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

On the holographic screen, the list of "Chronicles of Major Fires in the Imperial Palace during the Jiajing Reign" resembled a series of blood-red death warrants, squeezing out every last drop of air from the studio.

As Zhu Dijun stood behind the podium, the sarcasm on his face suddenly vanished, replaced by an extremely cruel focus, like that of a cold-blooded surgeon.

"Family members, do you really think that the lightning that struck the three main halls in April was merely Heaven taking a dislike to Jiajing and throwing a few lightning bolts at him?!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the holographic control panel, leaned forward, and spoke in a very low voice, which carried a chilling aura that could freeze one's bones.

He furiously typed a series of commands on the holographic keyboard. The fire list on the large screen shattered instantly, replaced by a timeline of court proceedings for the first two months of spring in the thirty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign!

"To understand this unprecedented thunderstorm in April, we absolutely have to rewind the timeline by two months!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red marker and drew three blood-red circles on the whiteboard with great force.

"In the thirty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign, from the first to the second month! In this deadly predicament of a bitterly cold winter, three extremely horrific power grabs erupted in succession at the highest levels of the Ming Dynasty court!"

He suddenly pointed the laser pointer in his hand at the first red circle.

"The first major event! A major restructuring of the official system!"

Judy Jun slammed a stick into the screen.

"In the first month of the lunar calendar! Zhao Wenhua, the most vicious henchman of the Yan faction in the southeast, submitted a secret memorial. The imperial court officially issued an edict, establishing the first governorship of Fujian! Who will be the first governor? Ruan E!"

On the holographic projection, Ruan E, who had been surrounded like a dead dog by Japanese pirates in Tongxiang, was slunk away and sent to Fujian.

"On the surface, this appears to be about improving the military and political system for resisting Japanese pirates along the southeast coast and normalizing the coastal defense divisions between Zhejiang and Fujian! But what's the reality?!"

Zhu Dijun laughed in anger.

"Ruan E, that troublemaker who constantly caused trouble for Hu Zongxian and represented the interests of the court's upright officials, has been completely kicked out of Zhejiang, the most fertile and prosperous region!"

"With his departure, who will take over military affairs in Zhejiang? The Governor-General of Zhejiang, Zhili, and Fujian, Hu Zongxian!"

Zhu Dijun wrote Hu Zongxian's name on the whiteboard and drew a heavy horizontal line through it.

"At this point, Hu Zongxian's centralized power in Jiangnan reached its absolute peak! The Yan faction's tentacles in the southeast's military and political affairs completely strangled the Ming Dynasty's most crucial financial and tax lifeline!"

Just as a few question marks appeared in the live stream chat, Zhu Dijun's scalpel had already cut into the second ulcer.

"The second major event! A massive crackdown on corruption within the palace!" The pointer slammed down on the second red circle.

"In February! Lu Bing, the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, acting on a secret decree from the Jiajing Emperor, suddenly struck, slicing open the belly of the Ming Dynasty's inner court! Li Bin, the Grand Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, was dragged from his bed by the Embroidered Uniform Guard, imprisoned, and executed!"

The large screen instantly switched to the scene of the Imperial Guards raiding a house.

Countless heavy camphor wood chests were pried open by the imperial guards, and the dazzling silver light almost blinded everyone.

"What are the charges? Stealing hundreds of thousands of taels of silver from the imperial treasury! Hiring artisans to build a private residence!"

Judy Jun's voice made the glass in the studio rattle.

"Lu Bing led his men to ransack the house, and they found over 400,000 taels of silver alone! There were also countless rare and precious treasures!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang, who was already on the verge of exploding with rage, jumped off the dragon throne like a raging lion whose tail had been stepped on when he heard the number "more than 400,000 taels".

"A eunuch! A household slave!"

Old Zhu's eyes bulged with extreme rage. He kicked over the bronze cauldron in front of him, pointed at the sky, and roared wildly.

"Back in our day, to save a few taels of silver, we even tried to carve the lampshades ourselves for the palace! And this eunuch managed to steal 400,000 taels of silver from the palace! That's equivalent to half a province's annual tax revenue in the Ming Dynasty! How did that bastard Zhu Houcong manage his household?!"

The parallel Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Di's face was ashen. He knew all too well the workings of the inner court. The eunuchs dared to be so greedy without the emperor's tacit approval and indulgence. "Just raising pigs."

Zhu Di coldly uttered four words.

"Jiajing ran out of money for cultivating immortality, so he slaughtered a fat pig for the New Year. But this cut will draw blood."

On the sky, Zhu Dijun ruthlessly tore off this fig leaf.

"Heaven won't let a blind sparrow starve, but the Jiajing Emperor ran out of money for alchemy, so he had to take action against the eunuchs!"

Judy Jun spread his hands with a mocking expression.

"Four hundred thousand taels of silver filled Jiajing's private treasury! But my lords, there are factions in the inner court too! Li Bin is the Grand Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial! Jiajing's move directly purged the entire eunuch power in the inner court! All the eunuchs are terrified, feeling a sense of shared fate!"

He gave no one a chance to breathe, turned around abruptly, and the marker, like a steel knife, was firmly stuck in the third red circle on the whiteboard.

"The third major event! The grand assessment of officials in the capital—the massive purge of officials in the capital!"

A Ming Dynasty official gazette filled with names of people suddenly appeared on the holographic screen.

"In February! The Ministry of Personnel and the Censorate joined forces to conduct the once-every-six-years capital inspection! On the surface, they dismissed more than twenty elderly, infirm, corrupt, and incompetent officials in the capital!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his knuckles pounding the podium, his eyes radiating an icy chill.

"But who was actually pulling the strings? Yan Shifan!"

"This isn't some anti-corruption or anti-organized crime campaign at all; it's a blatant case of factionalism and infighting!"

Zhu Dijun roared out.

"Under the guise of performance evaluation, Yan's faction frantically purged neutral officials and those with a strong faction of upright officials within the Six Ministries! Anyone who didn't bribe Yan Shifan, anyone who dared to impeach Yan Song, was all branded 'incompetent' and stripped of their official robes and kicked out!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

The cold wind from Coal Hill, mixed with snowflakes, lashed against Zhu Youjian's bloodless face.

"The Imperial Examination... factional strife..."

Emperor Chongzhen collapsed into the mud, his hands tightly covering his face, letting out a miserable laugh like that of an owl.

"So, as early as the Jiajing era, the capital inspection had already become a killing machine! I trusted the Donglin Party back then and let them conduct the capital inspection, and as a result, they replaced all the capable ministers and generals in the court with useless idiots who only knew how to talk big!" He frantically pounded the frozen mud, his fingernails curling and bleeding.

"The Yan faction kills the upright officials, and the upright officials kill the Yan faction! This entire Ming Dynasty court is a bunch of mad dogs that will bite each other to the death for power!"

The studio's dim gray lights suddenly flickered, transforming into an extremely oppressive, deathly black, like the calm before a storm.

Zhu Dijun slowly straightened up and casually tossed the broken pen into the wastebasket. He crossed his arms and quietly stared at the three alarming red circles on the holographic screen.

"In the first month of the year, Ruan E, a representative of the Jiangnan gentry and the Qingliu faction, was ousted, and the Yan faction completely took control of the purse strings in the southeast."

"In February, Li Bin, the moneybag of the inner court eunuch group, was executed, and the eunuchs were in a state of extreme panic."

"In the same month, the upright and neutral factions of the outer court were brutally bleed dry by Yan Shifan, who used the capital inspection as a tool!"

Zhu Dijun's voice grew softer and softer, but the oppressive feeling that sent chills down one's spine rose like a tsunami.

"Family members. Do you understand these three conditions together?"

He struck the holographic keyboard with tremendous force.

"boom!"

On the big screen, the thunder and fire that struck the Fengtian Hall on April 13th exploded again with extremely shocking special effects! The eerie blue lightning mixed with the raging flames turned the entire studio pale white!

"Three extremely powerful vested interest groups that control the lifeline of the Ming Dynasty—the gentry of Jiangnan, the eunuchs of the inner court, and the upright officials of the imperial court—were all driven to the brink of despair by Jiajing and the Yan faction in the first two months of spring!"

Zhu Dijun roared, veins bulging on his forehead, his pointer pointing directly at the sea of ​​fire.

"Do you really think that the fire that destroyed the three main halls in April was simply due to bad weather?!"

The live stream chat room across the entire network instantly fell into a suffocating silence, followed by an explosion of comments like a tsunami.

"Holy crap!!! This is terrifying to think about!"

"They set fire to the place when they were cornered?! This is a shocking case of collusion from within and without!"

"Eunuchs were spilling oil inside the palace, while civil officials were covering for them outside?!"

"I got goosebumps all over! This is scarier than any ghost story!"

Zhu Dijun stared intently at the camera, his eyes blazing with a chilling fervor.

"On April 13th, a thunderstorm raged. Fire broke out in the three main halls of the Forbidden City."

"How strange was this fire? Torrential rain and fierce winds! In this kind of weather, even if lightning struck the roof, it would be absolutely impossible for it to quickly spread into a raging fire, even burning down the entire corridor outside the Meridian Gate!"

He frantically drew the spread of the fire on the whiteboard, each stroke carrying a deadly deduction.

"There's only one answer! In the instant the thunder struck and its roar drowned out all other sounds, someone inside the Forbidden City, carrying flammable oil and torches, seized the opportunity to set those wooden buildings ablaze!"

"The eunuchs were responsible for setting fires in the palace because Jiajing confiscated their wealth! The censors and upright officials were responsible for creating momentum outside the palace because the Yan faction stripped them of their official positions! The gentry of Jiangnan stirred up public opinion in their localities because Hu Zongxian cut off their source of income!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the edge of the podium, making a deafening noise.

"What are they trying to do?! They want to use this thunderbolt from Heaven to unleash a karmic fire that can burn through the very top of your head!"

"They want to use the ashes of the three main halls, the most sacred political symbols of the Ming Dynasty, to force that emperor who hides in the Western Garden, cultivating immortality and exploiting the people, to bow his head and admit his mistakes!"

On the holographic screen, Emperor Jiajing's edict of self-reproach, which read "Heaven has warned me, the fault lies with me," crashed down, the golden characters appearing extremely ironic in the firelight.

"The fire burned for a day and a night. Jiajing was terrified! He was truly terrified!"

Zhu Dijun gave a disdainful sneer, his voice like a blade scraping against glass.

"Because he knows better than anyone that this fire isn't divine punishment at all; it's just a coordinated counterattack launched against him by his gang of driven mad dogs!"

"So he obediently issued an edict of self-reproach. So he obediently allowed civil and military officials to submit memorials frankly pointing out the malpractices of the government. He was using this method to tell those who started the fires—Alright, I've stopped, so you damn well better stop burning!"

The special effects of the fire in the studio went out at that moment. Utter silence descended.

Zhu Dijun's face was half-hidden in the shadows, and the red dot of the infrared laser pointer was like a bead of blood, fixed on the two characters "Da Ming" on the whiteboard.

"This was the political climate in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty. They didn't solve the problems, they only dealt with the people who raised them. If they couldn't deal with the people, they'd set the houses on fire."

"In this hellish arena where everyone from top to bottom is evil, and the lives of millions of people are used as bargaining chips in factional struggles, how strong and insane do you think the iron-blooded new army that Qi Jiguang recruited in Yiwu, forced into this situation, would have had to be to carve out a true bloody path through the strangulation of these beasts?"