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

[Modern Live Streaming Room]

The dense, golden bullet screen, like a waterfall flowing backwards, surged wildly across the holographic screen.

"The Qi Family Army!"

"Qi Jiguang, the God of War! The true pillar of stability for the southeastern coastal defense!"

"The last backbone of the Ming Dynasty, the only invincible iron army capable of utterly crushing the Japanese pirates in open battle!"

Standing behind the podium, Zhu Dijun looked at the screen filled with passionately enthusiastic names, a hint of uncontrollable respect flashing in his eyes. He didn't speak immediately, but let the comments burn on the screen for a full ten seconds.

Then, he suddenly grabbed the pointer and slammed it heavily onto the podium.

A muffled "bang" was like a bucket of cold water mixed with ice crystals, completely extinguishing the passion that had just ignited in the studio.

The lighting suddenly changed, switching from a warm, homage-like red to an extremely oppressive, iron-gray.

"Family members, anyone familiar with the history of the Ming Dynasty knows that Qi Jiguang and the Qi Family Army were inextricably linked! This was a truly invincible army that swept through the era!"

Judy Jun pressed his hands firmly against the control panel, his voice carrying a suffocating coldness.

"However! Before we talk about the Qi Family Army's rampage, we must understand a crucial premise!"

He wrote several large characters on the whiteboard in an extremely violent manner: "[The 33rd year of Jiajing: Economic Dead End]".

"What kind of mess did Qi Jiguang inherit?!"

As Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, the bloodshot in his eyes was clearly visible.

"During the Jiajing reign of that year, the entire economic system of the Ming Dynasty had been completely turned into a vicious cycle of chaos by these civil officials, gentry, and smuggling groups!"

On the large screen, a virtual imperial edict bearing the imperial seal of the Ming Dynasty suddenly appeared.

"In March of the thirty-third year of the Jiajing reign! The imperial court issued an edict that made the entire Ministry of Revenue of the Ming Dynasty utterly vomit blood!"

Judy Jun's red laser pointer slashed fiercely across the imperial edict.

"The four prefectures of Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang will suspend tax collection for one year!"

Viewers in the live stream were stunned for a moment.

Suspension of taxation? Tax exemption? Has the Ming emperor changed his ways?

"Do you think this is some kind of imperial grace?! Bullshit!"

Zhu Dijun, enraged, laughed coldly and shattered the imperial edict image on the holographic screen with a slap.

"This is completely smashed! It's so badly damaged that not a single grain of rice can be squeezed out!"

The map on the large screen instantly switched to the water towns of Jiangnan. What was once a bustling place with small bridges, flowing water, and willow-lined bridges is now a scene of scorched earth and ruins.

"What kind of places are these four prefectures? They are the source of more than half of the tax revenue for the entire Ming Dynasty! They are the nation's most vital purse strings!"

Zhu Dijun roared out.

"But under the burning, killing, and looting of the Japanese pirates and the use of smuggling tycoons in Jiangnan to kill people, the fields here were completely abandoned! In Songjiang, Suzhou, Jiaxing, and Huzhou, seven or eight out of ten villages and towns were destroyed! The people were either beheaded or became homeless refugees!"

He grabbed the blackboard eraser and began scribbling wildly on the whiteboard:

"With no land to cultivate, what was the result? Grain prices skyrocketed! Massive famine instantly spread throughout the once most prosperous Jiangnan region! Corpses littered the fields, and people resorted to cannibalism!"

The red laser pointer was once again pointed at the coastal area.

"That's not even the worst part! With agriculture in Jiangnan collapsing, another economic lifeline of the Ming Dynasty has been severed!"

Zhu Dijun drew several X's heavily on the screen.

"The coastal salt fields, such as those in Tongzhou, were all burned and destroyed by pirates and Japanese pirates! The most important source of national tax revenue for the Ming Dynasty—salt tax—was physically lost on the spot!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang felt a sweet taste in his throat, followed by a strong, metallic smell that assaulted his senses.

When he raised his army, he deeply understood the significance of the grain and treasury of Jiangnan and the salt administration of the Ming Dynasty to the country. They were the very lifeblood of the state apparatus!

"Seven or eight out of ten towns in Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, and Zhenjiang were destroyed... the coastal salt fields were completely destroyed..."

Zhu Yuanzhang's withered hands gripped the armrests of the dragon throne tightly, his nails almost digging into the wood. His eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at the salt fields and villages reduced to scorched earth against the sky.

"Those damned smuggling beasts, those incompetent corrupt officials! They've uprooted the very foundation of our Great Ming!" Old Zhu's furious roar echoed throughout the hall, like that of a wounded lone wolf.

"Without the grain and provisions from Jiangnan, without the salt tax, how will the Ming Dynasty support its army?! How will it quell the rebellions?!"

The veteran generals, including Xu Da and Tang He, kneeling below, were also filled with rage. Having fought their entire lives, they knew all too well what it meant to be cut off from supplies. This was tantamount to strangling the Ming Dynasty!

How dare those scoundrels of later generations do such a thing! They were all ordinary citizens of the Ming Dynasty, and they were also gentry of the Ming Dynasty. Did the Ming Dynasty really think that being the dogs of the Mongols was a happy thing, and that they liked the tax farming system so much?

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel mercilessly cut open the festering wounds of the Ming Dynasty's finances.

"Agriculture has collapsed, salt tax is gone, and the national treasury has been cut in half. But the damn war is still going on!" Zhu Dijun grabbed a black marker and wrote four words forcefully on the whiteboard: "[Military spending skyrockets]".

"On the southeastern front, the garrison troops are all utterly useless. In order to suppress the Japanese pirates, the imperial court has no choice but to spend exorbitant sums to transfer troops from other regions! The wolf soldiers from Guangxi, the local soldiers from Huguang, and the militia from Shandong! These elite troops from other places have been transferred here, and the resettlement expenses, travel expenses, and provisions alone have instantly cost millions of taels of silver!"

Judy Jun spread his hands, a disdainful sneer on his face:

"Jiangnan is out of money. The national treasury was already empty. How are we going to fill this gaping hole of several million taels in military spending?!"

On the big screen, images of the Grand Canal being blocked by countless sunken ships and floating corpses appeared.

"What's even more critical is that the Japanese pirate raids directly cut off the canal transport in the southeast! The capital's warehouses were instantly strained, and even feeding the officials in the capital became a problem!" Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the control panel.

"These civil officials in the Ministry of Revenue of the Ming Dynasty came up with the most shameless and desperate solution—to send additional officials to other provinces!"

Red arrows shot from the capital to all parts of the country.

"Jiangnan is short of money, so they plunder Hubei and Hunan! They plunder the Central Plains! They plunder the Southwest! The imperial court directly and forcibly shifted the war costs from the Southeast onto the people of the whole country! Provinces that were not originally affected by the disaster were driven to ruin and death by these heavy additional taxes!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

The old, crooked tree on Coal Hill let out a mournful wail in the cold wind.

Zhu Youjian stared intently at the two characters "Jiapai" on the sky, as if struck by lightning, and collapsed onto the cold mud.

"Add more...add more across the country..."

Emperor Chongzhen's withered hands pounded wildly on the gold-brick floor, blood seeping from between his fingers, yet he let out a mournful laugh like that of a vengeful ghost.

"Isn't this my Liaodong military pay and training allowance?! Isn't this the poison that has driven the Central Plains into rebellion?!"

He always thought he was the most miserable emperor in the world. It turns out that as early as the Jiajing era, the civil officials of the Ming Dynasty had already mastered this kind of self-destructive scheme!

"Turning a festering sore in one place into a dead end for the whole world..."

Zhu Youjian looked up at the dim sky, tears mingling with blood as they streamed down his face.

"Your Majesty Jiajing! Not only did you burn down the national treasury, but you also planted the seeds of rebellion deep within the very marrow of the Ming Dynasty!"

In a parallel Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty

As Jiajing gazed at the irrefutable facts and tragedies presented by Zhu Dijun on the sky, he sighed helplessly. Did he really think Zhu Dijun was unaware, did he really think Zhu Dijun didn't want to change things? Those were his subjects, and they all wanted to call him "Father." But there was no way around it. As long as he made changes, the burning of the palace would happen that very day.

Seven of my sons have already died, and I no longer wish to outlive my children.

The studio's iron-gray lights grew dimmer, like a coffin about to close.

Zhu Dijun stepped down from the podium and approached the camera. He ripped off his tie and threw it on the ground, his eyes revealing a chilling, bone-deep coldness.

"Family members, do you think that adding more people to the world is the end of this vicious cycle?"

He lowered his voice, each word seeming to be squeezed out from between his teeth.

"Wrong! Amidst this carnage that has engulfed the southeast, a group of true demons are having their final revelry!"

He tapped the holographic screen three times heavily.

Three blood-red characters slammed onto the center of the screen—【Major Mergers and Acquisitions】!

"In the thirty-third year of the Jiajing reign, when ordinary people perished and villages and towns were reduced to ruins, in the four severely affected areas of Zhejiang, Zhili, Fujian, and Guangdong, local powerful gentry, officials in the capital, imperial relatives, and even military commanders not only did not restrain themselves, but instead intensified their atrocities!"

Zhu Dijun roared, veins bulging on his forehead: "Taking advantage of the war, they've been frantically seizing coastal sandy fields! They've colluded with the government to forcibly take over unclaimed farmland! And the officers have brazenly pocketed all the military farms!"

On the screen, countless ordinary people of the Ming Dynasty, dressed in tattered clothes and having lost their land and homes, stood desperately by the river. Before them lay the whips of powerful figures, and behind them, the tax-collecting edicts of the government.

"Family members, put yourselves in their shoes. Your home has been burned down, your fields seized by landlords, and the imperial court is still demanding exorbitant taxes. You won't even have a bowl of coarse grain porridge for tomorrow. You only have two choices: either starve to death or jump into the sea!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and lashed it hard across the vast ocean of the screen!

"Thus, countless landless peasants, bankrupt salt producers, and fleeing soldiers, filled with extreme despair and hatred for this cannibalistic court, picked up knives, jumped onto ships, and directly joined the ranks of pirates and Japanese pirates!"

The red alert on the big screen was flashing wildly; it was a totem of an endless loop.

"The powerful lords seized land—the common people went bankrupt and became pirates—the pirates' plundering led to increased levies and military spending by the imperial court—the government further indulged in land seizures in order to make money—more common people couldn't survive and became pirates!"

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

"This is the most surreal and utterly despairing truth of the Jiajing era! The Ming Dynasty's regular army wasn't facing a few thousand ronin from Japan! They were facing millions upon millions of Ming citizens who had been driven to rebellion by their own country's system! That's why the Wokou (Japanese pirates) along the coast kept multiplying despite the efforts to suppress them!"

The live stream chat froze completely. All the viewers were chilled to the bone by this terrifying, closed-loop logic. This wasn't war at all; it was a one-way massacre of the lower classes by the state apparatus, ultimately escalating into a brutal civil war.

"The Ming Dynasty's treasury is empty. Taxes in Jiangnan have stopped. The garrisons at the front are in disarray. Civil officials are hindering progress, the Yan faction is vying for credit, and local gentry are stabbing us in the back."

Zhu Dijun slowly straightened up. All the lights in the studio went out, leaving only an extremely glaring, pale spotlight shining on the whiteboard behind him.

With a black marker, he wrote three names on the map of Jiangnan, a land representing death and despair—[Qi Jiguang].

"The country can't provide a single grain of rations, the Ministry of War can't allocate a single musket, and even friendly troops might betray their comrades and desert at any moment."

Zhu Dijun dropped his paintbrush, his eyes becoming extremely deep and filled with an intensely fervent fighting spirit.

"In this deadly predicament, ten times more hopeless than hell, we are about to witness the most incredible military miracle in China's five-thousand-year military history. No soldiers? We'll recruit the toughest, most unruly civilians ourselves! No logistics? We'll create a specialized industrial chain ourselves!"

His voice suddenly rose, like thunder tearing through the night.

"When those miners from Yiwu, Zhejiang, who were willing to risk their lives for mining, donned the 'Mandarin Duck Armor' of Qi Jiguang's army, this utterly rotten Jiangnan region was about to experience a true 'dimensional reduction' attack!"