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

The blood-red warning line on the holographic screen crossed the Zhejiang border at an alarming speed and rushed madly towards the entire territory of Fujian.

Zhu Dijun grabbed a black whiteboard eraser and wiped away the previous map of Taizhou. He then drew an extremely large bloodsucking leech in the center of the whiteboard.

"Family members, this is Fujian in the 41st year of the Jiajing reign!"

His red laser pointer tapped rapidly across the screen. Xinghua, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Yanping. The coordinates of the four prefectures instantly exploded with towering smoke effects, and alarms blared throughout the studio.

"The Japanese pirates in Zhejiang have been badly beaten and can't stay any longer. What are they going to do? They're heading south! To Fujian for a feast!" Zhu Dijun roared.

"These defeated Japanese main forces not only failed to restrain themselves, but instead joined forces with local Fujian pirates and opportunistic thugs!"

He wrote four words heavily on the whiteboard: "Inside and outside cooperation!"

"A local traitor led the way, while the main force of the Japanese invaders attacked the city! These two scoundrels teamed up and turned Fujian into a living hell!"

"Xinghua is in dire straits! Quanzhou is besieged! Yanping has fallen! The Fujian troops were already incompetent; faced with this massive mixed attack, they didn't even dare to breach the city walls, abandoning their armor and weapons, collapsing at the first touch!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, staring intently at the camera.

"Throughout Fujian, the people were slaughtered, rivers of blood flowed, heads were piled up like mounds of corpses, and the rivers were blocked by the bodies!"

The live stream chat exploded with furious comments.

"Here we go again! These local traitors are a cancer on the Chinese nation!"

"Are the Fujian government troops inhuman? They just let the city fall like that?!"

"Where's Qi Family Army?! Go rescue them quickly!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the old, crooked tree on Coal Hill, the north wind blew so hard it stung your face.

Zhu Youjian knelt in the mud, his hands gripping the frozen earth tightly, listening to the explanations on the sky about "mobile crimes" and "internal and external cooperation," his whole body trembling violently.

"Bandits...it's bandits' tactics again!"

Emperor Chongzhen's eyes were bloodshot, and his teeth were clenched so tightly they were grinding together.

"If they can't stay in one place, they run to another! They rob wherever they go, using local thugs and ruffians to bolster their power! That's how Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong shattered my Ming Dynasty!"

He suddenly tilted his head back and let out an extremely mournful laugh, his face, covered in blood and mud, filled with despair.

"The officials in Fujian are all utterly useless! They've raised these soldiers for a thousand days, but when it comes to actually fighting them, they run away faster than rabbits! I myself was counting on these incompetent fools to hold off the bandits, but they turned around and surrendered!"

On the backdrop, the red light in the studio gradually turned into an extremely somber, iron-gray.

"The Ming Dynasty has finally realized that if they continue to muddle through, the entire southeast will be lost!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the side of the podium, making a dull thud.

A military order suddenly popped up on the big screen.

"The fire in Zhejiang is out, so let's move the fire chief to Fujian!"

He grabbed a red marker and wrote Qi Jiguang's name on the whiteboard in a flourish: "Qi Family Army! Carrying the invincible prestige of the Taizhou victory, the entire army marches into Fujian! To support Fujian!"

Then, next to Qi Jiguang's name, he wrote another name heavily.

Yu Dayou!

"It wasn't just Qi Jiguang!"

Zhu Dijun's voice revealed a sense of triumphant satisfaction at having avenged a great wrong.

"The veteran general Yu Dayou, who was imprisoned and exiled to Datong after his fierce battle at Cengang, has also been urgently recalled to the southeast by the imperial court!"

"The naval war god has been fully revived! The imperial court has reinstated him to command the navy, to coordinate with Qi Jiguang's army in land assaults!"

"The two gods have combined! The Ming Dynasty's anti-Japanese forces are witnessing the most frenzied and explosive peak team battle in history!"

On the holographic screen, the special effects exploded instantly!

Qi Jiguang's flying fish robe and Yu Dayou's chainmail shone brightly in mid-air as the two iron-blooded armies completed a historic meeting in Fujian.

"Family members, do you think this is just a normal relief effort? You're so wrong! This is the beginning of a massacre!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and lashed it hard at the coordinates of an isolated island on the screen map.

Hengyu!

"This was Qi Jiguang's first crucial battle after entering Fujian!"

He roared.

"Where is Hengyu? It's on the coast of Ningde, Fujian! This place is a hellish fortress!"

The scene instantly cuts to a panoramic view of Hengyu Island's terrain.

"This is an isolated island! At high tide, it's completely submerged; at low tide, the surrounding area is a bottomless black mudflat that even a small boat can't navigate!"

Zhu Dijun banged loudly on the podium.

"The main force of the Japanese pirates has established their stronghold here for three whole years! The Fujian government troops have attacked countless times, but they have all been bogged down in the quagmire and become easy targets for the pirates!"

He drew a huge dead end on the whiteboard.

"A direct assault? No boats! Walking across? We'd be stuck in the mud and waiting to die! This is an unsolvable dead end!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his knuckles clenched so tightly they turned white, his voice extremely suppressed.

"But this time they've encountered Qi Jiguang, who doesn't play by the rules! They're the kind of vicious wolves in Yiwu who would slaughter their entire clan over a single mine!"

On the holographic screen, dawn was breaking, and the tide was slowly receding, revealing the deadly swamp.

Several thousand soldiers of Qi Jiguang's army lined up on the shore, without any noise or fear. Each of them had a thick bundle of straw tightly tied to their back.

"Qi Jiguang issued the military order—everyone, carrying straw rafts, crawl forward!"

"Pfft!"

In the scene, the first Yiwu miner fiercely spread the straw in his hand on the mud, then pounced on it, using the buoyancy of the straw to carve a bloody path through this dead land.

"What are Qi Jiguang's army doing?! They're filling the sea with their own bodies!"

Judy's roar shook the heavens, and veins throbbed on his forehead.

"Thousands of people, treading on straw rafts in tight formation, crawled forward through a hail of arrows and musket fire, their bodies slick with mud!"

"Is the formation broken? No! The spearmen gripped their spears tightly, and the wolf-wielders dragged hundreds of pounds of bamboo, step by step, crawling across ten miles of muddy beach, directly rushing to the gates of the Japanese pirates' lair!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Yuanzhang, who had been restless, suddenly stood up from the dragon throne and stepped down the steps.

His eyes, which had been filled with killing all his life, were fixed on the Qi Family Army soldiers crawling in the mud on the sky.

"What a hero! This is a true hero of our Great Ming Dynasty!" Old Zhu exclaimed excitedly, slapping a large pillar beside him.

"Fearless of death, never complaining! When faced with a dead end, they forge their own path! If these kids were born during the Hongwu era, we'd make sure they were all granted titles and honors!"

Crown Prince Zhu Biao, watching from the side, was also filled with excitement: "Father, Qi Jiguang truly understands military strategy! Using straw rafts to gain leverage, he broke through this natural barrier and swamp; the Japanese pirates' demise is imminent!"

On the sky, the special effects of war are in full swing.

"The Japanese pirates on Hengyu Island were dumbfounded! They never dreamed that the Ming army could actually crawl out of the mud!"

Zhu Dijun kicked over the wastepaper basket next to him.

"The Qi Family Army climbed ashore and immediately formed a 'Mandarin Duck Formation'!"

"Wolf pack in front, slaughtering relentlessly! Spear behind, thrusting mercilessly!"

On the big screen, Qi Jiguang's soldiers were covered in black mud, looking like demons crawling out of hell. Their weapons mercilessly sliced ​​through the Japanese pirates' defenses, each charge kicking up clouds of blood.

"In less than half a day! Hengyu Island, which had been entrenched for three years, was completely crushed by Qi Jiguang's army! The main force of the Japanese pirates on the island was annihilated, not a single one was spared!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a piece of chalk and drew a big red X next to Hengyu Island.

"Direct physical deliverance!"

The barrage of comments scrolled wildly, the screen filled with the red word "kill".

"That felt so good! So damn satisfying!"

"They just waded through the mud and got to work; their execution is amazing!"

"You dare to be so arrogant in Fujian? The living devil has arrived!"

"After the battle of Hengyu, did Qi Jiguang's army stop? No!" Zhu Dijun threw down his pointer and frantically drew a devastating line on the screen with his finger.

"Immediately afterwards, Qi Jiguang's army marched forward, heading straight for Niutian!"

"In the Battle of Niutian, Qi Jiguang made a frantic night march, a long-distance raid! The Japanese pirates were still asleep when Qi's army broke into their camp and beheaded thousands!"

"After defeating Niutian, we moved on to Lindun! The Japanese pirates at Lindun tried to resist stubbornly by relying on their waterways, but Yu Dayou's navy opened fire on the river to block them, while Qi Jiguang's army trapped them like turtles in a jar on the shore! We annihilated the enemy!"

The golden character "捷" (Jie) danced wildly on the screen, dazzling the viewer.

"Hengyu Victory! Niutian Victory! Lindun Victory!" Zhu Dijun raised his hands to the sky, his entire being erupting with extreme fervor.

"When Qi Jiguang's army entered Fujian, they immediately launched a sweeping offensive! Those smugglers and pirates who had been swaggering around in Fujian were utterly defeated! Within a few months, the large-scale Japanese pirate raids in Fujian were completely crushed!"

The parallel Zhengde era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Leopard Chamber, Emperor Zhu Houzhao of the Ming Dynasty was so excited that he crushed the Western Region wine cup in his hand, and the dark red wine flowed down his fingers.

"Well done! This is what real warfare is all about!"

Zhu Houzhao pushed aside the dancer beside him, drew his sword from his waist, and began brandishing it in the hall.

"Like autumn leaves swept away by the wind! They won't give the bandits even a chance to breathe! If I had such a powerful army, I would have led them all the way to the Japanese mainland to capture that Emperor alive!"

He turned to look at the eunuch Liu Jin beside him and snorted coldly.

"Look at them! And look at you bunch of greedy lackeys! If the court had entrusted military power to such pragmatic officials earlier, there wouldn't have been any Jiajing-era Japanese pirate raids!"

The studio lights gradually cooled, changing from a glaring blood red to an extremely oppressive dark gold.

Zhu Dijun stood on the podium, panting heavily, and took a large gulp of mineral water. He casually wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the fervor in his eyes fading, replaced by a cold, icy scrutiny, like the edge of a knife.

"Family members. Fujian has won, Hengyu has been wiped out."

He crushed the empty bottle in his hand and threw it on the table with a "thud".

"But are these pirate scum who weren't killed just going to wait to die?"

Zhu Dijun tapped a few times on the holographic keyboard, and the map of Fujian on the big screen scrolled down instantly.

Our gaze travels beyond the mountains of southern Fujian and plunges directly into the prosperous land at the southernmost tip of the Ming Dynasty's territory—Guangdong and Guangxi.

"Under the combined attack of Qi Jiguang's army and Yu Dayou's forces, both by land and sea, some of the remaining main forces of the Japanese pirates boarded fast ships and sped all the way to the coast of Guangdong!"

Red laser dots flashed wildly on the coordinates of Guangzhou Prefecture and Leizhou Peninsula.