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

The studio lights, which had been silent just moments before, suddenly switched to an extremely glaring white. Judy Jun snapped the marker in his hand in two, and black ink dripped from between his fingers onto the podium, but he didn't care at all.

"Family members, the Manchu remnants are forging portraits, pasting Nurhaci's face onto Zhu Yunwen's portrait. This is already the physical limit of forgery. You think that's all?"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly against the control panel, his knuckles turning white from the extreme force. "Now we're going to continue digging up the grave of another ancient TV series! This kind of spiritual cultural castration is more disgusting than smuggling tycoons selling out their country!"

Four large, dark red characters suddenly appeared on the big screen, along with an extremely gaudy poster for a period drama: "The Legend of Dragon Pearl: Infernal Affairs".

"This drama, which aired in 2017, is disguised as a period idol drama, but it actually involves the heinous crime of desecrating ancestral graves and scattering ashes!"

Judy loosened his tie, his voice hoarse and seemingly tearing the air apart.

"Whom did they extend their poisonous hands to? They extended them to the famous general who resisted the Qing Dynasty during the Southern Ming period, the last pillar of the nation enshrined on a shrine by the Han people—Prince Li Dingguo of Jin!"

Zhu Dijun typed heavily on the holographic keyboard, and two side-by-side character photos filled the entire screen.

The photo shows the same male actor.

"This actor's name is He Zhonghua. It sounds nice, but what he does is nothing more than the same traitorous dog Wang Jingwei."

Judy Jun's eyes were so cold they could kill, and his pointer was pointed directly at the photo on the left.

"Here, he plays Li Dingguo, a famous general who resisted the Qing Dynasty. But in the photo on the right, he's wearing a Qing Dynasty eunuch's robe! He's playing a eunuch in the Qing palace named Li Defu!"

Zhu Dijun let out a deafening roar.

"Family members, do you know how the screenwriters of this drama series came up with the plot?! They made Li Dingguo and this Qing Dynasty eunuch Li Defu into twin brothers!"

Zhu Dijun roared, his anger almost setting the studio ablaze.

"What kind of insane scheme is this, a decade-long cerebral thrombosis?! This isn't artistic creation at all; it's a shameless cultural flogging!"

The large screen flashed rapidly, displaying Li Dingguo's true historical battle achievements.

"Who is Li Dingguo?! He is the last backbone of the Ming Dynasty! He defeated two famous princes, which shocked the world! He killed Prince Jingjin Nikan of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and forced Prince Dingnan Kong Youde to commit suicide by burning himself! He terrified the Manchu Qing court, and they even prepared to abandon the south and divide the country along the Yangtze River! If it weren't for that beast Sun Kewang, why would we Han people have been submerged for 300 years? We could have even pushed back and saved our other suffering compatriots."

Zhu Dijun frantically tapped the screen.

"Li Dingguo dedicated his life to resisting the Qing dynasty, never surrendering to them until his death, nor did he shave his head or change his clothes! His last words to his son were: 'I would rather die in the wilderness than surrender to the Manchus!'"

A large red laser pointer drew a big X on the still of the eunuch Li Defu.

"This national hero, whose integrity resonates throughout history, has been forcibly linked by these screenwriters to a servile eunuch who used to serve tea and water to the Qing emperor! And they've used the same face to portray him!"

Zhu Dijun zoomed in on the camera, his eyes filled with utter hatred.

"What are they doing? They're exploiting the visual residue in the audience's subconscious! The moment the audience sees that face kneeling on the ground in eunuch's robes, they're already subconsciously making a despicable association with 'Li Dingguo is a eunuch'! They're making this anti-Qing leader do on television what the Manchu Tartars couldn't do even with a knife to his throat!"

A parallel universe between the Ming and Southern Ming dynasties. Deep in a dense forest shrouded in miasma on the southwestern frontier.

The setting sun was like blood. Prince Li Dingguo of Jin, clad in tattered armor, gripped a dull longsword tightly in his withered hand. His army had been without food for many days, and the soldiers were subsisting on tree bark and wild grass, surrounded by a vast wilderness and the oppressive presence of the Manchu pursuers.

He raised his head, his eyes bloodshot as he stared at the celestial canopy hanging high in the sky. On the canopy, the traitorous actor named He Zhonghua was kneeling on the ground, kowtowing, dressed in a repulsive Manchu eunuch's robe. His face was exactly the same as the general's costume on the left side of the screen, bearing his name.

Li Dingguo let out a mournful roar like a wild beast on its deathbed, and spat a mouthful of blood directly onto the rock in front of him.

"A humiliating disgrace! A truly humiliating disgrace!"

Li Dingguo suddenly swung his longsword, frantically hacking at the ancient tree beside him, wood chips mixed with his blood splattering everywhere.

To preserve the Han Chinese tradition and for the last breath of the Ming Dynasty, he and his brothers endured untold hardships in these mountains, even losing their wives and children in the process. He even beheaded two Manchu princes, never once bending his knee.

Now, those actors and screenwriters of later generations are actually using such destructive methods to ruin his lifelong reputation!

"An insult! This is a complete insult to me, Li Dingguo!"

Li Dingguo's eyes were bloodshot, his long sword pointed straight at the sky, and he let out a desperate and violent roar.

"Damn wild boar hide! They destroyed my kingdom, slaughtered my people, and now they want to steal my honor! As long as I have a breath left, I will slaughter them all! Slaughter them all!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yunwen, in the Imperial Clan Court prison, was completely limp on the ground. He had been complaining about being framed, but now, seeing the tragic end of the Southern Ming Dynasty and the fate of Li Dingguo, he didn't even have the strength to speak.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang sat quietly on the dragon throne, his facial muscles twitching violently.

He gazed at the Southern Ming general on the sky, bleeding and drawing his sword in the rainforest, and at the last words: "I'd rather die in the wilderness than surrender to the Manchus." Old Zhu's calloused hands gripped the imperial seal tightly, his nails scraping against the jade with a harsh sound.

"These are the true men of our Ming Dynasty."

Zhu Yuanzhang's voice was terrifyingly deep.

"Those corrupt officials in Jiangnan, those smuggling beasts, sold out the country for money. And in the end, it was these loyal ministers and righteous men who upheld the integrity of our Zhu family and the Han people!"

Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly stood up and kicked over the imperial desk.

"Those playwrights who wrote plays in later generations deserve to be torn to pieces! If they were in my hands, I would exterminate their entire clan, skin them alive, stuff them with straw, and hang them on the city gate to dry in the wind!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel had precisely cut into the core of this cultural poisoning case.

"Family members, do you really think the screenwriter is just crazy and lacks historical common sense? Wrong!" Zhu Dijun wrote two extremely eye-catching words heavily on the whiteboard—[commercial speculation] and [historical nihilism].

"These people are playing an extremely dirty game of profit! These producers know very well that subverting historical figures and creating extreme contrasts is the fastest way to grab attention and generate negative publicity! For ratings and to sell the copyrights for a high price, they don't care about historical bottom lines or national dignity at all!"

The holographic screen immediately switched to displaying screenshots from other scenes of the show.

Zhu Dijun pointed at the man and woman in the screenshot and let out a cold laugh of extreme contempt.

"Look at this even more ridiculous plot! Not only do they disgust Li Dingguo, but they also fabricate a story about a former Ming princess falling in love with a Manchu emperor! A Ming dynasty orphan burdened with the hatred of national and familial grievances is actually moved by the so-called deep affection of the Manchu emperor, resulting in a tragic love story!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his hand on the table.

"The motives behind such scripts are extremely sinister! Why don't they dare to film the Jiading Massacre? Why don't they dare to film the Yangzhou Massacre? Why don't they dare to film the hundreds of thousands of innocent souls killed by wild boars in Guangzhou?!"

He stared intently at the camera, his eyes filled with a chilling intensity.

"Because they want to use clichéd love stories to forcibly erase that horrific blood feud! They want to use this entertainment-oriented approach to trivialize history! To make you think that dynastic changes are just a matter of a few men and women falling in love, to make you think that shaving your head and changing your clothes and massacring cities are not big deals. This is cultural warfare! By belittling national heroes and smearing anti-Qing martyrs, they are whitewashing the Manchu invasion and undermining the courage and backbone of the Han people!"

The red lights in the studio were flashing wildly, like a siren blaring.

"However, these capitalists and screenwriters who profit from human suffering have underestimated the bottom line of modern audiences!" Zhu Dijun spread his arms, and the TV series poster on the screen was completely flooded with countless bullet comments such as "boycott", "take down", and "cultural garbage", and finally shattered into a pile of electronic waste.

"As soon as this drama premiered, it was met with overwhelming condemnation and strong boycotts across the internet! The people's eyes are discerning; they know perfectly well who the heroes are and who the traitors are! The drama's ratings plummeted from beginning to end, its reputation soared, and it ended in a dismal failure amidst endless criticism!"

Zhu Dijun's cold gaze swept across the entire room, his voice resolute.

"Although the Ming Dynasty has fallen, the spirit of the Han people has not! General Li Dingguo's words, 'Better to die in the wilderness than surrender to the Manchus,' are etched into the historical DNA of this land. Any cultural trash that attempts to trample on this bottom line will only be forever nailed to the pillar of historical shame!"

He casually swept the broken marker off the podium, then slowly leaned back in his chair, half his face hidden in the dark red light.