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

The studio lights switched to a blinding pure white, as if exposing evidence at a crime scene. On the holographic screen, a long, bright yellow scroll slowly unfurled—the political bombshell announcing a complete upheaval in the Ming Dynasty court—the Jiajing Emperor's edict.

"There must be something fishy going on when things seem unusual. All the hidden murderous intentions will eventually be revealed through the transfer of political power."

Zhu Dijun placed his hands on the edge of the podium, his eyes blazing as he stared intently at the copied imperial edict.

"Let's take a look at what kind of arrogant and monstrous actions Xu, the chief minister who was praised in history books as 'restoring order,' took in the twelve hours after Jiajing died.

He typed on the console and brought up a flowchart of Ming Dynasty etiquette regulations.

"According to the rites of the Ming Dynasty, the drafting of the imperial edict upon the death of the late emperor was an extremely serious collective decision-making process involving the very foundation of the nation. It required the unanimous deliberation of the entire cabinet, as well as the participation of imperial princes and top-ranking nobles and military generals, in order to demonstrate the smooth transition of imperial power and the legitimacy of the imperial line. But what happened on the night Jiajing died?"

Zhu Dijun tore the flowchart into the computer's recycle bin and replaced it with portraits of Xu Jie and Zhang Juzheng, with a dimly lit duty room in the background.

"Xu Jie immediately set up a cordon, isolating himself from Gao Gong and Guo Pu, who were also in the cabinet. Without consulting or communicating, he pulled his prized student Zhang Juzheng, who was still Prince Yu's lecturer, and the two of them hid in the cabinet office, working behind closed doors, and managed to write out this imperial edict, the highest directive of the Ming Empire!"

In the live stream, viewers who had some knowledge of Ming Dynasty history flooded the chat with comments:

"Ignoring the other Grand Secretaries? That's incredibly disgraceful!"

"Gao Gong has such a fiery temper, why doesn't he go after Xu Jie and fight him to the death?"

[“Writing one’s own will—that’s not just writing whatever you want; that’s forging an edict and usurping the throne!”]

"A forged imperial edict? The Jiangnan civil service calls this 'obeying the will of Heaven'!"

Zhu Dijun burst into laughter, but there was no warmth in his voice. He pointed to the core clauses of the will with his pointer, dissecting them one by one.

"Listen to what's written in this will. The first point completely negates the core national policies of Jiajing's life. In the will, written in Jiajing's own voice, he reflects with tears streaming down his face, saying that he 'held religious ceremonies for years, wasting national funds' and 'misused alchemists in his pursuit of immortality.' This is tantamount to directly shoving the political conclusions of the late emperor over the past forty-five years into the mud, and publicly declaring that the late emperor was a foolish idiot who brought disaster to the country and its people."

"Secondly, physical cleanup. Abolish all Taoist rituals and ceremonies in the Western Garden in one fell swoop, stop the procurement of rare and precious items from various places, and abolish the secret police prisons that directly obeyed the emperor's orders. Uproot all the means by which Jiajing bypassed the civil service system, directly embezzled money from local areas, and maintained stability."

"The third point, and also the core interest of this group, is a general amnesty. Who should be pardoned? Hai Rui, who should be released from death row and used as a symbol of integrity; all officials and scholars who were exiled or beheaded for impeaching Jiajing for practicing Taoism and offending Yan Song. This would quickly win over the hearts and minds of scholars across the country."

Zhu Dijun suddenly turned around and drew three extremely thick exclamation marks on the whiteboard with his marker.

"Everyone, use your brains! This is the most crucial evidence of the conspiracy! If Jiajing really died of natural causes from taking medicine, would Xu Jie, as a veteran minister who had served for over twenty years, have needed to be so hasty and brutal in completely erasing the late emperor's decrees the moment he breathed his last? He could have waited for Prince Yu to ascend the throne smoothly, and after a few months of transition, slowly implemented the new policies."

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes cold and sharp as knives.

"He can't wait! He's guilty! Only those who have brought about the emperor's death through illegitimate means need to immediately issue a repentant edict to whitewash their heinous acts of seizing power. They need to use Hai Rui's release and the benefits of the new policies to silence the scholars and common people. They need to use the huge distribution of benefits to dispel the doubts of the external forces about the emperor's sudden death."

The Ming Dynasty, in a certain parallel universe.

During the Hongwu reign, the Great Prison.

Hu Weiyong, imprisoned, listened to the analysis coming from the sky through the iron bars. He was originally an extremely ambitious and ruthless warlord who wanted to undermine the power of the prime minister and check the emperor, but at this moment he felt a chill run down his spine.

"He poisoned himself, sealed the door himself, and wrote his own will..."

Hu Weiyong swallowed hard, shook his head with a wry smile, and said, "Compared to this, my methods of forming cliques and engaging in corruption are like those of a child who has just learned to walk in front of these scholars from Jiangnan in later generations. Killing someone means destroying their spirit, leaving the emperor with no reputation at all. The civil officials of the Ming Dynasty have completely become wild dogs that have broken free of their reins."

In the studio, Judy Jun made her final conclusion regarding this coup.

"Let's look beyond the 'Veritable Records of Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty,' which has been heavily embellished and deliberately downplayed the core contradictions. What happened in the 45th year of Jiajing's reign was not a sudden awakening of a wise ruler, nor was it a change of dynasty in accordance with the will of Heaven."

He walked to the center of the holographic screen, where all the portraits of the figures on the screen—Jiajing Emperor, Xu Jie, Zhang Juzheng, and Hai Rui—transformed into strings of data code, ultimately settling on a massive scale of power. On one side of the scale was an empty dragon throne, and on the other side were mountains of civil officials' official hats.

"Yan Song fell from power, Prince Jing died mysteriously, and Yan Shifan was beheaded on fabricated charges. The Qingliu faction removed all of Jiajing's outer wings. Then, they used Hai Rui's memorial to ignite the conflict between the emperor and his ministers, provoking the emperor's anger. With his survival threatened, Xu Jie turned the Taoist priests against him, using Taoist metaphysics to cover up the slow poisoning; he joined forces with the Imperial Medical Academy to implement medical isolation; and finally, he sealed off the Western Garden, completely severing imperial power."

Judy Jun pressed his hands on the control panel, his voice suppressing a breathtaking power.

"Throughout the entire incident, no one actually carried a knife to assassinate the emperor. The imperial physicians dispensed medicine according to the prescriptions, the Taoist priests prepared the alchemy according to the dosages, and Xu Jie offered words of comfort and concern. They perfectly exploited Jiajing's own peculiarities to complete a ten-month-long cleansing operation. Afterwards, they used the power of the cabinet to monopolize the official history writing, shifting all the blame onto the emperor's own superstitious belief in alchemy."

He clapped his hands, as if to brush away the dust of history that had settled on them.

"The most covert, successful, and sordid court coup in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty thus ended with a glorious and righteous imperial edict. Jiajing was a master strategist who treated his ministers like dogs, but in the end, he was bitten in the throat by these same dogs who usually spouted benevolence and morality. From that moment on, the actual control of the Ming Dynasty no longer belonged to the Zhu family, but was completely taken over by the civil official group based on the Jiangnan financial clique."

Zhu Dijun grabbed the mineral water bottle on the podium and drank the last bit of water in one gulp.

"The Jiajing era was decaying in a slow, insidious process. What awaited the Ming Dynasty was the Longqing Emperor, who only survived thanks to the protection of civil officials. This short-lived emperor, who would later be only thirty-six years old, faced with a group of ruthless Grand Secretaries, would he continue to be a puppet, merely issuing official seals, or would he manage to tear a hole in this impenetrable empire? In the next episode, we'll continue to uncover the hidden Longqing New Policies."

The studio screen suddenly went black, leaving a deathly silence, before being completely overwhelmed by an explosive surge of comments.