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

After a brief period of silence, the live stream chat exploded like a flood. Countless scarlet characters scrolled wildly across the screen.

"Big merchants! Big landowners!"

"Smuggling tycoons! Civil servant groups!"

"The Japanese pirates are all their dogs! The biggest beneficiaries are these beasts who eat the blood of their fellow countrymen!"

"I thought America had lost all humanity, but these guys who mimic Zhou etiquette and spout the Four Books and Five Classics are even worse than animals! Where do they get the audacity to stand on their moral high ground and pontificate? Did Liang Jingru give them that?"

"Don't be ridiculous, upstairs. Where would Fish Leong get that kind of courage? It's the power and money she got! Using someone else to do her dirty work, it's a tactic that's been around for centuries!"

The blood-red spotlight in the studio shone fiercely on Zhu Dijun's face. He looked at the screen filled with boiling rage, a chilling smile curving his lips.

"Excellent! Family members, your eyes are discerning!"

Zhu Dijun walked to the very front of the stage, placed his hands on the table, and approached the camera.

"But I know that there are still some spiritual capitalists, or the disciples and followers of certain Jiangnan gentry, hiding behind their screens, cursing me for talking nonsense and for defaming their pure and upright civil official ancestors!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the holographic keyboard three times in a violent manner.

"Today, I will slap these beasts in the face with the official history books compiled by the Ming Dynasty, without leaving a trace!"

On the large screen, several yellowed copies of the "Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming" crashed down, kicking up a cloud of virtual dust. A red highlight instantly locked onto a passage of classical Chinese text.

"Ming Shilu, Volume 397! Date: Leap March of the 32nd year of Jiajing!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and struck the writing heavily, the sound deafening.

"The pirate Wang Zhi, along with bandits from Zhangzhou and Guangdong, and Japanese pirates from various islands, launched a massive invasion with hundreds of ships covering the sea. Warnings were issued simultaneously along thousands of miles of coastline in eastern and western Zhejiang, and north and south of the Yangtze River!"

He used his laser pointer to draw two knots on "Wang Zhi" and "Group of Thieves".

"Did you understand?! The notorious pirate Wang Zhi, with hundreds of ships, led a group of Chinese pirates from Zhangzhou and Guangzhou, and incidentally colluded with a bunch of Japanese ronin on the island! The guides and the main force are all Ming Dynasty people!"

Zhu Dijun turned around abruptly and switched the screen to another file.

"Didn't those gentry say that the Japanese pirates were invincible? Didn't they say that the Ming Dynasty's border troops were useless? Then let's look at Volume 395! February of the 32nd year of Jiajing!"

"The system of military colonies has long been abandoned, fertile land has been seized by officials and powerful families, and more than half of the military households have deserted!"

Zhu Dijun roared out those words, each one distinct, veins bulging on his forehead.

"It's all in black and white! The evidence is irrefutable! Why are the coastal garrisons so empty? Why do the soldiers collapse at the first sign of trouble? Because the fertile military farms meant to protect our homeland have long been embezzled by these officials and powerful figures! The military households have been forced into becoming refugees and slaves without food! You've smashed the rice bowls of the Ming soldiers, seized their land, and now you expect them to risk their lives for your smuggling profits on empty stomachs?! Keep dreaming!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the old crooked tree on Coal Hill, the north wind howled like a knife.

Zhu Youjian stared intently at the words "Fertile lands have been seized by officials and powerful figures, and more than half of the military households have fled" displayed on the sky, his eyes bloodshot with horror. His withered hands frantically tore at his dragon robe, and he let out a mournful laugh that was utterly desolate.

"My Great Ming Dynasty... did not fall at the hands of bandits, nor at the hands of Buryat wild boars! It fell at the hands of these ruthless civil officials and powerful clans!"

Chongzhen's voice was hoarse and broken.

"I live frugally every day in the Forbidden City, urging my officials to donate funds. They cry poverty! They say they have no money! It turns out that all the money and land are in their own treasuries!"

Emperor Chongzhen suddenly drew his imperial sword and slashed wildly at the air in front of him, as if he wanted to tear all the gentry hiding in the water towns of Jiangnan to pieces.

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel slashed viciously into a deeper, more toxic layer.

"The military farms have been looted, but what about the civilian farmland? Surely the common people can still make a living?"

Zhu Dijun let out an extremely chilling laugh, "Let's look at volume 401! August of the 32nd year of Jiajing!"

A fragment of a memorial from the Ministry of Revenue popped up on the large screen.

The Ministry of Revenue replied to the Imperial Inspector's report: "In Jiangnan and Zhejiang, wealthy families own vast tracts of land, yet they often evade taxes and corvée labor; the poor, having no land, are burdened with heavy corvée labor!"

Zhu Dijun enlarged the ten characters "Taxes and corvée labor are mostly evaded" and "The poor oppose heavy corvée labor" to the extreme, and the red light on the screen flashed wildly.

"Family members, do you know what this was called in ancient times? It was called 'Feisai' and 'Guishi'!"

"These wealthy families from Jiangnan and Zhejiang possess thousands of acres of fertile land, but they collude with the government to forcibly register their land holdings on the household registers of ordinary poor people! The rich don't have to pay a single penny of tax, while those poor people who don't even have a place to stand not only have to pay their own taxes but also exorbitant taxes on behalf of these powerful figures!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the podium, making a dull thud.

"Suzhou and Songjiang are known for collecting half the country's land taxes! But all of this heavy taxation falls on the shoulders of the poor! The rich don't pay taxes, and the poor become the scapegoats! This is what these Confucian scholars have done! They've driven the common people to the brink of starvation. What other way out do they have besides becoming pirates or leading the Japanese pirates?!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

The air inside the Fengtian Hall had become completely still.

Zhu Yuanzhang sat upright on the dragon throne, his calloused hands crushing the edge of the imperial desk. Splinters pierced his palms, drops of blood falling onto the gold bricks, yet he didn't even flinch.

"The wealthy and powerful evade taxes and corvée labor, while the poor, having no land, are burdened with heavy corvée labor..."

Old Zhu's voice was terrifyingly soft, yet it carried a chilling killing intent capable of wiping out millions of people and their entire families.

He stood up, walked down the jade steps, and stood before the group of trembling civil officials.

"The Yellow Register we established! The Fish Scale Register we established! We killed hundreds of thousands of corrupt officials precisely to prevent you bastards from oppressing the people!"

Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly kicked the first civil official, sending him flying backward. His furious roar shattered the clouds outside the hall.

"Centuries later, your disciples and their descendants will still be feeding on the blood and flesh of ordinary people! You are not worthy of studying! You are all a bunch of maggots in human skin!"

In the blood-red spotlight of the studio, Zhu Dijun casually ripped off his messy tie and drew four large circles heavily on the whiteboard.

"The even more chilling truth is that they are geographically completely overlapping!"

The laser pointer in Zhu Dijun's hand drew an extremely glaring red line on the map.

"Family members, let's take a look at where the most severely affected area of ​​the Ming Dynasty's annexation is!"

On the large screen, the map of the Jiangnan coastal area was divided into four parts.

"The first one! The Hangzhou-Jiaxing-Huzhou Plain in Zhejiang Province, including Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Taizhou-Wenzhou!"

Zhu Dijun speaks very fast.

"The Hangzhou-Jiaxing-Huzhou area is full of officials, gentry, and powerful families, such as the Xiang family of Jiaxing and the Shen family of Huzhou! They frantically seized farmland from the people. In Ningbo and Shaoxing, wealthy and powerful families directly occupied coastal mudflats, and military officers privately occupied military garrisons! Ordinary people were forced into the deep mountains or to engage in smuggling at sea!"

The laser pointer was moved to the second area.

"The second area! Southern Zhili! Also a severely affected region in the Ming Dynasty's annexation efforts!"

Zhu Dijun pointed to Suzhou and Songjiang,

"The powerful and the officials colluded to engage in fraudulent taxation, with up to 40% of the land without grain being exempt from taxes! In places like Changshu, Taicang, and Jiading, the coastal sandy fields and mudflats were seized by the powerful, and the government turned a blind eye, classifying them as 'wasteland' and exempting them from taxes, when in reality they were incredibly fertile! These people were the core black gloves that later colluded with pirates to carry out smuggling!"

The screen continues to scroll down, switching to Fujian and Guangdong.

"The third area! Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, and Fuzhou in Fujian! Powerful maritime merchants, coupled with clan influence, directly monopolized all the land and ports along the coast. The rich owned vast tracts of land, while the poor had nowhere to stand! Large numbers of landless people were forced to the sea, becoming the most loyal guides for the Japanese pirates!"

"The fourth area! Guangzhou, Huizhou, and Chaozhou in Guangdong! Powerful and tyrannical families have been frantically seizing the silted-up land in the Pearl River Estuary, also known as Shatin, without paying a single cent of tax! What do they do when the people resist? These powerful clans directly organize armed clashes and kill without blinking an eye!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, his eyes red as he stared directly at the camera.

"Family members, have you noticed?"

His voice was extremely suppressed, carrying a chilling, terrifying quality.

"Zhejiang, Southern Zhili, Fujian, and Guangdong! These four places—where the annexation of land was most ruthless, the exploitation of the people was most brutal, and where clan gentry held absolute power—exactly and 100% overlap with the hardest-hit areas of the great Japanese pirate raids of 1553!"

The chat in the entire live stream froze instantly, followed by a screen full of "Holy crap!" comments.

"This is no coincidence at all!"

Judy Jun roared and slammed a stick into the map on the big screen.

"This is karma! This is extreme greed in mergers and smuggling, which has ultimately backfired on this country! Half of those Japanese pirates who burned, killed, and looted were local refugees driven to desperation by these landlords and gentry, while the other half were desperate fugitives brought in by these smuggling tycoons to exploit the impoverished and eliminate their rivals!"

The studio alarms fell silent, replaced by a suffocating stillness.

The map on the large screen transformed into a sea of ​​fire. Amidst the flames, countless ordinary people from the lower classes of the Ming Dynasty perished under the blades, while in the distant gardens of Jiangnan, gentry dressed in fine silks and satins were clinking glasses and drinking merrily.

"The Ming Dynasty is rotten to the core. It has been riddled with holes from the root by these interest groups."

A profound and unfathomable sorrow permeated Zhu Dijun's voice.

"The coastal defenses were weak, and the army was in disarray. The common people were betrayed by their own officials and landlords and slaughtered by foreign enemies."

He slowly turned around, threw the pointer in his hand onto the podium, and his gaze seemed to pierce through hundreds of years.