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

Holographic projections flickered across Zhu Dijun's face. He swiped his finger across the tablet screen, and several vintage color photographs instantly replaced the previous image of Qing Dynasty uniforms.

The photo shows a huge construction site. Beneath the excavated loess layer, countless deep pits and ruined brick and stone structures are exposed. A timestamp of 2006 is printed on the corner.

"Family members. Since we've brought up the Forbidden City and those foreign masters, let's shift the timeline a bit to the modern era. Let me tell you something that many of you who are older might remember."

Zhu Dijun walked to the whiteboard and fiddled with a marker in his hand.

"In 2006, during the preparations for the Beijing Olympics, large-scale ancient ruins were indeed unearthed at the construction site of the Olympic Park."

He wrote the words "2006, Beijing construction site" on the whiteboard.

"How was it reported in the news at the time? Mainstream media and archaeological experts jointly issued a statement, confidently telling the people of the whole country that this was an ancient tomb complex from the Yuan Dynasty. More than 100 tombs were excavated, and more than 600 cultural relics, including porcelain, pottery, and bronze mirrors, were unearthed."

A cold smile appeared on Zhu Dijun's lips.

"Experts say this proves Beijing's historical significance as the capital of the Yuan Dynasty. As for the widely circulated rumors about sacrificial altars and underground formations, they dismiss them all as nonsense."

He drew a heavy cross on "Yuan Dynasty tomb".

"But what exactly was the Yuan Dynasty?"

The holographic screen split in two instantly.

On the left is the extant and widely circulated official portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. He has a round face, thick beard and hair, and exudes an aura of imperial authority that commands respect without anger.

On the right is a portrait of Genghis Khan Temujin, the founding emperor of the Mongol Empire, who is also revered by historians.

Zhu Dijun pressed a button on the tablet. The facial features of the two portraits were directly extracted, overlapped, and aligned by AI.

Facial contours, eye spacing, the direction of the nasal bridge, even the depth of the nasolabial folds. Except for the hat and clothing colors, the two faces fit together perfectly the instant they overlap. They are completely the same person.

The live stream chat remained silent for five seconds before bursting into an alarmingly fast scrolling speed.

"Holy crap? This isn't just a resemblance, it's like the same artist drew this face from the same source!"

"I was wondering why Zhu Yuanzhang and Genghis Khan always looked familiar when I read history books. Were they the same person with different skins?"

"Wait a minute, if the portraits are copied and pasted, then the Yuan Dynasty..."

"It's not over yet."

Zhu Dijun ignored the comments and the images on the screen changed again.

This time, on the left is a portrait of Kublai Khan, the Yuan Dynasty emperor, and on the right is a historical record of a portrait of Zhu Houzhao, the Ming Dynasty emperor. Not only are their facial features highly similar, but a historical record also pops up at the bottom of the screen.

"Emperor Wuzong of Ming, Zhu Houzhao. The Zhengde Emperor, who was smeared by the civil official group as an absurd emperor who loved war. In historical records, he often gave himself various names. The most famous of these foreign names is 'Kublai Khan'."

Zhu Dijun turned around, placed his hands on the podium, and his gaze pierced the screen like a knife.

"In the past few days, after eliminating the traitors, we have obtained some of the missing fragments."

"There was no Mongol Empire!"

The moment those four words were uttered, the air in the studio became frighteningly heavy.

"This is Buryat wild boar skin. It's a fabricated history created out of thin air to cover up the true territory and timeline of the Ming Dynasty. They forcibly separated the Ming Dynasty's military achievements in the early period, such as conquering the world and spanning Eurasia, and the Ming Dynasty's victories that made the West kneel and beg for mercy, and attached them to a fictional 'Mongol Empire'."

"They not only stole the technology of the Ming Dynasty and changed the dates of its reigns, they even used the faces of the Ming emperors to create fictitious ancestors for themselves!"

The Ming Dynasty. A parallel Hongwu era.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, there was a deathly silence.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared at the so-called "Genghis Khan" portrait on the sky, his withered fingers picking at the edge of the imperial desk until wood chips appeared.

"A brilliant tactic. A truly brilliant tactic."

Zhu Yuanzhang, enraged, laughed instead, his laughter echoing through the hall, carrying a chilling murderous intent.

"Tear our faces off and paint them with the skin of foreigners. Put the blame for the land we conquered on those bloodthirsty beasts."

He turned to look at Zhu Biao, his eyes bloodshot.

"Biao'er, did you see that? If we don't kill all five of these Mountain and Sea Thieves, hundreds of years from now, they'll have dug up our Zhu family's ancestral graves and used them as masks!"

Zhu Biao did not try to calm his father down as usual. The usually gentle crown prince was now as white as paper, and his eyes were colder than ice.

"Father."

Zhu Biao lifted his hem and knelt on the gold brick.

"Your Majesty, I humbly request that you dispatch an additional 300,000 border troops. Do not sheath your swords, do not accept surrenders. Slaughter all those foreigners beyond the Great Wall, whether they stand on two legs or run on four, until they are wiped out."

"And their caves, don't they love digging? Pour oil into them and burn them! All women, young and old, must be killed! Cut off their maternal cultural heritage."

The Ming Dynasty. A parallel Yongle era.

Zhu Di looked at the sky, his imperial sword already shattering the imperial desk in front of him.

"Erase my dynasty and fabricate a new dynasty to replace the military achievements of the Ming Dynasty."

Zhu Di was panting heavily, his chest heaving violently.

"These wild boars in their skin and horns, they not only want to seize China, they want to tear the backbone of China out of its roots and stuff it into their pile of stinking bones!"

He pointed to the sky and roared at Zhu Gaosui.

"Send the order to the three main camps! Kill them all! Turn the northern snowfields red! Burn those cave-dwelling monsters to ashes underground!"

Modern setting. Studio.

Zhu Dijun slapped the whiteboard hard, bringing the topic back to the beginning.

"Since there was no Yuan Dynasty, what exactly was unearthed from beneath the Olympic Park in 2006?"

He zoomed in on the panoramic view of the construction site and highlighted several vertical shafts that were tens of meters deep.

"Back then, in 2006, an extremely alarming claim circulated online."

Zhu Dijun's voice was low, revealing a cold, hard tone as he recounted a real case.

"Legend has it that an altar used for holding religious ceremonies was unearthed in the capital. Its discovery revealed to the world that the Olympic Park was not a Yuan Dynasty tomb at all, but a huge burial ground for children's corpses."

"That statement specifies the exact timeframe—the eighth year of the Yongzheng Emperor's reign. A powerful earthquake struck Beijing. In order to suppress the so-called 'dragon vein,' the Yongzheng Emperor secretly conscripted 500 young boys and girls for a live sacrifice, burying them alive in the ground. This is what was unearthed back then."

The live stream chat was flooded with incredulous exclamation marks. Many people recalled that when the internet was just becoming widespread more than a decade ago, online forums and message boards were indeed filled with this urban legend.

"That rumor was quickly suppressed back then," Judy Jun sneered.

"How to suppress it? Just look at how the West wages a propaganda war."

He pulled up a screenshot of a news article from that year on his tablet.

"They used their familiar rhetoric to tell the public: it's all from the Yuan Dynasty, so we should believe in science."

Zhu Dijun immediately closed the screenshot and threw it into the trash can.

"Nonsense! They're the ones who compiled the history, they're the ones who dug up the graves, and they're the ones who wrote the reports. Of course they wouldn't leave behind any historical records, and of course they wouldn't issue any reports. Who would record the evidence of their own crime of nailing 500 living Chinese children to the ground?"

The holographic screen went black, and then a set of old black and white photos suddenly appeared.

They were several conical brick towers standing in the wilderness, half-buried in the ground. The towers had no doors, only a few small, dark windows at the top. In the soil beneath the towers, countless scattered fragments of bone lay half-hidden.

"Infant Tower".

Zhu Dijun read out these three words.

"Many people don't know this. But what is it actually? Refer to the truth discovered during the Boxer Rebellion."

He retrieved the information about the mythical creatures in the Classic of Mountains and Seas again and placed it together with the Infant Nursery Tower.

"Combining what I just mentioned about the giant, man-eating trees of the West, and the monsters in those underground caves, this isn't superstition at all; it's a species' instinct! They are feeding! They are using the flesh and blood of the Chinese people to nourish those alien beings of the same origin as them!"

Zhu Dijun slammed his fist on the podium.

"500 young boys and girls were used in shamanic rituals."

The comment section was like a powder keg that had been detonated, going completely crazy.

"Kill all the wild boars and hide them!!!"

"Eating baby bok choy! These beasts are eating our children with mites in the ground!"

"The nursery tower is basically a monster's feeding trough! There was one of those things at the entrance of my old village, and the elders wouldn't let us go near it. Turns out there really were filthy things there!"

"Traitors deserve to die!"

The screen was filled with rage, but not a single word of rebuttal.

Judy Jun straightened up as he watched the rapidly updating subtitles. He tilted his head in feigned confusion, his gaze sweeping across the camera, his tone carrying a chilling mockery.

"That's strange."

He spread his hands.

"Having gone this far, I've laid my bare hands. Where are those people who were just vehemently accusing me of promoting nihilism?"

Zhu Dijun picked up the cup, took a sip of water, and looked at the camera.

"Why don't you come out and walk around? Why aren't you saying anything? Is the keyboard broken, or...?"

He paused for a second. In the earpiece, Xihe's cold, electronic voice reported precisely on time: [T-850 Mobile Squad's clearing mission complete. All 1240 internal spy nodes within the territory have been physically paralyzed, with no deaths, and all are in a partially shut-down state.]

Zhu Dijun put down the water glass, a cold and hard smile curving his lips.

"Or perhaps your hands and feet are no longer able to type?"