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

The blood-red light and shadow in the studio were like solidified dark mud, making it almost impossible to breathe. On the big screen, Japanese pirates were massacring cities in the south, and Mongol cavalry were rampaging in the north; the top and bottom ends of the Ming Dynasty's territory were burning wildly.

Zhu Dijun gripped the podium tightly with both hands, his chest heaving violently. He ripped open the already disheveled collar of his shirt, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the camera.

"Family members, we're fighting on two fronts, simultaneously in the north and south! This would be an extremely critical life-or-death situation in any dynasty. But what exactly are we fighting in this war?"

He slammed his fist violently onto the holographic keyboard, and four large, cold characters crashed onto the center of the screen—【Taicang Empty】.

"What they're fighting for is money! Real gold and silver from the national treasury! The food in the soldiers' mouths and the weapons in their hands!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a laser pointer and pointed it sharply at a model of an empty granary and treasury on the screen. "In the thirty-first year of the Jiajing reign, the Ming Dynasty's treasury was emptied beyond recognition! To recruit new soldiers, replenish provisions, and manufacture firearms, military spending skyrocketed like a burst dam!"

A series of extremely exaggerated deficit reports appeared on the holographic screen.

"But that's not the most despairing part." Judy Jun sneered repeatedly, his voice filled with a ruthless glint that seemed to want to tear someone apart alive.

"The soldiers on the front lines were eating moldy rice mixed with sand, and they couldn't even get a complete winter coat. They were being beheaded by the Mongols in the snowstorm. And what was our Jiajing Emperor, hiding in the Western Garden, doing?!"

The screen image changed instantly.

Inside the magnificent Xiyuan Taoist temple, incense smoke curled upwards. The Jiajing Emperor, dressed in an extremely luxurious crane-feather Taoist robe, was meditating with his eyes closed. In front of him, several Taoist priests were gathered around a huge pure copper alchemy furnace, throwing chests of top-grade spices, precious medicinal herbs, and even pure gold and silver into the raging fire without batting an eye!

"They're building Taoist temples! Holding religious ceremonies! And concocting some damn elixir of immortality!"

Zhu Dijun slammed a stick into the alchemy furnace on the screen, causing a piercing buzzing sound throughout the studio.

"In his quest for immortality, Emperor Jiajing burned countless taels of silver worth of incense and medicinal herbs in the Western Garden every day! The palace treasury was squandered like water on those nonsensical altars for rituals and ceremonies! What he was burning wasn't incense; it was burning the lives of soldiers on the front lines!"

The live stream chat was instantly flooded with a torrent of angry comments.

"The situation is critical at the front, but feasting is rampant at the rear! The Emperor himself is leading the way in burning money on immortality cultivation!"

"Using military funds to refine pills, why doesn't that old bastard just throw himself into the furnace and refine himself!"

"Soldiers froze to death on the Great Wall, while he cultivated immortality in a Taoist temple! If this doesn't lead to the downfall of the nation, who will?!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Beneath the old, crooked tree on Coal Hill, the north wind howled. Zhu Youjian stared intently at the enormous alchemy furnace burning with gold and silver in the sky, frozen in place like a dried-up corpse whose soul had been drained.

A trickle of crimson blood dripped from his bitten lip onto his tattered dragon robe.

"Buying money...using pure gold and silver to refine pills..."

Emperor Chongzhen pounded his withered hands on the cold, muddy ground, letting out a miserable laugh like that of a vengeful ghost. "I can't even afford to make a new set of clothes, and the imperial granary can't scrape together 100,000 taels of silver to pay the soldiers at the front! To save a little money on charcoal, I've been freezing my hands and feet in the palace all winter!"

He suddenly tilted his head back, tears mingling with blood streaming down his face, and roared in despair:

"Your Majesty Jiajing! You used up all the wealth of the Ming Dynasty to seek immortality, leaving this bottomless pit for your descendants! My Ming Dynasty has long been burned to ashes by your alchemical furnace!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang drew his imperial sword and cleaved the imperial desk in two with a single strike.

"You beast! You despicable beast!"

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes were bloodshot, making him resemble a berserk god of war.

"The rules we set forbid future generations from becoming obsessed with magic arts, Buddhism, or Taoism! How could he waste the people's hard-earned money on such worthless junk during a time of national crisis!"

Old Zhu turned around and stared intently at the kneeling officials and princes below, his eyes blazing with murderous intent as if a mountain of corpses and a sea of ​​blood were about to erupt.

"Issue the decree! Carve this scene onto the stone in the Imperial Ancestral Temple! From now on, any emperor of the Ming Dynasty who dares to practice Taoism, refine elixirs, and squander the national treasury will be beaten to death with clubs by the Imperial Clan Court. They will not be worthy of being buried in the ancestral tombs of our Zhu family!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel never stopped, directly dissecting the most malignant layer of the Ming Dynasty's economy.

"The emperor was spending lavishly, and corrupt officials like Yan Song were also lining their own pockets. But what happened when the national treasury was empty?" Zhu Dijun pressed his hands on the podium, zooming in on the camera. "This brings us to the most disgusting and shameless aspect of feudal dynasties—the exploitation of those below!"

On the big screen, an extremely distorted land ownership map suddenly appeared.

"In the thirty-first year of the Jiajing reign, land annexation had reached an utterly insane level!"

Zhu Dijun frantically drew circles on the whiteboard with a red pen in his hand.

"The regional princes, nobles, Yan Song's cronies, and officials and gentry in Jiangnan are all abusing their power to frantically conceal land ownership! They occupy eighty percent of the most fertile land in the land, yet they don't pay a single penny of tax!"

A blood-stained tattered page of a local county gazetteer is highlighted and enlarged.

"To fill the gap in military spending, the imperial court has no choice but to drastically increase taxes. Who benefits from this burden? It falls entirely on the shoulders of the remaining 20% ​​of impoverished farmers who have no connections and no land to their name!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was chillingly cold.

"Taxes, imperial stipends, and a whole host of other miscellaneous taxes! After paying all the taxes on the grain the common people grow for a year, they can't even afford a bowl of thin porridge in the winter!"

The scene suddenly changed. An old farmer, dressed in tattered clothes, knelt in despair in the freezing snow. The yamen runners rushed into his house like bandits, took away his last emaciated ox, and even tied up his crying daughter with ropes.

"Selling children, losing everything!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the control panel, producing a dull thud.

"What if they can't survive? They can only sell their last bit of land to wealthy landowners at rock-bottom prices, becoming tenant farmers themselves, or even fleeing overnight and becoming vagrants! The national tax base is getting smaller and smaller, while the burden on the lower classes is getting heavier and heavier. It's a completely deadlocked death spiral!"

The dim red lights in the studio grew increasingly viscous.

"Not only are farmers struggling to survive, but business owners are also being driven to the brink of ruin!" Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser, forcefully wiped the words off the whiteboard, and wrote four extremely violent characters—【Business is dead】.

"We just talked about the coastal areas. The official maritime ban policy was implemented to an extreme and distorted state that year!"

Zhu Dijun lashed the map of Jiangnan on the big screen with his pointer.

"Legitimate trading vessels have been completely shut down, and normal coastal commerce has been utterly paralyzed! Who benefits?! Only those powerful smuggling groups from Jiangnan who collude with Japanese pirates! They monopolize all overseas profits, raking in the cash, while legitimate merchants are going bankrupt and jumping into the sea!"

The red laser pointer slashed inland.

"The coast is ruined, and what about the inland? The Mongols in the north are raiding for supplies, and the continuous warfare has completely cut off trade routes! In addition, local governments are frantically setting up checkpoints and collecting tolls along the way just to make money!" Zhu Dijun sneered with disdain.

"A porcelain merchant, traveling from south to north, was skinned alive by corrupt officials at every level. Before he could even sell his goods, he was driven to suicide!"

The parallel Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Di sat on the dragon throne, his facial muscles twitching with extreme anger.

"All industries are in ruins, and the people are suffering..."

Zhu Di's voice was terrifyingly low.

"The Ming Dynasty has been drained dry by these civil officials and their unworthy descendants. Elder brother, are these the kind elders and capable ministers you trusted? What can they do besides sucking the marrow from your bones?!"

Zhu Gaochi knelt on the ground, his clothes soaked with cold sweat, and dared not utter a single word in rebuttal.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun casually tossed the broken marker into the wastebasket, leaned back in his chair, and half of his face was hidden in the dark red light.

"Family members, if it were just a man-made disaster, perhaps the common people could have gritted their teeth and lived for another two years. But in the thirty-first year of Jiajing's reign, Heaven did not leave the Ming Dynasty with a last way to survive."

Suddenly, the background music on the big screen was accompanied by the deafening roar of a flood and the cracking sound of parched earth splitting open.

"Drought and flood disasters struck simultaneously! Vast swathes of farmland suffered total crop failure!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was extremely suppressed, "The government's granaries are long gone. The disaster relief funds have gone through the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Revenue, and not a single copper coin is left! Without relief, without food rations, what awaits the Ming Dynasty is a tide of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of refugees!"

The scene depicts a dense mass of ragged refugees, writhing like zombies across the desolate landscape. The tragedy of cannibalism is playing out in every corner.

"This economic meat grinder of the thirty-first year of the Jiajing reign has completely drained the marrow from the bones of the people." Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the podium, staring intently at the camera, his eyes revealing a chillingly dangerous aura.

"Smuggling rings, Yan Song's cronies, and emperors who cultivate immortality. They pushed the Ming Dynasty to the brink of destruction. But do you really think these heartless vested interests will stop in the face of this land full of refugees?"

The studio lights went out instantly, leaving only a pale spotlight shining on Zhu Dijun's cold profile.

"No. Not only did they not stop, but they also took advantage of the desperate situation where the people could not survive and unleashed a set of ultimate methods that would disgust the entire history of mankind."

Zhu Dijun lowered his voice, each word carrying a chilling, bloody undertone.

"Eat the spoils of the childless!"