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

The studio lights began to flicker violently, turning into an extremely oppressive scarlet red.

Zhu Dijun wiped the three characters "Dream of the Red Chamber" off the whiteboard completely. The red pointer drew a sharp arc in the air and suddenly pointed at the unopened "Journey to the West" on the other side.

"Family members, this isn't recorded in the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Shizong of Ming,' but it is mentioned in the long-running written record of mythology, 'Journey to the West.' Let me explain it to you!"

The holographic keyboard emitted a series of popping sounds.

On the big screen, the cover of the ancient book "Journey to the West" shattered with a crash, and three large, golden characters, yet exuding an eerie and ghostly aura, smashed into the center—[White Bone Demon]!

"We've all watched the TV series 'The Monkey King Thrice Beats the White Bone Demon' since we were kids, it's a familiar story, right?"

Zhu Dijun gripped the podium tightly with both hands, leaning forward, his bloodshot eyes staring directly at the camera like searchlights.

"The book says that the White Bone Demon transformed herself into a village girl, an old woman, and an old man in order to eat Tang Sanzang's flesh. Sun Wukong, with his fiery eyes, killed her three times to protect his master, finally forcing the demon back to her original form!"

"And the result?"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser and slammed it hard against the edge of the podium.

"Tang Sanzang, without distinguishing right from wrong, recited the Tightening-Headband Mantra, which could squeeze a person's brains out! And there was Pigsy beside him, who not only didn't help, but also kept fanning the flames and kicking him when he was down! In the end, Tang Sanzang wrote a letter of dismissal, directly expelling Sun Wukong from the pilgrimage team and sending him back to Flower Fruit Mountain!"

The holographic projection behind Zhu Dijun conjured up the yellowed letter of demotion.

On the surface, it's about Sun Wukong vanquishing demons and Tang Sanzang, with his mortal eyes, failing to recognize good intentions. But if we consider the historical context of the Jiajing era...

Judy Jun's voice was like a detonating dynamite, making the entire studio vibrate.

"You think Wu Cheng'en was writing a mythological monster-fighting story? You're sorely mistaken! This is a mind-blowing textbook on Ming Dynasty politics and workplace dynamics!"

He grabbed a red marker and violently drew a huge equation on the whiteboard.

"What do you call this? In the Journey to the West world, this isn't called exorcising a demon; this is a vicious 'coup' by the White Bone Demon against Sun Wukong! It blatantly demonstrates an untouchable, inviolable law in the traditional Chinese power structure—the absolute authority of the leader cannot tolerate a mere employee challenging it time and time again! Every time you kill a demon, you're proving to the whole world that the leader is blind and an idiot! Do you think the leader will tolerate you?!"

The live stream chat instantly fell silent, and countless netizens felt a chill run down their spines.

"Now, let's stuff all the figures from the Jiajing era, this rotten pot, into this formula one by one!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer lashed hard against the portrait of "Pigsy".

"Look at this pig! He's gluttonous, lazy, greedy, and worst of all, extremely lecherous! He can't resist beautiful women, and when trouble comes, he hides behind the boss and whispers rumors!"

He let out a cold laugh filled with disdain:

"Family members, who the hell is this?! Isn't this someone pointing their finger at Yan Shifan and cursing him?! The young Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty! Those who know, know, all about Yan Shifan's extravagant lifestyle and the bedroom inventions he uses to satisfy his perverted desires! What he does most every day is whisper in the ear of Yan Song or Jiajing, ostracizing those truly loyal and capable ministers and generals who are actually doing the work!"

The story takes place in a parallel timeline of the 35th year of the Jiajing reign in the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Yan residence, Yan Shifan was drinking with two beautiful concubines. When he saw the fat, big-eared pig in the sky and heard Zhu Dijun ruthlessly skinning it, the wine cup in his hand fell to the ground with a "crack" and shattered.

"This descendant of the King of Zhao from later generations dares to compare me, a high-ranking official, to a pig demon!"

Extreme terror and rage flashed in Yan Shifan's single eye, and his entire body of fat trembled violently. His lewd deeds, which could not be brought to light and were despised by the gentry of Jiangnan, had actually been so vividly depicted in a shabby novel, and even made public by Tianmu!

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel continued to dig deeper.

"Who is Tang Sanzang? Tang Sanzang from Journey to the West represents the core will of the entire pilgrimage team! He may lack practical skills, but he wields supreme power!"

Zhu Dijun circled a large character "权" (power) on the whiteboard with a black pen.

"In this formula, Tang Sanzang could be the Jiajing Emperor, who sits in the Western Garden cultivating immortality and turns a blind eye to the suffering of the world! He could be Yan Song, who controls the government! Or he could be that high-ranking group of civil officials who disregard the life and death of the country for the sake of factional struggles!"

The red laser pointer slashed across the whiteboard, locking onto the ghastly skeleton.

"So here's the question: who exactly is the White Bone Demon who sparked this coup storm?!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes instantly turned red, and his voice suddenly turned cold, revealing a desolate and mournful tone that seemed to pierce the heavens.

"Do you really think those are demons that suck people's life essence in the deep mountains and forests?! Look at this hell on earth in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth years of Jiajing's reign!" He slammed his fist on the holographic control panel, and the large screen exploded, cutting out the ruins of the Guanzhong earthquake and the mountains of corpses and seas of blood along the Jiangnan coast.

"The White Bone Demon here is a metaphor for the more than 800,000 impoverished people who died in the Guanzhong earthquake and didn't even receive a single grain of relief food! It represents the old, weak, sick, and disabled who died under the swords of the Japanese pirates, beheaded and disemboweled in the streets! It refers to the Ming Dynasty citizens whose land was seized by powerful figures and who were driven to desperation by the cannibalistic world, ultimately committing suicide by jumping into the sea!"

Zhu Dijun roared, veins bulging on his forehead, every nerve twitching:

"A village girl, an old woman, and an old man! Aren't they just the most innocent family of three from the lowest rungs of society in the Ming Dynasty?! They were exploited and drained of their life force while they were alive, and after they died, they turned into piles of bones that no one would collect! All the resentment in the world coalesced into the White Bone Demon in the novel, wandering in the wilderness, dying with her eyes wide open in disbelief!"

At this moment, the barrage of comments in the entire live stream room completely collapsed like a flood.

"Holy crap! So that's what 'White Bone Demon' means! I cried!"

"Bones exposed in the wilderness, not a rooster crows for a thousand miles! Ordinary people don't even have the right to be human; they can only be skeletons in books!"

"This deconstruction is too ruthless! How desperate must Wu Cheng'en have been to write such a cannibalistic metaphor!"

Zhu Dijun's chest heaved violently, and his pointer drew an extremely tragic arc in mid-air, pointing directly at the monkey wearing a golden headband and covered in wounds in the very center of the screen.

"The common people have turned to bones, the powerful ministers have become fat pigs, and the highest authority has become a blind man who can only chant mantras!"

His voice was like thunder tearing through the night, "So, in this hellish place where right and wrong are reversed, and good and evil are indistinguishable! Who is that Sun Wukong who wields the golden cudgel, possesses unparalleled abilities, and repeatedly tries to protect the Ming Dynasty, only to have his head tightly bound by that golden cudgel called 'Imperial Power and Factional Strife'...?!"

The special effects on the big screen exploded instantly!

One by one, real historical figures, covered in blood and as if cast in bronze, crashed onto everyone's retinas, stepping on the tattered pages of Journey to the West!

"Zhu Wan, a loyal minister who forcibly banned smuggling at sea for the sake of the Ming Dynasty's coastal defense, was ultimately forced to commit suicide by poison in Hangzhou by powerful gentry from Fujian and Zhejiang colluding with court officials!"

"Zhang Jing, the anti-Japanese governor who, under immense pressure from the Yan Party, rallied a large army and won the great victory at Wangjiangjing, only to be framed by Zhao Wenhua and beheaded in the western market of the capital!"

"Hu Zongxian, the Governor-General of Zhejiang and Zhili, who walked a tightrope between the Yan faction and the Qingliu faction every day, didn't hesitate to soil his hands to quell the Japanese pirate raids, and finally committed suicide in prison after writing 'The precious sword is hidden in its case, this is the time to make friends'!"

"They were military geniuses, Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou, who, even seeing the 120,000 regular Ming troops reduced to a rotten mess, still gritted their teeth and went to the impoverished mountains and rivers of Yiwu to recruit miners, devoting their entire lives to prolonging the life of the Ming Dynasty!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a mineral water bottle from the podium and smashed it hard on the ground, splashing water everywhere.

"And then there's that female general who led the Guangxi wolf soldiers on a thousand-mile raid, fought bravely on the Jiangnan battlefield, and shed her last drop of blood for the Ming Dynasty—Lady Shi Ge!"

"They're all fucking Sun Wukong!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his knuckles pounding the podium with a loud thud, the sound carrying a suffocatingly bloody stench.

"The sharper the swords of these true pillars of the Ming Dynasty are, the more victories they win, the more terrified those 'Tang Sanzangs' sitting on the dragon throne and in the cabinet will be! Because you are proving their incompetence! You are using your actions to puncture the illusion of peace and prosperity they have woven with lies!"

"And so, Pigsy slandered them! Tang Sanzang recited the Tightening-Headband Mantra! The officials and the Yan faction in the court raised their butcher knives!"

On the holographic screen, Zhu Wan collapsed in front of the poisoned wine, Zhang Jing's head rolled onto the execution ground, and Hu Zongxian's prison cart creaked shrilly in the wind and snow.

"No matter how capable you are, no matter how many innocent people you've saved! As long as you cross that extremely dirty red line of the power game, that imperial edict called 'Demotion Letter' will slam directly onto your heads! You'll be stripped of your military power! Imprisoned! Beheaded!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

The air inside the Fengtian Hall seemed to be frozen solid.

Zhu Yuanzhang slumped on the dragon throne, panting heavily. For the first time in his eyes, which had been filled with a lifetime of ruthless battles, an extreme fear and sorrow welled up.

"The monkey who slayed demons was driven away, leaving behind a fat pig who only knew how to spout slander to keep the blind monk company..."

Old Zhu's fingernails dug deep into his flesh, and drops of blood fell onto his dragon robe.

"Our loyal ministers and valiant generals were driven to their deaths step by step by those beasts sitting in the capital! They weren't protecting Tang Sanzang; they were protecting the Zhu family's empire! Zhu Houcong... you blind bastard, you're cutting off the arms of the Ming Dynasty!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

The old, crooked tree on Coal Hill swayed wildly in the strong wind.

As Zhu Youjian listened to the explanation of "Sun Wukong," he felt as if struck by lightning, collapsing onto the cold, muddy water. He frantically pounded his chest with both hands, letting out a mournful howl as shrill as an owl.

"Sun Wukong... the golden headband... a derogatory letter..."

Emperor Chongzhen's tears, snot, and muddy water smeared all over his face.

"Wasn't I the Tang Monk who chanted the Tightening-Headband Mantra back then?! Lu Xiangshan and Sun Chuanting! Weren't they all Sun Wukongs in my hands?! I listened to the slander of the court officials and personally slaughtered all the last remaining monkeys of the Ming Dynasty who could fight!"

He looked up, gazing desperately at the overcast sky, and coughed up a mouthful of black blood.

"Retribution! This is all the Zhu family's karma!"

On the backdrop, the red light in the studio was extremely intense, resembling a churning sea of ​​blood.

Zhu Dijun slowly straightened up and casually tossed the half-broken pointer he was holding onto the table. Half of his face was hidden in the shadows, but his eyes revealed a chilling aura that would send shivers down the spines of anyone, regardless of time or place, or any audience member.

"In this world where right and wrong are turned upside down, capable people never have a good ending. This is the biggest curse of the Jiajing era."

He abruptly raised his head, looked directly at the camera, and asked, word by word, in an extremely deep, hoarse voice that seemed to penetrate the soul:

"Did you understand this explanation?"