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

[Modern Live Streaming Room]

The dense barrage of bullet comments filled the holographic screen like a red rainstorm.

"May Senior Zhu Wan rest in peace!"

"We remember your heroism! You were not a treacherous official falsely accused of murder; you were the true backbone of the Ming Dynasty's southeastern coastal defense!"

"The Jiangnan smuggling ring deserves to die! These traitors are two-faced beasts!"

As Zhu Dijun watched the swirling barrage of comments, his previously raging emotions suddenly calmed down.

He pushed aside the black chair behind the podium and walked to the camera. He straightened his disheveled shirt collar, faced the direction of Zhejiang, and solemnly kowtowed three times.

Zhu Dijun stood up, his eyes red-rimmed, but his voice was as cold as a knife chilled to the bone:

"Family members, by the thirty-first year of the Jiajing reign, Jiangnan had deteriorated to this hellish state. But do you think the calamities facing the Ming Dynasty have reached their end?"

He walked back to the podium and slammed his fist heavily on the control panel.

"No! The civil service is a group of insatiable gluttons! Besides using the wars in the southeastern coastal defenses to deplete the Ming Dynasty's official power and protect their smuggling interests, they've also completely sold off the northern border!"

The holographic screen suddenly switched, the sea of ​​blood in Jiangnan receded, and in its place was a map of the northern border defense with yellow sand covering the sky.

Four extremely violent characters slammed onto the screen: "[Mongol Invasion]".

"In the thirty-first year of the Jiajing reign! At the same time as the Japanese pirates landed in the south, the Mongol Tatar tribes in the north, led by Altan Khan and the Jinang tribe, treated the Ming Dynasty's nine border defense lines as their own backyard!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a laser pointer and frantically pointed red dots at important military towns like Xuanfu, Datong, Yansui, and Jizhen.

Each tap sends a blinding burst of light across the screen.

"The Mongol cavalry had been raiding southwards for years, and in this very year, they broke through the Great Wall with remarkable ease on several occasions! They directly invaded the heartland of Shanxi and Northern Zhili!"

"This is the capital region! Right under the emperor's nose! Where are the Ming Dynasty's border troops?! What have those generals and adjutants, who are paid by the court, been doing?!"

A bloody battle report from the Ministry of War during the Ming Dynasty is highlighted and enlarged.

"Faced with the Mongol cavalry, the border generals were cowardly and avoided battle, collapsing at the first contact, some even abandoning their cities and fleeing! They would rather watch their people have their heads chopped off by the Mongols' scimitars and watch the subjects of the Ming Dynasty be taken away as slaves than leave the city to fight!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the old crooked tree on Coal Hill, Zhu Youjian stared intently at the fleeing Ming Dynasty border generals in the sky, letting out a mournful roar.

"Abandoning the city and fleeing... another abandonment and fleeing!"

Emperor Chongzhen frantically tore at his hair, the veins bulging on the back of his withered hands.

"Datong and Xuanfu, those are the iron bulwarks left by Emperor Chengzu! Are the Ming Dynasty's border generals just for show?! Later generations say I was a tyrant for killing so many governors and viceroys, but look at these useless fools! Should we keep them around for the New Year?!"

The parallel Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Di sat upright on the dragon throne, his face contorted in extreme pain.

"Xuancheng, Datong, and Jizhou—that was the place where I led my troops on my five expeditions to the northern deserts!"

Zhu Di drew his long sword from his waist and cleaved the corner of the imperial desk in two with a single stroke, his killing intent soaring to the heavens.

"These mere Tatar tribes dare to cross the Great Wall and wreak havoc in Northern Zhili! The Ming generals fled without a fight; they all deserve to be torn to pieces! What kind of quagmire have the descendants of our ancestor turned this Ming dynasty into?!"

Zhu Gaochi lowered his head and dared not speak, while Zhu Zhanji on the side also looked ashamed. Zhu Gaoxu and Zhu Gaosui next to him could only sigh. Even though they knew that history was repeating itself, when it came to their own Ming Dynasty, they were all heartbroken.

On the sky, Judy Jun's scalpel never stopped, cutting open the festering flesh to reveal the white bones infested with maggots.

"Why not fight? Because there's no way to fight!" Zhu Dijun drew four words heavily on the whiteboard with his red pen: "[The Garrison Collapses]".

"In the thirty-first year of the Jiajing reign, how utterly depraved were the border troops who embezzled funds? On paper, they had 100,000 soldiers, but in reality, they didn't even have 10,000 able-bodied men who could wield a sword! The rest were all old, weak, sick, and disabled! The spears in the armory were rusted, and the gunpowder was mixed with sand! The border defenses were completely empty, and the northern defense line was just a thin sheet of paper that could be pierced with a single poke!"

The screen then shifts to a scene of several ragged, emaciated soldiers holding tattered banners and blocking the entrance to the border government office.

"They couldn't even get enough to eat, and their annual pay was being siphoned off by higher-ranking officers and civil officials in the Ministry of War! In that year, serious mutinies and demands for unpaid wages broke out in many places! The soldiers who risked their lives to fill the pits were forced to rebel and demand money, while the officials were buying land in the capital and Jiangnan!"

Zhu Dijun turned around and drew a huge, blood-dripping red circle around the four characters "collapse of the garrison" with a marker.

He stared intently at the camera, his voice carrying a chilling edge that seemed to expose a century-old lie.

"Family members, was the garrison system really that bad? Was the ancestral system established by Zhu Yuanzhang truly so foolish? We must dig out the dirty water that later generations have poured on the garrison system!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the side of the podium, causing the entire studio to vibrate.

"The apparent reason for the collapse of the garrison system was the corruption and embezzlement among the hereditary garrison leaders. But the most fatal and intractable poison was the century-long, fundamental undermining of the system by the civil service!"

On the big screen, the chart filled with evil, which we discussed in previous episodes, appeared.

"Do you remember the infamous 'compensation for grain' during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Ming?! Back then, they abolished the practice of paying grain in kind and forcibly switched to collecting silver, directly cutting off the in-kind supplies to the nine border garrisons! The grain that the border soldiers used to be able to eat turned into a few taels of silver mixed with lead in the hands of civil officials in the Ministry of Revenue!"

Zhu Dijun drew a thick red line on the color-folding method, leading straight to the garrison of the Jiajing era.

"Grain turned into silver, and the circulation of currency becomes a breeding ground for corruption! The Ministry of War, the Ministry of Revenue, the Governor-General, the Provincial Governor—the civil officials scrape their way down the ranks! By the time it reaches the lowest-ranking military households, it's not even enough to buy a bowl of coarse grain porridge with sand in it!"

"What's worse, in order to suppress military officers and completely control military power, the civil official group used every means to trample on the dignity of soldiers! In the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, a second-rank general had to kneel on the ground and kowtow like a dog when he saw a fourth-rank civil official! Any military officer who was slightly more assertive could have his family destroyed by a single memorial from an imperial censor!"

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the podium, his anger turning into a mocking laugh, filled with extreme contempt.

"They take your salary without working, cut off your supplies, break your backbone, and treat you like a free serf, tilling the land and doing private work for civil officials! This is the true picture of military households during the Jiajing era! This is the root cause of the complete collapse of the once mighty garrison system that swept across the northern deserts!"

The live stream chat exploded with comments.

"So this is where the boomerang of the color-changing method killed the Ming Dynasty's border defenses!"

"Civil officials are cutting military spending while simultaneously criticizing military officers for being incompetent—what utterly shameless!"

"If we trample those who wield swords to defend our country under our feet, it would be an injustice if this nation didn't perish!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang listened quietly to the analysis on the screen above, without roaring or smashing anything. His withered old face revealed a terrifying, deathly stillness that could crush the entire court.

"Military officers kneeling before civil officials..."

Zhu Yuanzhang's voice was terribly hoarse.

"We established the Military Guard Law, allowing military households to live off the imperial rations for generations, so that they would protect the Ming Dynasty! These scholar-officials, who have studied the classics, have not only drained the blood of military households, but have also broken the bones of our Ming soldiers!"

Old Zhu turned his head and stared intently at the group of civil officials below, his eyes flashing red:

"Do you also believe that warriors with knives deserve to be trampled underfoot by you pens-wielding people?!"

The civil officials of the Hongwu reign were so terrified that they knelt on the spot, trembling like leaves, unable to utter a single word.

If anyone dared to say even one of these things, Xu Da and the others present would have beaten them to death without Zhu Yuanzhang even lifting a finger. The founding generals at this time were not the hereditary fools who had left the army in the later stages. They had deep camaraderie with the soldiers of the garrison. Their titles were not only due to their own abilities, but also to the contributions of the soldiers of the garrison.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel slashed fiercely at the most disgusting fig leaf behind this decadent history.

The studio lights instantly switched to a stark white, and the big screen displayed screenshots from various modern period dramas, pages from the Qing Dynasty's "History of Ming," and covers of a bunch of online novels.

"Family, what's the most fucking disgusting thing?" Judy grabbed the blackboard eraser and started banging it wildly on the whiteboard.

"It's the control of public opinion by later generations! It's the historical nihilism created by those who wield the pen in history books!"

The red laser pointer was drawing X's on these screenshots like crazy.

"Go watch the TV dramas these days, read those so-called orthodox history books, even read many novels! How do they write about the decline of the Ming Dynasty?!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was filled with rage, like a volcanic eruption: "They say the collapse of the garrisons was due to the rigidity of the ancestral system established by the emperor and the corruption of the hereditary system of military generals! They say the Ming Dynasty perished because the emperor didn't attend court and because the military generals were arrogant and domineering, and because of the warlords who carved up the country! They even tried to shift the blame to a few eunuchs who couldn't even leave their homes!"

He moved closer to the camera, his knuckles pounding the podium with a loud thud, his voice filled with extreme mockery.

"But what about the civil service?! In these books and dramas, those civil officials who control the Ming Dynasty's finances, manage military logistics, and control the entire nation's administrative lifeline are always portrayed as utterly incorruptible! Always as pure as the sun and moon! Always as loyal as the night before them!"

"The people's hunger is due to the emperor's incompetence! The borders have been breached because the generals are cowardly! The coastal defenses in Jiangnan are in disarray because of the cunning smugglers!"

Zhu Dijun spread his hands, his face full of disdain.

"So, everyone else is taking the blame for all the world's mistakes, while these supposedly upright civil officials who occupy hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile land without paying taxes, smuggle weapons, collude with the enemy, and embezzle military pay for their own enrichment are the most innocent little rabbits in the world?!"

Viewers across the entire live stream were furious.

"Civil officials have the power to revise history; they can turn black into white!"

"The blame is all placed on the emperor and eunuchs, the military generals take the fall, and they themselves hide in the gardens of Jiangnan counting their silver!"

"No wonder novels from the late Ming Dynasty all feature massacres across Jiangnan. If these vampires aren't killed, even the gods of the Ming Dynasty can't save it!"

Zhu Dijun abruptly wiped away all the writing on the whiteboard, and the studio lights instantly went out.

An extremely cold spotlight shone on his profile.

"The civil service group erased all the faults, maliciously exonerated David's shortcomings, and covered up their ugly faces as ghouls."

Judy Jun's voice dropped to freezing point.

"In the thirty-first year of the Jiajing reign, the Mongols in the north breached the pass, and the Japanese pirates in the south massacred cities. The national treasury was empty, the military generals were cowardly, and the civil officials were greedy."

He casually tossed the marker into the wastepaper basket.

"In such a hopeless situation, with the north and south attacking from the north and the state machinery completely paralyzed, the Ming Dynasty was already half-buried in the yellow earth. Smuggling tycoons are laughing, Yan Song is laughing, Altan Khan and the Japanese pirates are all laughing."