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

The extremely cold spotlight in the studio, like an incandescent bulb in a morgue, shone fiercely on Zhu Dijun's tall yet manic figure.

He grabbed a rag from the holographic control panel and wiped the words "Macau" and "Mao Haifeng" on the whiteboard clean.

"Family members, whether it's luring Wang Zhi into a trap or fighting to the death with thousands of elite Japanese soldiers in Cen Port, all these meat grinder-like wars ultimately boil down to one word!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a thick black marker and wrote a huge, ink-splattered character in the center of the whiteboard with extreme force—

【money】!

"When a large army moves, gold flows like water. Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou are risking their lives at the front, while tens of thousands of soldiers are feeding their horses and building firearms and warships every day. Where does the money come from?!"

"The national treasury has long been emptied by Jiajing's pursuit of immortality and the corruption of Yan's faction! The Ministry of Revenue is constantly crying poverty in the Forbidden City! As the Governor-General of the Southeast, Hu Zongxian has been driven to the brink of despair!"

On the holographic screen, pages of Jiangnan tax records, soaked in blood, crashed down.

"Without money to pay the troops, the frontline army immediately mutinied! The coastal defense line collapsed instantly! In order to preserve the last breath of the Ming Dynasty, Hu Zongxian submitted a memorial to the court that was like drinking poison to quench thirst!"

The red laser pointer in Zhu Dijun's hand was like a bloodstained scalpel, firmly piercing the two large characters on the screen—【Editor】!

"What does 'promotion' mean?! In modern terms, it's called living beyond your means! Mortgaging your future!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes were bloodshot, and he stared at the camera through gritted teeth.

"Hu Zongxian submitted a memorial requesting that the taxes for the following year's village system and equal corvée labor be forcibly levied in advance in the three hardest-hit areas of Zhejiang, Southern Zhili, and Fujian, which were affected by the anti-Japanese pirates!"

The large screen instantly switched to a scene of gloom and desolation in the Jiangnan water towns.

The people of Jiangnan, whose homes had already been ravaged by Japanese pirates, were forced to abandon their homes by local officials' sergeants who, like wolves and tigers, kicked open their dilapidated doors before they could even catch their breath.

"You've paid this year's taxes? Not enough! The army has no money for food! Hand over next year's and the year after's taxes right now!"

Zhu Dijun wildly waved his pointer on the podium, his voice carrying a suffocatingly bloody tone:

"You think being promoted is just about paying more money? You're so wrong! This is the ultimate feast for local bureaucrats in the Ming Dynasty!"

"By the end of the year, Xu Pu, a supervising secretary in the Ministry of Works, finally couldn't hold back any longer! Risking the death penalty of offending the entire Yan faction and the military in the southeast, he directly submitted a memorial to the Jiajing Emperor, vehemently denouncing the evils of the compilation system!"

On the screen, Xu Pu's memorial to the throne was like a blood-stained sword piercing straight into the imperial court.

"Xu Pu's memorial was full of venomous insults! He told the emperor that the court needed to allocate 10,000 taels of silver to the southeast for military expenses, and that corrupt officials and local bullies were using this as an excuse to forcibly impose 100,000 taels of silver on the common people!"

Zhu Dijun laughed in fury, his laughter like a dull knife cutting into flesh. "The government is taking this opportunity to ruthlessly exploit the people! To pay this non-existent 'tax for next year,' ordinary people have no choice but to sell their land, sell their children, or even commit suicide as a whole family!"

The live stream chat was instantly filled with an atmosphere of extreme depression.

"Holy crap! The Japanese pirates are killing people in front, and the government is looting them from behind! Where are the common people supposed to survive?!"

"I understand Hu Zongxian, but what he's doing is cutting into the lifeline of ordinary people!"

"These corrupt officials are too ruthless; they've profited from the national crisis to this extent!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

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

Zhu Youjian collapsed into a mud pit covered with ice shards. Upon hearing the words "promoted to a higher level" and "living beyond one's means," he felt as if a thousand steel needles had pierced his brain at once.

"Promote the collection of taxes in advance..."

Emperor Chongzhen's withered hands gripped the frozen earth tightly, his fingernails cracked and black blood seeped out. He suddenly raised his head and let out a miserable laugh like that of a wild beast on its deathbed.

"Hahahaha! Isn't this just my Liaodong military pay, suppression military pay, and training military pay?!"

Emperor Chongzhen pounded his chest frantically, tears mingling with blood streaming down his face.

"I had no money fighting the Jurchens in Liaodong, so I levied an additional three taels of tax! I had no money to suppress the bandits, so I levied even more! And what was the result? The court took one tael, while the corrupt officials below took five! The people couldn't survive and all of them rebelled!"

He stared in despair at the overcast sky, coughing up a mouthful of black blood.

"So this ruthless, exploitative ancestral method of the Ming Dynasty was already ingrained in our very bones during the Jiajing era! This is a dead end! A dead end of no return!"

On the backdrop, the red light from the studio was extremely intense.

Zhu Dijun slammed Xu Pu's memorial on the table. "Was Xu Pu wrong? Not at all! He was speaking out for those ordinary people who hanged themselves! But was Hu Zongxian wrong?! If we hadn't raised the quota, the hundreds of thousands of anti-Japanese soldiers wouldn't even have had enough money to eat coarse grain porridge, and the southeastern part of the Ming Dynasty would have been flattened by the Japanese pirates in an instant!"

"This is the ultimate dead end of the Ming Dynasty's officialdom! There's no right or wrong, it's all a complete mess!"

"What was the final result of the endless arguments and attempts to smooth things over in the imperial court? A partial postponement of tax collection! They said they'd postpone it, but in reality, the money still had to be collected in full! The burden on the people of southeastern Ming Dynasty reached an unprecedented and terrifying peak that year!"

Zhu Dijun casually slammed the stack of yellow books symbolizing taxes onto the ground, his entire demeanor suddenly darkening, and the studio lights instantly switched to a deathly white, graveyard-like atmosphere.

"Family members, the southeast is being bleed and ripped dry, their very bones drained to fight the Japanese pirates. And what about the north, where there's no pirate raid? Can't we live in peace and prosperity then?"

He suddenly and violently typed three keys on the holographic keyboard.

A vast map of the Ming Dynasty's northern territory, covered in ravines and snow, suddenly appeared on the big screen.

"Dream on! In this damned thirty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign! Heaven has not spared any corner of the Ming Dynasty's territory!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red pen and drew a large circle across the entire Shandong province.

"Shandong! The Yellow River has overflowed, compounded by a severe drought! The entire province has suffered a total crop failure! Millions of people have been displaced, and corpses of the starved are everywhere! The imperial court has no choice but to squeeze out government grain from the already depleted national treasury to provide relief to the refugees in Shandong!"

He pointed his pointer sharply upwards, firmly planted on the northernmost point of the Liaodong Peninsula.

"But Shandong isn't the worst off! Look at Liaodong!"

On the holographic screen, three large, scarlet characters, as if cast in blood and exuding an extremely tragic and ghostly aura, instantly blinded everyone—

Cannibalism!

"These three characters come from the History of Ming!"

Zhu Dijun roared, his eyes bloodshot and veins throbbing on his forehead.

"This isn't some historian exaggeration, nor is it some kind of unofficial folk tale! It's the real story of the living eating the dead! The dead weren't enough to satisfy their hunger, so the living ate the living!"

The special effects on the big screen instantly exploded, creating a chilling scene resembling an infernal hell.

In the midst of the heavy snow, countless emaciated and barely clothed Liaodong people lay dead on the wilderness. The survivors pounced on them like wild dogs, tearing at their fellow human beings' flesh with rusty kitchen knives and their own teeth.

"Liaodong suffered from consecutive years of drought and floods, coupled with the military turmoil caused by the Mongol tribes on the border! The combination of natural disasters and man-made calamities led to a massive famine in the thirty-sixth year of the Jiajing reign!"

A hoarse sound, like the grinding of cast iron, escaped from Zhu Dijun's throat.

"There was no food! Even tree bark and clay were eaten! Then came a widespread plague! This hellish situation continued until the thirty-ninth year of the Jiajing reign!"

The parallel Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, a deafening roar erupted, shattering eardrums.

Zhu Di kicked over the heavy gilded bronze cauldron in front of him, smashing it into the gold bricks and creating a large crater, scattering incense ash everywhere. This Yongle Emperor, who had spent his entire life fighting battles in the northern frontier, now had bloodshot eyes and a violently heaving chest, like a raging dragon whose scales had been touched.

"A great famine struck Liaodong...people resorted to cannibalism..."

Zhu Di gripped the sword hilt tightly, veins bulging on the back of his hand. "Foolish! That beast Zhu Houcong, who cultivated immortality! He literally starved the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty to collapse!"

The civil and military officials below were so frightened that they knelt on the ground, trembling with fear.

"Liaodong is the first line of defense against the Buryat and Mongol tribes outside the Great Wall! If the people of Liaodong cannot survive, it means the source of soldiers will be cut off, and it means that the Ming Dynasty's control over Liaodong will completely collapse!" Zhu Di roared, pointing at the sky, his eyes revealing extreme fear and rage.

Zhu Gaoxu and Zhu Gaosui, standing below, looked at their beloved elder brother with disdain. This fat-headed, big-eared fool had ruined so many people. The crisis in the later years of the Jiajing reign was the result of the seeds of disaster sown during the elder brother's reign!