacy was severely lacking, and they were terrified of Han rebellion. To prove that they were 'the chosen ones,' they not only physically castrated themselves by forcing them to shave their heads and change their clothes, but they also went so far as to culturally castrate themselves!"

"This portrait of Zhu Yunwen is not the original from the early Ming Dynasty at all! It was painted during the Qianlong era of the Qing Dynasty, when the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) was being compiled. The court painters responsible for compiling portraits of emperors throughout the Ming Dynasty deliberately used Nurhaci's facial features to 'reverse' Zhu Yunwen's appearance!"

Zhu Dijun waved his hand.

"They depict the ancestors of the Zhu family as their own masters! Then they secretly release these flimsy, unofficial histories about 'Jianwen's exile to Liaodong.' This is to lull the Han people at the bottom of society into a false sense of security: Look, the Qing Dynasty replaced the Ming Dynasty. This isn't a foreign invasion; it's our Jianwen Emperor's lineage fighting their way back from the Northeast. This is a family matter for the Zhu family! What are you all so obsessed with about opposing the Qing and restoring the Ming?!"

In the Qin Dynasty, Ying Zheng stood with his hands behind his back, a hint of disdain flashing in his cold eyes.

"To alter portraits of the previous dynasty to steal legitimacy? Such despicable tactics do not deserve the title of emperor. The Qin Dynasty conquered the six states with its iron cavalry; why should it acknowledge the rulers of the six states as its ancestors?"

"This shameless lie might have fooled the people of the Qing Dynasty, who were under lockdown, and it might have fooled ignorant idiots today, but it can't fool real historical records!"

Suddenly, Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the control panel, instantly turning off the studio lights and shattering the two similar fake portraits on the screen.

"Now, let's see what the real Buryat wild boar skin looks like after stripping away the official Qing Dynasty filter. In an overseas region without any of the political oppression of the Qing Dynasty!"

The large screen flickered violently, and then three yellowed but extremely realistic ancient paintings, like three resounding slaps, slammed heavily into the center of the screen.

"This! It's a real portrait of Nurhaci, treasured in the Paris Museum! It's a realistic painting made by Western missionaries and painters who weren't castrated by the Qing court, based on what they saw with their own eyes!"

The entire live stream fell into a deathly silence, followed by a deafening roar of exclamations.

The man on the screen had a completely different face from the round face in the comparison picture earlier.

The figure in the painting has extremely high and prominent cheekbones, a gaunt and sunken face, sparse and short eyebrows, and a pair of narrow, cloudy eyes that reveal intense cunning and violence. Most notably, he has a rugged, flat nose and an extremely short chin, characteristic of the Tungusic hunting and fishing tribes of Siberia. His face exudes the aura of a primitive beast, born from years of scavenging and bloodshed in the Northeast, completely devoid of the refined features of a Han Chinese from the Central Plains, or even the Ming Dynasty imperial family!

"Did you see that clearly?!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly stood up straight, the pointer scraping across the portrait of Paris with a harsh, screeching sound.

"High cheekbones! Narrow eyes! A classic Tungusic look! Does this have absolutely nothing to do with the long face inherited from the Ming Dynasty's founding emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang?!"

"The Manchu remnants and those traitorous intellectuals thought that by altering domestic history books and destroying domestic portraits, they could forcibly plaster a wild boar's skin onto the faces of the Zhu family as their ancestors. But they never imagined that foreign missionaries hundreds of years ago would forever freeze the true face of this monster on the canvas of Europe!"

The live stream chat went wild, turning into a vast ocean of anger.

"This is the truth! With that shifty-eyed, boar-skinned appearance, he's not even fit to carry Emperor Jianwen's shoes!"

"Tampering with portraits! Claiming ancestors from the previous dynasty! This kind of shameless cultural fraud has shattered my worldview!"

"This is akin to killing someone's spirit! They killed the people of the Ming Dynasty and then tried to steal their ancestors' artifacts!"

Zhu Dijun pulled up a chair and sat down heavily, his whole body sinking into the half-light and half-dark shadows, his eyes becoming extremely deep and dangerous.

"Family members, a fabricated history is a fabricated history. No matter how it is packaged, it cannot hide the stench of mutton and blood."

He casually shrunk the portrait of Paris and pushed it to the edge of the screen.

"However, since these Manchu loyalists insist on bringing up the Jianzhou Jurchen they've possessed, and Nurhaci, at this time, I'll bring up another figure who is highly controversial in historical circles—Crown Princess Lü!"

Zhu Dijun leaned forward slightly, a chilling smile curving his lips.