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

[Modern Live Stream Room]. The dense barrage of comments on the holographic screen froze for a few seconds, then erupted into suppressed fury.

"A desperate situation! This is the real desperate situation!"

"Natural disasters and man-made calamities have all come together; Heaven is determined to destroy the Ming Dynasty, and the civil officials are still frantically pushing the cart from behind!"

"Qi Jiguang, come out here right now! I can't stand this humiliation!"

The studio's dim gray lights resembled solidified cement. Zhu Dijun stood behind the podium, ignoring the urging comments from the live chat. He slammed his hand on the holographic keyboard, instantly switching the studio lights to an extremely morbid, money-grubbing dark gold.

"Family members, I know you're anxious, but before Qi Jiguang truly forges that decapitating blade, we must see what the person in charge of this rotten pot of the Ming Dynasty is actually doing!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a black marker and wrote four large characters on the whiteboard with extreme ferocity: "[The 35th year of Jiajing]".

"Let's shift our focus from the millions of corpses floating in the southeast and northwest back to the damn magnificent capital!" His infrared pointer, like a sharp knife, slammed into a luxurious mansion appearing on the screen. "Look at the highest levels of the Ming Dynasty court! Grand Secretary Yan Song is over seventy years old this year. So old he can barely walk, yet the Jiajing Emperor actually granted him special permission to be carried directly into the cabinet in a sedan chair!"

"His favor has reached its historical peak! What do you call this? This is called absolute power!" Zhu Dijun laughed in fury, his laughter chilling to the bone. "It doesn't matter that Yan Song is senile, he has a son who can be called the smartest man in the Ming Dynasty—Yan Shifan!"

A portrait of Yan Shifan—one-eyed, obese, and with a sinister face—slammed onto the holographic screen.

"In the thirty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign, the Yan faction completely seized control of the lifeline of the entire state apparatus. Yan Shifan directly replaced his father, handling all memorials in the cabinet! The appointment and dismissal of officials in the Ministry of Personnel, the allocation of military funds in the Ministry of War—all of these were decided by this fat pig Yan Shifan while he was drinking at home!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, his knuckles turning white.

"The soldiers on the front lines in Jiangnan are eating mud, while the Yan family's silver in the capital is piling up and getting moldy!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang's imperial brush was snapped in two with a "crack".

"Approving imperial edicts on behalf of his father...controlling the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War..."

Old Zhu's calloused face twitched violently, and the murderous aura emanating from his eyes caused the temperature in the entire hall to plummet to freezing.

The Grand Secretariat of the Ming Dynasty was originally created as a secretarial team to share the burden of imperial power. Now, the son of a Grand Secretary who isn't even a formal first-rank official dares to defecate on the neck of the state apparatus!

"What a Yan Shifan! What a Jiajing Emperor!"

Zhu Yuanzhang kicked over the imperial desk, pointed at the sky, and roared.

"The imperial power has been usurped to this extent by these lackeys. Has Zhu Houcong gone mad from practicing immortality?! Mao Xiang! Remember this: those two bastards, Yan Song and Yan Shifan, if we ever find out where their ancestors were, dig up their ancestral graves!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel mercilessly sliced ​​open the next festering wound in the imperial court.

"And look at the vicious dogs under Yan's command!"

Zhu Dijun slashed the laser pointer in his hand, locking onto another person's face.

"Zhao Wenhua! This is the adopted son of Yan Song, who went to Jiangnan to offer sacrifices to the sea and, in order to steal credit, unjustly killed Zhang Jing, the governor-general in charge of the anti-Japanese pirate campaign. Not only was he not convicted, but because of this fabricated 'merit in supervising the Japanese pirates,' he was directly promoted to Minister of Works by the Jiajing Emperor!"

A shocking list of official titles flashed across the holographic screen.

"The one who killed a loyal minister was promoted to Minister! With the backing of the Yan faction, Zhao Wenhua has seized control of all personnel and military power in the southeast! What is the court like now?" Zhu Dijun spread his hands with a face full of disdain.

"Zhang Jing's blood hasn't even dried yet! All the officials in the court have become cowards! Not a single one dares to stand up and utter a word! The command of the anti-Japanese army has thus completely fallen into the hands of Yan's faction!"

The viewers in the live stream were furious.

But at this moment, Judy Jun's voice suddenly turned cold and ruthless.

"I know that when people look at this history, many will think that Yen's party was pure evil."

"Family members, this is exactly the origin of the scene in the TV series 'Da Ming 1556' where Yan Shifan points his finger at Hu Zongxian and angrily berates him, saying that he eats the Yan family's food but smashes the Yan family's pot!"

Zhu Dijun zoomed in on the camera, his bloodshot eyes like two sharp blades:

"But! Today, as I stand here, I must tear away an even more disgusting veil of pretense! I want to say this: whether it's smuggling on the northern border or the recent massive pirate raids during the Jiajing reign, those corrupt officials of the Yan faction deserve to die, but those so-called 'pure officials' who stand on the moral high ground and write memorials every day criticizing the Yan faction are no better than them!"

He slammed his fist on the control panel, causing the screen to emit a low hum.

"A bunch of beasts in human form; those two words are not an exaggeration to describe them!"

Zhu Dijun roared out.

"The corrupt officials spout platitudes about benevolence and morality in court every day, claiming to be acting for the sake of the people and the common folk of the Ming Dynasty! But open your eyes and see clearly, who exactly are these 'common folk' they're talking about?!"

The laser pointer frantically drew several large, blood-red circles on the screen.

"They are the local tyrants and bullies of Jiangnan who collude with pirates! They are the smuggling magnates who have seized and annexed hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile land without paying taxes! They are the scholars who are in the same social class as them, who monopolize national resources together, and some are even their own families!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was filled with anguish, each word dripping with tears.

"The people they speak of are definitely not those impoverished peasants and farmers who toil in the fields, barely able to afford a bowl of coarse grain porridge, yet who uphold the Ming Dynasty!"

The studio's dark gold lights twisted like venomous snakes.

"So, my family, never be fooled by the memorials of those so-called 'pure officials' in history. They'll be sold out and still be counting the money for them! The Ming Dynasty court was just two packs of man-eating jackals fighting over a piece of bloody meat. Neither of them was any cleaner than the other!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the old crooked tree on Coal Hill, Zhu Youjian heard the phrase "the common people of Qingliu are gentry," and he was struck dumb. He slumped down in the mud, his parched lips trembling uncontrollably.

"Donglin Party... Fushe Society..."

Chongzhen let out a mournful laugh like that of an owl, his withered hands gripping his cheeks so tightly they left ten bloody welts.

"So that's how it is! So that's how it is! They complain about being poor to me every day, they curse Wei Zhongxian as a eunuch, and they talk about the common people! It turns out that their 'common people' are all those wealthy gentry in Jiangnan who have millions of taels of silver hidden in their homes! I've been deceived by these hypocrites for seventeen whole years!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun casually tossed the blackboard eraser into the wastepaper basket.

"In this hellish arena where everyone was evil and anyone who got involved was doomed, the Yan faction finally completed the personnel reshuffle of the entire southeastern military and political system. And this became the most crucial turning point of the entire 35th year of Jiajing's reign."

He tapped the holographic screen three times heavily.

The first appointment came crashing down.

"In March! Hu Zongxian, a key figure in Yan's faction, was officially promoted to Governor-General of Military Affairs of Zhejiang, Zhili and Fujian, with the additional title of Vice Minister of War!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer was firmly planted on Hu Zongxian's name.

"He commanded all the troops in Southern Zhili, Zhejiang, and Fujian fighting against the Japanese pirates! He became the supreme commander of the entire southeastern part of the Ming Dynasty! And at this very moment, a ruthless strategist, arguably the most eccentric and ruthless man in the Ming Dynasty, entered Hu Zongxian's staff!"

A figure dressed in a blue robe, exuding a wild and unrestrained air, appeared on the screen—[Xu Wei]!

"Xu Wenchang has joined the staff! Upon arriving, he immediately helped Hu Zongxian devise an extremely insidious, yet highly effective, strategy for suppressing the Japanese pirates!"

Zhu Dijun wrote four words on the whiteboard.

"【Appeasement + Counter-espionage】! The main force can't defeat you pirates, huh? Fine, then I'll use Ming Dynasty official positions and silver to sow discord between Wang Zhi and Xu Hai! Let them fight like dogs! The Ming Dynasty has finally found a ruthless character who knows how to adapt!"

Immediately afterwards, a second, earth-shattering appointment appeared on the screen.

"July!"

A fierce, barely suppressed fire suddenly ignited in Zhu Dijun's eyes.

"And it was in this year that the young man who had been watching the garrison soldiers escape, driven to the brink of madness by his frustration, was finally promoted! Qi Jiguang was promoted to the position of Assistant Commander of Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Taizhou!"

On the map, the territories of Ningbo, Shaoxing, and Taizhou are shrouded in a dazzling red light.

"These three places are the core and hardest-hit areas of the Japanese pirate raids during the Ming Dynasty! Qi Jiguang has officially become the powerful commander-in-chief on the Zhejiang front!"

Judy Jun's voice was like a detonating dynamite.

"In addition, Ruan E, the Zhejiang governor who was at odds with Hu Zongxian and only ever hindered him, was directly transferred by the imperial court after being surrounded and killed by Japanese pirates in Tongxiang!"

"With this, Hu Zongxian completely unified the military and political power in the southeast! And Qi Jiguang finally had a defense zone that truly belonged to him!"