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

On the holographic projection, a giant tree image from the secret archives of the Western medieval papacy stands side by side with a ginseng fruit tree model from "Journey to the West" recreated by a well-known domestic AI generation engine.

Below are also a few photos of the basement menu of America's Lolita Island, which was just decrypted from the dark web a few hours ago.

The name of the main dish was clearly written on it: Baby Bok Choy.

The comment section was silent for about ten seconds.

This was true silence. The server's backend data stream showed that for a few seconds, not a single punctuation mark was sent in the live stream with tens of millions of online viewers.

Then, emotions surged like lava bursting its banks, engulfing the screen. Red, bold, and enlarged bullet comments piled on top of each other, even causing ghosting.

["Beasts!!! A bunch of beasts!!!"]

"Damn it! When I watched Journey to the West before, I only thought Zhenyuan Daxian was a Taoist master, and the ginseng fruit was just a magical fruit that looked like a child. This is man-eating!"

"Those hanging on the trees aren't fruits at all! They're living people who've been drained dry!"

"No wonder our ancestors said, 'Those who are not of our kind will surely have different hearts!' We really can't be merciful anymore! So-called mercy is the greatest cruelty we can inflict on our own ancestors and descendants!"

"Now think about the purge during the Chenghua reign of Emperor Xianzong of Ming. Good riddance! Too few were killed! Leaving such inhuman monsters in the world is sowing the seeds of disaster for China!"

"I forgot the beginning, I forgot the middle, but anyway, let the earth burn! I'll die with these beasts! I don't want to see China reduced to a pasture for two-legged sheep!"

fury.

Unparalleled rage.

When the veil of warmth that had lasted for hundreds of years was torn off, revealing the stark white bones stained with blood and flesh beneath, the fierce spirit inherent in the Chinese nation was completely ignited.

But amidst this overwhelming anger, another discordant wave of comments began to flood the screen. The fonts were uniform, the wording was similar, and even the punctuation revealed a restless anxiety in an attempt to cover it up.

"Judy Jun, what are you trying to stir up? Journey to the West is a fantasy novel, what are you talking about with the Ming Dynasty and Europe!"

"Using a cheap novel to comment on international relations is simply sensationalism!"

"The America Lolita Island case is long closed, don't try to connect it here! That Western painting is definitely an AI forgery! It's fake!"

[Warning to the streamer: Spreading false history and panic-mongering statements could result in your account being banned! This is blatant fabrication!]

"Don't let him brainwash you! There's absolutely no scientific basis for anything about aliens or underground monsters!"

Zhu Dijun sat behind the podium without saying a word.

He stared at the barrage of spam comments on the screen and gave a cold laugh. The laugh didn't reach his eyes; it was as if he were looking at a group of dead meat lying on a chopping board.

These things panicked.

When they start threatening with "spreading rumors" and "banning accounts," it proves that the knife has accurately pierced their hearts.

He didn't refute the online trolls into the microphone; instead, he placed his hand on the encrypted tablet on the table and tapped it twice.

"Xihe."

The tablet screen lit up, and a line of flat text quickly refreshed: [Connecting to the real-time bullet screen data pool, reverse engineering initiated. Number of abnormal IP nodes: 1240. Physical location within China has been locked.]

Zhu Dijun swiped his finger across the screen, issuing commands.

Do not call the police or pursue legal action.

Conventional laws are meant to restrain human beings. Talking about the law with these moles who have taken funds from outside the internet and are colluding with outsiders to cover up the truth is a waste of time.

"Notify the T-850 mobile unit on standby."

Zhu Dijun's voice was very low.

"Deliver warmth to your doorstep according to the locked coordinates."

He checked a parameter on the execution options on the screen.

"Beat them until they're three-tenths cooked. Don't kill them, just sever their limbs and spine, leaving them with a breath. Let them lie on the ground, half-dead, and see if their masters on the other side of the ocean will send a plane to pick them up, or simply use the internet to devour their remaining value."

[Command received. Target removal process initiated.]

At this moment, in a southern coastal city thousands of kilometers away from the live broadcast room.

Inside a duplex of a luxury apartment building.

A bearded man sat in front of six monitors, typing away furiously. Dozens of accounts were displayed on the screens, spamming "fake image, spreading rumors" into Zhu Dijun's live stream.

On the table next to him was the transfer record that had just arrived—cryptocurrency, enough to keep him comfortably lounging in this house for three years.

"What underground monsters, what cannibals, they're really making this up."

The man chuckled and picked up the coffee next to him.

There was no knocking at the door.

There wasn't even a sound of footsteps.

The heavy security door burst open in an instant, the shattered door panels smashing the shoe cabinet in the entryway. Through the dust and smoke, a burly man over two meters tall, wearing a black camouflage trench coat, strode in.

Before the man could even scream, the hand, like a hydraulic clamp, had already grabbed his neck and slammed him onto the monitor.

The sound of bones cracking echoed in the apartment.

Extremely short and extremely brittle.

There was no blood splattering, only physical destruction precise to the millimeter.

T-850 released its grip, looked at the lump of flesh on the ground that could only express fear through its eyes, which resembled a rag doll, its red electronic pupils flashed, and it turned and walked out the door.

Scenes like this played out simultaneously in thousands of clandestine locations across the country within just two minutes. The arrogant online trolls' comments vanished instantly, as if muted.

In the live broadcast room, Zhu Dijun picked up his teacup and took a sip to moisten his dry throat.

He didn't mention what had happened in the live chat earlier; those noises didn't deserve to take up his time to preach the truth.

"The trash has been cleared away."

Zhu Dijun put the cup down and tapped the whiteboard heavily with his marker.

"Let's continue."

He swiped the tablet, and the image on the holographic projection switched again.

This time, instead of gory pictures, there were close-ups of two shoes.

On the left is a pair of uniquely shaped wooden shoes with high soles, against a backdrop of a medieval European castle.

On the right is a yellowed old photograph showing Empress Dowager Cixi wearing Qing Dynasty court dress and "flowerpot shoes," a source of great pride for the Qing Dynasty.

Zhu Dijun stood up, walked to the projector, and pointed to the left with his pointer.

"This picture shows a traditional shoe that was very popular in Europe from the 15th to the 17th centuries, called a Chopin shoe. It originated in Venice and later spread to Germany and Spain. The soles were made of wood or cork, and the height ranged from a few centimeters to several tens of centimeters."

He then moved the pointer to the right.

"This one needs no introduction, right? It's a symbol of the Manchu people, the so-called 'flowerpot-shaped shoes' that were unique to the noblewomen of the Eight Banners. It's a 'national characteristic' garment that's been touted by Manchu loyalists for hundreds of years in Qing Dynasty dramas."

He turned his head and looked at the camera.

"Everyone, take a close look at these two pairs of shoes. Their stress structure, their arch support, their base that practically lifts you up in mid-air. Do you think they're exactly the same, or were they made from the same mold?"

The comment section started scrolling wildly again.

The audience, who had just experienced the psychological shock of the "ginseng fruit," were now thinking very quickly.

"Holy crap? This isn't just similar, it's a direct copy!"

"What Qing Dynasty characteristics? Turns out it's just something outdated from Europe?"

"Wait a minute, how did shoes popular in the West in the 15th century end up on the feet of the Buryat people who supposedly originated in the deep forests of Northeast China?"

"This is chilling! Could it be that wild boar hides were already linked to Europe back then?"

"When there are too many coincidences, it's no longer a coincidence! The Eight-Nation Alliance later entered Beijing as if they were returning to their hometown. How could there be no connection?"

"It's confirmed! These remnants of the Mite Kingdom have no culture of their own; they've just pieced together everything from Western sources!"

"coincide?"

Zhu Dijun laughed, a laugh tinged with sarcasm.

"Those so-called experts in the field of history love to use terms like 'convergent evolution' and 'historical coincidence' when writing their papers. But how many coincidences are there in this world?"

He wrote four words on the whiteboard: "Cultural Inversion".

"How could a fishing and hunting people who claim to have emerged from the remote mountains and rivers of Northeast China, whose writing system is a makeshift creation, suddenly invent platform shoes exactly like those of Venetian noblewomen thousands of miles away? They can barely walk on flat ground, how could they wear such shoes to hunt? To ride horses?"

Zhu Dijun tapped his fingers on the whiteboard.

"The only explanation is that they didn't invent this at all. It was Western missionaries, or rather, certain hidden forces in the West, who directly gave these distorted aesthetic tools, which represent 'superiority' and are used to restrict women's movement, to their agents in the East in complete sets."

Several 15th-century European oil paintings flashed across the holographic projection again, depicting Western noblewomen wearing towering Chopard shoes, with their maids having to support them to walk with difficulty.

The scene then shifts to princesses and empresses dowager in the Qing Dynasty palace, wearing platform shoes, and needing eunuchs and maids to hold their arms on both sides.

"The exact same posture, the exact same way of asserting class."

Zhu Dijun's voice echoed in the hall.

"The Manchu conquest of China was not a so-called 'nomadic people defeating an agricultural people.' It was in itself a long-planned experiment of civilizational replacement, orchestrated by both internal and external forces."

He paused for a moment, looked at the camera, his eyes sharp as knives.

"The Eight-Nation Alliance and the Buryat wild boar skin were never enemies. They were in cahoots. They were rotating henchmen sent at different points in time to wreak havoc and sever Chinese civilization. They altered the timeline of the Ming Dynasty, stole Chinese technology, and then, wearing the flowerpot shoes bestowed upon them by their European masters, stood on the corpses of tens of millions of Han people and acted as masters for hundreds of years."

The Ming Dynasty, a parallel Yongle era.

The three main halls of Beiping.

As Zhu Di looked at the portrait of Empress Dowager Cixi on the screen and compared it to the pair of Western Chopard shoes next to her, the murderous intent in his eyes almost solidified into a tangible form.

"Good, very good."

Zhu Di gritted his teeth, his fingers pressing on the hilt of his sword. "They eat the food of my Great Ming, wear the shoes of barbarians, and yet they force these filthy things onto the heads of the Chinese people. Third Prince, go, order the Liaodong General to tell him that if I ever see another breathing wild boar beyond the Great Wall, I will exterminate his entire clan!"

Zhu Gaosui knelt on the ground, his back soaked with cold sweat, and kowtowed repeatedly to accept the order.

Modern live streaming room.

Zhu Dijun wiped the whiteboard clean.

"Since the shoes are exactly the same, they're copied completely."

He held the marker in his hand, his eyes dark and unfathomable.

"Then let's all guess again."

He didn't write anything; he just made a gesture of a yin-yang hairstyle on his head.

"That 'money-tail' hairstyle that caused bloodshed and countless deaths across China, where people 'either keep your head or keep your hair' was called..."

Zhu Dijun suddenly cut off the sound, and the image froze in mid-air.

"Guess which Western heretical monastery's rules it copied this time?"