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

The studio's extremely cold spotlight, 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 until they were spotless.

"Fellow countrymen, considering the border smuggling and internal betrayal, what consequences have these brought to the Ming Dynasty's border defenses? In two words: destruction!"

A burst of rapid typing erupted from the holographic keyboard, and the large screen abruptly switched to a heavily damaged military sand table map of the Nine Border Regions. The northern defense lines of Xuanda, Shanxi, and Jiliao were densely covered with glaring red dots indicating an alarm.

"In the thirty-seventh year of the Jiajing reign, to what extent was the northern border of the Ming Dynasty ravaged?"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a thick red marker and drew a brutally violent cross on the Datong defense line in the very center of the sand table.

"The Tatars, led by Altan Khan and the Xin'ai tribe, have invaded year after year! Along the Datong line alone, more than seventy border forts and beacon towers were burned and leveled by Mongol cavalry! Large areas of the border walls in Yansui and Yongping have collapsed. The Ming army was utterly powerless to fight back and was forced to abandon its outer fortifications and retreat entirely to key inland towns!"

He lashed his pointer sharply across the coordinates of Datong Right Guard, the sound like metal striking metal.

"The core battle has broken out! Datong Right Guard has been besieged by the main Mongol force for months!"

Special effects instantly appeared on the large screen. A dilapidated, isolated city stood amidst the wind and sand, surrounded by a dense mass of Mongol cavalry tents.

"In the era of cold weapons, siege warfare was a veritable meat grinder! What if the city ran out of food?"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes filled with a cold, piercing ferocity.

"Kill the warhorses! What will they eat after they've eaten all the warhorses? Dig up grass roots! Peel tree bark! Even scrape off the soil from the city walls to make soup!"

In the scene, several emaciated Ming Dynasty border soldiers, with sunken eyes, are digging in the mud with their dulled swords. The city walls are dilapidated, resembling a skeleton gnawed by wild beasts.

"After the siege was lifted, what became of Youwei City? The granaries were empty, and the armory was so depleted that not even a nail remained. What followed was an extremely terrifying post-disaster plague!"

"Most of the soldiers and civilians in the city starved or died of disease. Even more despairing was the fact that a large number of refugees from the Guanzhong earthquake fled along the official roads to the Datong and Yansui areas, hoping to find food to survive in government territory, only to run headlong into the Tatars' slaughter and the plague. Corpses filled the roads, and white bones littered the fields!"

The live stream chat fell into complete silence, then erupted into a suppressed frenzy of comments.

"It's so tragic. They survived the earthquake, but starved and died of disease at the foot of the Great Wall."

"What happened to the legendary Nine Garrisons? Where did the pride of the early Ming Dynasty go? Are we just going to cower in the city and take a beating like this?"

"Good question! Where have the Ming Dynasty's nine border cavalry gone?" Zhu Dijun asked mockingly, his hands pressing firmly on the podium.

"This inevitably leads us to the fundamental national policy established by Zhu Yuanzhang in the early Ming Dynasty—the military farm system!"

He wrote the four characters "collapse of the military settlements" on the whiteboard, each stroke revealing a deep-seated sarcasm.

"Emperor Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang, once looked down upon the world and boasted, 'I can support a million soldiers without consuming a single grain of grain from the people.' He relied on a system of three parts defense and seven parts farming. But what a mess that system was made of by the Jiajing era!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the side of the podium, the loud thud echoing.

"The border towns have seen a sharp decline in population. Mongol cavalry have invaded, specifically targeting people and livestock. able-bodied men have been captured and enslaved on the grasslands, while the people have abandoned their fields and migrated inland. In Datong, Shuozhou, and Yingzhou, vast tracts of fertile farmland have been abandoned and overgrown with weeds. Military officers have forcibly seized the remaining fertile military settlements for their own use, turning the veteran soldiers of the garrisons into serfs to cultivate the land for their generals!"

He grabbed the blackboard eraser and slammed it hard on the table:

"Without land, there is no grain production. If there is no grain production, what will the border troops eat? When the Mongols attack, how can soldiers who haven't even had enough to eat fight to the death? The entire military-agricultural system in the Hetao and Datong areas collapsed completely in the thirty-seventh year of the Jiajing reign. The self-sufficiency of the border troops became an extremely absurd joke!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang sat on the dragon throne, his face pale, his withered fingers gripping the edge of the dragon desk tightly, blood seeping from under his fingernails.

"Our military settlements... the eternal foundation we painstakingly built for the Ming Dynasty..."

Old Zhu's throat emitted a wheezing sound similar to that of a dying wild animal.

"Your Majesty, please calm your anger!"

All the civil and military officials knelt on the ground, their bodies trembling like leaves.

"Calm down my ass!"

Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly stood up, grabbed the paperweight from the table, and hurled it down onto the steps below, sparks flying.

"Three parts defense, seven parts farming; any officer who dares to occupy private land will be executed without mercy! This ancestral precept is engraved on an iron plaque and stands in the Five Military Commands' Office! This unworthy descendant of Zhu Houcong actually watched as the nine border garrisons rotted into this state! A million-strong army became serfs of their generals, unable even to fill their stomachs. How could they possibly withstand the Mongol swords?!"

Old Zhu's eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at the fading figures of border soldiers digging for grass roots in the sky, his voice shrill and harsh:

"Issue my decree: effective immediately, conduct a thorough investigation of all military farms throughout the land! Any officer who has encroached upon military farmland, regardless of their merits, shall be skinned alive, stuffed with straw, and displayed on the city gate towers!"

Xu Da and Tang He exchanged a glance, their eyes revealing undisguised horror. These corrupt officials and military generals of the Jiajing era had truly exposed their ancestors' dirty secrets.

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

"The Datong defense line is paralyzed, and someone has to clean up this mess. Repairing the city walls and replenishing the military equipment will require a huge amount of money. Even rats would have to leave the local treasury with tears in their eyes if they went in. Where will the money come from?"

Zhu Dijun brought up the Yellow Register of the Ministry of Revenue of the Ming Dynasty on the screen and frantically drew on it with an infrared laser pen.

"The imperial court went all out, forcibly diverting funds from the inland areas! They frequently transferred silver from the Taicang granary, desperately sending grain from the south to the Xuan-Da defense line. But the Ming Dynasty's treasury at that time was a broken water tank riddled with holes; there simply wasn't enough liquid cash in the Taicang granary. What to do?"

He lowered his voice, each word sounding like a dull knife cutting into his nerves.

"Robbing Peter to pay Paul! Misappropriating funds from mainland cooperative banks! What's the most fatal and chilling aspect of this?"

On the whiteboard, Zhu Dijun drew a blood-stained arrow pointing directly at Shaanxi.

"A large portion of the money that was diverted to fill the hole in Datong was originally earmarked as disaster relief funds for the earthquake-stricken areas of Guanzhong, Shaanxi!"

The chat in the entire live stream room froze instantly.

"Do you understand now?! Why are there so many strange rumors circulating in Shaanxi? Why is there an orphaned woman in red dancing day and night on the ruins of Lantian?"

Zhu Dijun's voice was hoarse with an extreme sense of sorrow.

"Because in order to protect the northern defense line, the Ming Dynasty simply abandoned the millions of disaster victims in Shaanxi on paper! The disaster relief funds were gone, the local officials were left empty-handed, and the people had no means of livelihood, starving to death in the ruins. This is officials forcing the people to their deaths; this is a city wall built with human blood!"