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

When Zhu Dijun gritted his teeth and spat out the words "eat the childless," the live stream chat, after a brief silence, erupted in unprecedented shock and rage.

Netizens were completely dumbfounded.

"Holy crap! It's not enough that civil officials are embezzling, smuggling, and exploiting the royal family; now they're going to eat up the entire family line?!"

"Are these people even human?!"

"I can't bear to listen anymore! What kind of terrible misfortune has the common people of the Ming Dynasty suffered?!"

"I thought America had lost all humanity, but I never imagined these guys who study Zhou etiquette and the Four Books and Five Classics would also lose all humanity. Where do they get the audacity to stand on their moral high ground and criticize others? Surely they can't say it was Liang Jingru who gave them that privilege, can they?"

"Of course, it's the courage given by the exchange of power and money. Look at some of today's second-generation rich kids; they're the most typical examples, except they're in modern times, not the Ming Dynasty."

The blood-red spotlight in the studio shone fiercely on Zhu Dijun's face. He completely ignored the frantically scrolling comments on the screen, slammed his fist on the control panel, and wrote four large, brutal characters on the whiteboard in black ink—【Using someone else to do the dirty work!】

"Family members, there is a Chinese idiom, 'to kill someone with a borrowed knife.'"

Zhu Dijun sneered repeatedly, his voice carrying a chilling intent that exposed a century-old lie.

"You think the great Japanese pirate raids during the Jiajing era were just a simple case of foreign invasion? Wrong! Besides being a case of smuggling rings colluding with civil officials to export profits, it was also an unprecedented and bloody annexation orchestrated by the powerful local landowners in Jiangnan!"

A red laser pointer was drawing circles wildly on a map of Jiangnan.

"Land consolidation has reached its extreme. What if the people refuse to sell their land? What if they're afraid of being investigated by higher authorities for forced sales? These beasts have come up with a plan to wipe out their own families!" Zhu Dijun roared.

"They directly provided intelligence, maps, and household registration lists to the Japanese pirates and other pirates at sea! They used the Japanese pirates' knives to plunder disobedient middle-class landowners, slaughter those who refused to sell their land, and even kill their own business enemies!"

"If officials or relatives of the victims come to inquire afterward, we can always pin the blame on the Japanese pirates!"

On the large screen, a series of chilling virtual images crashed down.

The ferocious Japanese pirates stormed into the village, hacking down ordinary families and setting fire to their houses and land deeds. Meanwhile, on a high hill just a few miles away, the gentry and wealthy families of Jiangnan watched the flames rise into the sky while fanning themselves with folding fans, clutching forged documents for the takeover of unclaimed land.

"When everyone dies, the land becomes unclaimed wasteland. These local tyrants and bullies then legally seize hundreds or even thousands of acres of fertile land at extremely low prices, or even just by having their own people in the government stamp it with an official seal!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly against the podium, his finger bones turning a ghastly bluish-white.

"This isn't an external threat; it's a one-sided massacre of our fellow citizens by the vested interests within the Ming Dynasty! This is the most authentic hell on earth during the Jiajing era!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, there was a deathly silence.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the Jiangnan gentry waving folding fans on the sky, his calloused face twitching violently, and the murderous intent shooting from his eyes almost lifted the dome of the hall.

"Using the swords of the Japanese pirates to kill our Ming people and seize our Ming land..."

Old Zhu's voice was so hoarse it sounded like two pieces of raw iron rubbing together violently.

"Good, very good. We didn't do enough to kill those corrupt officials, local tyrants, and evil gentry we killed back in Jiangnan! Those beasts weren't even as good as demons in human skin!"

Zhu Yuanzhang drew his imperial sword and shattered the gold bricks beneath his feet with a single strike, roaring to the heavens:

"Where are the Embroidered Uniform Guards! Convey our decree: any wealthy families in the Jiangnan region who have seized land and oppressed the people—no need for special interrogation! Skin them alive, pack them into straw, and leave no one alive—men, women, children, or grandchildren—throw them all into the Yangtze River to feed the turtles!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the old crooked tree on Coal Hill, the north wind cut Zhu Youjian's cheeks like a knife.

Emperor Chongzhen stared at the sky, letting out a mournful wail that sounded like both crying and laughing. His withered hands pounded the hard, dry ground with rage, his fingernails curling and bleeding profusely.

"Using someone else to do the dirty work... exploiting someone else's family's wealth..."

Zhu Youjian looked up at the dim sky.

"The gentry of Jiangnan, it turns out, had already turned into man-eating monsters back in the Jiajing era! Am I still expecting these people to pay taxes and fight bandits for the Ming Dynasty? I'm truly the biggest fool in the world! The rebels were right to be killed! These vampires of Jiangnan should all be wiped out by the bandits!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel slashed fiercely at the climax of this decadent Jiangnan region.

The timeline on the large screen suddenly jumped, freezing on a blood-red year—[the thirty-second year of Jiajing (1553)]!

"Family members, the consequences have finally exploded completely!" Judy grabbed a pointer and slammed it onto the big screen.

"The thirty-second year of the Jiajing reign was the absolute peak of the Japanese pirate raids in the Ming Dynasty! These smuggling gangs and local tyrants, through their breeding practices, finally created the monster they desired, a threat to the Ming Dynasty that could be posed at any time!"

On the screen, countless massive pirate fleets blotted out the sky, like a horde of dark, bloodthirsty ghouls rushing madly toward the Ming Dynasty's coastline.

"That year, Japanese pirates launched a full-scale invasion! They attacked Zhejiang, Southern Zhili, and Shandong! They raided several coastal provinces, causing unprecedented and unparalleled destruction!"

Zhu Dijun typed furiously on the holographic keyboard, and strings of place names, glowing with a blinding red light, crashed onto the screen.

"Zhapu has fallen! Haining has fallen! Shanghai has fallen! Jiading has fallen! Taicang has fallen!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was like a death knell, reverberating in the studio.

"These places are the most prosperous money bags of the Ming Dynasty! The Japanese pirate fleets landed on a large scale, penetrating deep into the interior and advancing unimpeded! They slaughtered civilians and burned down houses. The once prosperous and dreamlike Jiangnan water towns were directly turned into a sea of ​​blood with corpses floating for hundreds of miles!"

On the screen, a major town in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is engulfed in flames, and countless Ming Dynasty people scream and wail amidst the ruins, their blood staining the crisscrossing waterways.

"Everyone will surely ask, what about the Ming Dynasty's army? What about the garrison troops stationed along the coast?!"

Zhu Dijun let out a disdainful sneer and drew a giant duck egg directly on the whiteboard.

"Zero! Absolutely no fighting ability whatsoever!"

A tattered copy of a battle report from the Ministry of War was highlighted and enlarged.

"The Ming army suffered repeated defeats in the early stages, and the garrison system completely collapsed! As we mentioned before, the civil officials suppressed the troops and exploited them with the 'compensation tax' system, causing more than half of the garrison soldiers to desert. The remaining soldiers were all old, weak, sick, and disabled who couldn't even hold a gun properly! How dire were the military preparations? The cannons were stuffed with sand and couldn't be lit, and swords would break in two before they even hit the Japanese pirates' bamboo armor!"

Zhu Dijun pointed at the soldiers and households of the garrison who had fled at the first sign of trouble on the screen, and laughed in anger.

"Upon seeing hundreds of Japanese pirates land, the local government troops didn't even dare to close the city gates; they simply threw down their uniforms and ran! Even more bizarrely, some starving deserters simply covered their faces and joined the pirates in robbing civilians!"

The chat rooms across the entire network were completely enraged.

"Is this still the army of the Ming Dynasty?! This is a bunch of escape masters and legal bandits!"

"Tens of thousands of regular troops were chased and slaughtered by a few hundred ronin; even being nailed to the pillar of historical shame would be too disgraceful!"

"This country is rotten to the core!"

"My poor ancestors, couldn't they have lived a peaceful life until their death?"

The parallel Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Di sat on the dragon throne, his facial muscles twitching spasmodically, and the murderous intent in his eyes solidified into tangible frost.

"Fleeing at the first sign of trouble, following the bandits to plunder the people..." Zhu Di's voice seemed to drift from the deepest hell.

"When the Ming Dynasty was first established, the soldiers of the garrisons followed me on my northern expeditions to the desert, their blood staining the yellow sand. How valiant they were! How many years have passed, and they have been corrupted by civil officials and greedy generals into such cowardly wretches!"

Zhu Di slammed the imperial desk to the ground, glaring angrily at the assembled officials:

"If I were to capture these border generals who fear the enemy like tigers, I would have their entire clan torn to pieces and their ashes scattered into the East China Sea!"

On the backdrop, the studio's blood-red lights flickered violently, as if breathing. Zhu Dijun casually tore down the chart of the extinction plan from the whiteboard, leaned back on the podium, and his eyes revealed a cold sternness that pierced through the fog of history.

"The Japanese invasion has spread completely to both sides of the Yangtze River, and the entire southeastern economic center is about to be completely destroyed."

Judy Jun's voice was extremely suppressed.

"So, who benefited from this major pirate raid during the Jiajing era?"

"Family members, you don't really think they're just Japanese pirates, do you?"