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

Zhu Dijun's words were like a tidal wave, one after another, constantly assaulting everyone's cognitive defenses.

Murder of the emperor.

The burial was rushed.

Cleansing the harem.

To silence those who knew about the incident.

Each step points to a chilling truth—the death of the Hongwu Emperor was by no means a peaceful one!

This was a long-planned coup!

A bloody power grab orchestrated by the Crown Prince against the empire's supreme ruler!

In the Fengtian Hall of the eleventh year of the Hongwu reign, Zhu Yuanzhang no longer roared.

He simply sat quietly on the dragon throne that he had kicked over and then had the eunuchs help him up.

His face showed no anger, no sadness, only a stagnant calm.

But everyone knows that beneath this calm lies a volcano powerful enough to incinerate the entire world!

He looked up at the sky, seemingly waiting for the last, and most crucial, piece of the puzzle.

The Forbidden City in Beijing, in the fifteenth year of the Yongle reign.

Zhu Di's breathing became incredibly heavy.

He always believed that the Jingnan Campaign was a desperate counterattack he was forced to take.

He always believed that his father's death was fate.

But now, the sky is telling him that things are not as he thought.

My father's death was murder.

From the very beginning, he stood on the side of justice when he started his rebellion!

He's not rebelling, he's fighting against a traitor!

"The imperial edict..."

Zhu Di uttered two words.

He remembered that there had always been a rumor back then.

A rumor about the last edict left by the emperor before his death.

Above the sky, Zhu Dijun's gaze became sharper than ever before.

"Family members, now, all the evidence points to Zhu Yunwen's group being suspected of regicide."

"But what they need to do is not just to let the founding emperor 'pass away'."

"They also needed to ensure that Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan, who was far away in Beiping and commanded the strongest border army, would not learn the truth immediately, much less obey the imperial edict to enter the capital!"

"Because they knew very well that once Zhu Di returned to Yingtian, given his military achievements and prestige, coupled with the reliance the Taizu Emperor had placed on him in his later years, the throne would never be Zhu Yunwen's!"

"Thus, the biggest unsolved case in Ming Dynasty history began."

Zhu Dijun spoke each word clearly and deliberately, his voice resounding throughout the world.

"【Tampering with the imperial edict and forging it to disrupt the government】!"

Above the sky, the scene darkened.

That was the Yingtianfu Imperial Palace in the intercalary fifth month of the thirty-first year of the Hongwu reign.

On his deathbed, the dying Zhu Yuanzhang used his last strength to pull out a military tally and a secret edict from beside his pillow.

He entrusted it to his most trusted personal eunuch.

"go……"

"To Beiping..."

"Summon...summon the Prince of Yan...back to the capital..."

"To repel external aggression... to pacify internal strife... it must be... it must be him... who else could it be..."

His intermittent words consumed the last of his life.

With tears in his eyes, the old eunuch, clutching the military tally and secret edict that concerned the fate of the empire, rushed out of the palace like a madman, leaped onto a fast horse, and headed straight for the city gate!

He knew he had to deliver the imperial edict to the Prince of Yan before his enemies could react!

However, he was ultimately too late.

Just as he was about to rush out of the city gate of Yingtian Prefecture.

Several squads of armored soldiers from the Beijing garrison, led by two civil officials, formed a wall and blocked his path.

Those two civil officials were none other than Huang Zicheng and Qi Tai!

"Halt!" Qi Tai shouted sternly, his face grim. "The palace is under strict lockdown; no one is allowed to leave the city!"

The old eunuch was frantic. He raised the military tally in his hand and shouted, "I am acting on the late Emperor Taizu's orders to deliver an edict to His Highness Prince Yan! Who dares to stop me!"

Huang Zicheng gave a cold laugh, a hint of ruthlessness flashing in his eyes.

"The late Emperor Taizu's dying wish?"

He stepped forward slowly and snatched the scroll of secret edict from the old eunuch's arms.

"Now, we are speaking of the late Emperor Taizu's dying wish!"

Without even glancing at it, he directly stuffed the secret edict, which was enough to change the course of Ming Dynasty history, into his pocket.

Then, he gave cold orders to the soldiers around him.

"This man is falsely claiming to be acting on imperial orders and harbors treacherous intentions. Arrest him!"

"Anyone who dares to resist will be killed without mercy!"

The old eunuch's eyes were bloodshot. He looked at the stolen imperial edict and at Huang Zicheng's smug face, and he understood everything.

"You...you traitors! You usurped the imperial edict! You're trying to harm His Highness the Prince of Yan!"

He drew the short knife from his waist, and like a mad tiger, he was about to pounce.

However, the cold blade pierced through his chest in an instant.

He looked down in disbelief at the blood on his chest, and finally, he collapsed into a pool of blood, unwilling to accept his fate.

He gazed toward Beiping until his death.

That true will, from then on, disappeared without a trace.

Instead, a "new edict" was concocted by Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng and promulgated to the world in the name of Emperor Jianwen.

The will stated: "The princes who reside in their respective kingdoms are not allowed to come to mourn."

"All the vassal kings, stay put in your own fiefdoms and are not allowed to come to Nanjing for the funeral!"

Above the sky, Zhu Dijun's cold voice brought closure to this centuries-old unsolved case.

"This is the truth!"

"There's absolutely no unsolved case!"

"This was a complete and utter act of regicide, usurpation of power, and power grab!"

"They killed the founding emperor, forged his will, and cut off all possibility for Zhu Di to return to the capital!"

"They twisted what should have been a normal power transfer—'the crown prince entering the capital to ascend the throne according to the imperial edict'—into 'a traitorous minister forging an imperial edict to ascend the throne, forcing a prince guarding the frontier to rebel'!"

"They are the greatest traitors of the Ming Dynasty!"

"But my ancestor, the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, from the moment he raised the banner of pacifying the rebellion, was not rebelling!"

"He is purging the court of corrupt officials!"

"He's punishing a traitor!"

"He was carrying out the final edict of Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, an edict that had been intercepted, altered, yet forever etched between heaven and earth..."

boom--!!!

At this moment, in all time and space, in the minds of everyone looking at the sky, there was only a blank!

The ultimate truth behind the Jingnan Campaign is actually this!

The fifteenth year of the Yongle reign.

"ah--!!!"

A roar, suppressed to the extreme, erupted from Zhu Di's chest!

He slammed his fist on the imperial desk in front of him!

With a loud crash, the sturdy pear wood imperial desk was smashed into pieces by his punch!

His eyes were bloodshot!

That's it!

I see!!!

My father... Before he passed away, he passed the throne to me!

It was passed down to me!

He is not a traitor! He is not a usurper! He is the heir personally chosen by his father!

It's Zhu Yunwen! It's Huang Zicheng! It's Qi Tai!

It was this group of traitors who murdered the emperor and usurped the throne that stole his throne and made him bear the infamy for hundreds of years!

An unprecedented surge of anger and resentment, mixed with the exhilaration of finally being exonerated, rushed straight to the top of his head!

"Issue my decree!"

Zhu Di's voice was hoarse and filled with boundless killing intent.

"All members of the clans of Fang Xiaoru, Qi Tai, Huang Zicheng, and others, regardless of age or gender, who are on record, shall be sent to the Nurgan Regional Military Commission to be slaves for eternity!"

"I will make them, life after life, atone for the sins of their ancestors!"

And in that distant eleventh year of the Hongwu reign.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, all was deathly silent.

Zhu Yuanzhang slowly stood up from the dragon throne.

He didn't look at anyone.

His gaze pierced through the main hall, through the palace walls, and through a hundred years of time, landing on that future time and space, on his son Zhu Bai who was consumed by the fire, on the old eunuch who finally fell in a pool of blood, and on the altered imperial edict.

Finally, his gaze slowly fell upon the young Prince Yan, Zhu Di, who stood in the hall, his face filled with shock and bewilderment.

At this moment, there was no anger or killing intent in the eyes of this iron-blooded emperor.

Only one thing remains, like a landslide and a tsunami... regret.

And a kind of bottomless... debt.

He opened his mouth, his throat dry, as if he wanted to say something to the fourth brother.

sorry?

Did we ruin you?

But he couldn't utter a single word.

He simply stretched out his hand, trembling slightly, towards Zhu Di, as if trying to grasp something.

"Our...our...good son..."

With a thud.

This towering and upright Hongwu Emperor suddenly collapsed to his knees and knelt down in the direction of Zhu Di.