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

The giant Western tree and the ginseng fruit tree from "Journey to the West" on the holographic projection disappeared.

Zhu Dijun slid his finger across the tablet, and a dozen yellowed old photos and several medieval and modern European oil paintings immediately appeared on the big screen.

"When you think of long braids, what's the first image that pops into your mind?"

Zhu Dijun walked to the whiteboard, holding a marker in his hand. "Isn't it like in Qing Dynasty dramas, where everyone from the emperor to the ministers has a long, black braid hanging down the back of their heads? The front is shaved bald, and there's a long tail at the back."

The screen displays a real photo of a late Qing Dynasty official, followed by a historical painting from the early Qing Dynasty period when the government shaved heads and changed clothing.

"That thing wasn't called the 'yin-yang head' when the Manchus first entered the Central Plains. It was called the 'money rat tail braid.' It was a tuft of hair the size of a copper coin, so thin that it could pass through the hole of a copper coin. Over the next few hundred years, it slowly evolved into what you see on TV as the 'yin-yang head.'"

He tapped the projector with his pointer.

"In China, this queue is a symbol of national oppression. 'Keep your hair, lose your head; keep your head, lose your hair.' Underneath these few strands of hair lie the lives of tens of millions of Han people."

The scene changes. The photos of people from the Qing Dynasty have disappeared.

Instead, a group of blond, blue-eyed white people appeared.

These men were dressed in tight-fitting European-style military uniforms and carried flintlock pistols. Most striking of all were the long, black braids that trailed down the back of their heads. Some of these braids were even tied with black ribbons.

"Everyone, open your eyes wide and take a look."

Zhu Dijun pointed to these oil paintings,

"In 18th-century Europe, not just ordinary people, but the real military. Especially the Prussian army, which was then known as the strongest army in Europe, as well as officers from Britain and France, all of them voluntarily started wearing queues on the back of their heads."

There was a brief moment of confusion in the comment section, but without those sarcastic and sarcastic trolls, the entire discussion environment became unusually clean.

Zhu Dijun tapped on the table.

"In the past, how did those so-called history experts and professors explain this phenomenon to you? They told you that it was called 'Eastern craze.' They said that Europeans envied the strength of the Great Qing Empire in the East, so Chinese style became popular, and even the army followed suit and grew queues like the Manchus."

He let out an extremely cold sneer.

"Learn from the Qing Dynasty? Did Frederick the Great of Prussia have nothing better to do than have his elite infantry adopt the hairstyles of a group of slaves from a fishing and hunting tribe? How could they possibly come up with such a lie that completely reverses cause and effect?"

Judy pressed a button on the tablet. A huge world map unfolded in the holographic projection.

"At this point, we must align the timeline and geographical coordinates. If Europe didn't learn from the Qing Dynasty, then there's only one truth—the queue culture of Europe and the queue made of Buryat wild boar skin are essentially from the same ancestor!"

Two red lines lit up on the map.

"Here's a little-known historical fact. Look at Northern Europe. During the Ming Dynasty, it was an extension of what we called the northernmost region of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission, encompassing present-day Stockholm, Sweden; Oslo, Norway; and Helsinki, Finland. What is the latitude of this region? Between 59 and 60 degrees north latitude."

The red line runs eastward from Northern Europe across the entire Eurasian continent, penetrating straight into Siberia, now part of Russia.

"Let's look at the Republic of Buryatia. Its capital, Ulan-Ude, is located around 51 degrees north latitude, which is also the birthplace of the Wild Boar Skin. The Lake Baikal region to its north extends directly to about 55 degrees north latitude."

The two areas are encircled by red halos on the globe and are almost on the same horizontal line.

"The latitudes are highly overlapping. Both places have long, extremely cold winters and are ice fields where night alternates with the eternity of ice. This is what is known as the 'Mamawo Deer Antler Culture'."

Zhu Dijun wrote these words on the whiteboard.

"In the West, this is called Druidism or the primitive beliefs of the North; in the East, it is called Shamanism. They all worship deer antlers, wear animal skins, live in caves, and retain the most primitive and bloody custom of human sacrifice. Or, to use the words of our ancestors in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, these creatures in the high-latitude ice fields all possess the characteristics of the species 'Huaiyao'."

The pointer was used to draw circles back and forth between the east and west ends of the globe.

"In terms of longitude, they are separated by seventy or eighty degrees of longitude, spanning most of Eurasia. But so what? Geographical isolation does not mean species isolation. They are the same kind of alien group lurking in the cold regions of the earth, launching a physical strangulation of agricultural civilization at different historical junctures, under different code names."

After the online trolls were physically removed, the tens of millions of viewers remaining in the live stream were completely convinced by this logic.

The scrolling bullet comments, carrying a chilling yet intense rage, densely covered the screen.

"The case is solved. Sure enough! The so-called Eight Banners, the Eight-Nation Alliance, and even NATO as we know them, have never changed!"

"They're all in cahoots! What bullshit about 'Eastern Fever'? They're just cousins ​​exchanging family insignia!"

"I was wondering why people on the internet kept rehashing stories about how the Qing emperors looked like Westerners. Turns out it wasn't a coincidence; it was a system where emperors took turns ruling!"

"Damn descendants of the civil service, damn landlords and merchants! For such meager profits, they've even betrayed their own race, cooperating with these inhuman species to raise us like livestock!"

"Kill them all! Including those spies and moles, turn them all into specimens!"

As Zhu Dijun stared at the comments, the dark circles under his eyes gleamed with a chilling light reflecting off the cold screen.

He didn't stop the audience from venting. The truth always comes with bloody barbs; you have to bleed to scrape away the rotten flesh from the bone.

"The braid is just one of its features."

Zhu Dijun's voice interrupted the barrage of comments. He wrote three more words on the whiteboard—Centipede Button.

"Since we say they're in cahoots, let's take a look at the skins they wear, besides the rope behind their heads that symbolizes their kind."

The holographic projection instantly filled more than a dozen sets of comparison images of people.

The row on the left features the armies of the great powers in 18th and 19th century depicted in Western films and television dramas, including the British army's red toad uniforms, the French army's blue coats, and the standard uniforms of the US and Russia.

The row on the right shows the Eight Banners New Army in the late Qing Dynasty, as well as the Manchu jackets and military uniforms that often appear in movies and TV dramas.

"Look closely at the buttons on their chests."

Zhu Dijun walked over and poked heavily into a row of horizontal buttons on the projection screen with his finger.

The densely packed horizontal woven buttons on the chest of Western military uniforms and the frog buttons on Manchu military uniforms overlap directly in close-up details.

Aside from the fact that the West used metal and woven rope, the Qing Dynasty used strips of cloth, with the structure, style, and even the density of the arrangement being exactly the same. It looked like a giant centipede lying on one's chest.

"The centipede-shaped buttons on Western military uniforms and those on Qing dynasty uniforms. Tell me, is this just a historical coincidence?"

Zhu Dijun turned around, his gaze icy.

"Britain, France, the US, and Russia—different colors, different materials. But the standard template representing their group identity has never changed. They're like different branches of a head office around the world. The Manchu conquest of China was like this company changing its president in East Asia. The Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of Beijing wasn't some foreign powers invading China; it was the head office's shareholders coming to East Asia to audit the accounts and distribute profits!"

The Ming Dynasty, a parallel Yongle era.

In front of the three main halls of Beiping.

Zhu Di's gaze was fixed on the "Western military uniforms" and "Manchu military uniforms" placed side by side on the night sky. The close-up of the centipede-shaped buttons was particularly glaring in the night sky.

"Checking the accounts and receiving dividends?"

Zhu Di clenched his teeth as he read those four words.

He turned his head, looked at Zhu Gaosui who was kneeling on the ground and dared not get up, and then looked at the military officers standing to the side.

"These beasts in leather and horns, are they treating our sacred land of China as their own private domain?"

Zhu Di drew the Emperor's Sword from his waist, its blade reflecting the light of the sky.

"deliver an imperial order."

Zhu Di's voice was low, yet it carried a ruthless determination to carve through the icy plains.

"The three main battalions of the Beijing Army shall break camp immediately. I don't care about longitude or latitude. As long as they are wearing this kind of leather and have that rat's tail, they shall march north along this line, killing their way to the polar night, to the ends of the sea. Those captured, I will skin them alive and see what their bones are made of!"

The military officers knelt down on one knee with a resounding crash: "Your subjects obey the imperial decree!"

Modern setting. Studio.

Zhu Dijun picked up the tea that had already cooled down and drank it all in one gulp.

After the bloodbath just now, coupled with the series of evidence now being presented, the underlying logic of the entire worldview has been completely overturned and reshaped. The so-called "historical mainstream" that the civil service group and the remnants of the Manchu Qing dynasty painstakingly cultivated for hundreds of years has been shattered into dust under the double blow of physical force and evidence.

The tablet screen lit up slightly, and Xihe's inorganic electronic voice entered his eardrums through the hidden earphones.

"Master, the actual controller of that overseas cultural foundation is attempting to leave the country on a private jet. The flight path has been locked, and the destination is the Cayman Islands."

Zhu Dijun's fingers paused on the rim of the teacup.

"Take it down," he commanded in his mind.

"The target was in public airspace, and its crash could trigger an international incident."

Xihe provides objective advice.

"Then fake it as a mechanical failure. The plane crashes and everyone dies. Don't leave a single fingernail behind. Then send out a T-1000 to lie in wait, confirm whether the target is dead, and see who comes to investigate."

Zhu Dijun didn't even blink.

"They think they can get away scot-free by deleting data online and setting fires at archaeological sites? From today onward, whether they are Manchu remnants or academic cliques that serve as their lackeys, there is only one path—death!"

He placed the teacup on the table with a dull thud.

Zhu Dijun looked back at the camera, picked up a marker, and put a huge X on the photo of the centipede buckle.

"Now, my fellow family members, we have found the origin of the queue, the origin of the flowerpot shoes, and the origin of the military uniform. Their so-called Qing Dynasty is not a native feudal dynasty at all. It is a colony dressed in the cloak of the East, a virus that the West planted in the heart of China hundreds of years ago."

He placed his hands on the podium and leaned forward.

"Now that we've peeled away the outer layers, let's dig up some bloody stuff. Let's see what shady things their masters did in the Forbidden City."