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

The 15th year of the Yongle reign, Beijing, the Forbidden City.

The roar, powerful enough to shatter gold bricks, gradually subsided.

The fragments of the imperial desk were scattered all over the ground, just like Zhu Di's heart, which had been torn apart and tortured countless times.

He stood amidst the chaos, his crimson eyes slowly closing. When he opened them again, the fury that had been so intense it could have set the world ablaze had vanished without a trace.

Instead, there was a kind of calm that made everyone present, including the black-clad prime minister Yao Guangxiao, tremble in their souls...

A deathly stillness, a coldness, as if all emotions had been burned away.

"hehe……"

A soft laugh escaped from Zhu Di's throat.

"Ha ha ha ha……"

The laughter grew louder and louder, yet it carried not a trace of joy. The laughter echoed through the empty Fengtian Hall, more chilling than the most mournful wails of ghosts…

He smiled.

He thought of his elder brother, Zhu Biao.

That gentle and refined elder brother, who always protected him and pleaded for him when their father was angry. History records say he died of illness, and he believed it. But now the heavens are telling him that his elder brother's benevolence has become the death warrant that the civil service is using to push him to his death!

He thought of his mother, Empress Ma.

That loving mother who toiled her entire life, mending clothes for her father and his brothers. History records say she died of illness, and he believed it. But now he understands that his mother died of grief and despair, having lost her beloved grandson in succession and about to lose her beloved son!

He then thought of his brothers, the King of Qin and the King of Jin.

His two elder brothers, who had stood with him in guarding the northern frontier and built a Great Wall of flesh and blood for the Ming Dynasty, died of illness around the same time, clearing the way for Zhu Yunwen's ascension to the throne by eliminating the last of his senior relatives.

What a convenient way to say it is "died of illness"!

What a coincidence that he "died of illness"!

Finally, he remembered his father, the Hongwu Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, whom he had lived in his shadow his entire life, whom he both respected and feared.

His father's dying edict summoning him to the capital was intercepted.

His father's approval of him, the phrase "To repel foreign aggression and pacify the interior, who else but you can do it?", was altered to "When the princes are in the country, they must not come to mourn."

He went from being the emperor's personally chosen guardian of the empire to a traitor who was even stripped of his right to attend the funeral!

Hahahaha!

That's it!

So that's how it is!

Why did all the scholars in the world condemn him as a traitor when he raised an army to quell the rebellion?

Why did Fang Xiaoru refuse to yield even unto death, willing to have his entire clan exterminated to denounce him as a usurper?

Why is it that after he ascended the throne, despite his diligent efforts and the creation of a prosperous era, the word "usurper" could never be erased from the pages of history?

He fought his whole life, and he spent his whole life proving himself.

He wanted to prove to his deceased father that he was more suited to be emperor than his weak nephew!

But in the end, he realized that he didn't need to prove anything!

Because he was the heir chosen by the Emperor!

He's not rebelling!

He is not usurping the throne!

He was simply carrying out a final edict that had been delayed for four years and obscured by bloodshed and conspiracy...

"Traitor to the nation..."

Zhu Di's laughter abruptly stopped. He uttered those two words in a low voice, devoid of any emotion, yet the temperature in the hall suddenly plummeted to freezing.

"So it turns out, it was a group of traitors who, colluding from within and without, betrayed my Great Ming Dynasty!"

He slowly turned around, his gaze sweeping over the silent officials below the prince.

Yao Guangxiao, Qiu Fu, Zhu Neng... these civil and military officials who crawled out of the piles of corpses during the Jingnan Rebellion, now looked at their emperor with nothing but endless horror in their hearts.

They had never seen Zhu Di like this before.

Not the Prince of Yan who led from the front on the battlefield and seemed like a madman.

It was not the same Emperor Yongle who was capricious and ruthless in court.

The man before me was like a peerless weapon whose bloodstains and dust had been wiped away, leaving only its purest sharpness.

His gaze swept calmly over everyone, yet made each person feel as if they had been thoroughly seen through, inside and out.

"Yao Guangxiao," Zhu Di said calmly.

"Your subject is here." Yao Guangxiao bowed, his voice trembling slightly.

"Back then, you advised me to raise an army, saying that the world was in turmoil because it was the will of Heaven," Zhu Di said, looking at him. "Now, the heavens tell me that this mandate of Heaven has always been with me!"

"I am not a traitor!"

His voice suddenly rose to a high pitch, like a dragon's roar echoing through the heavens, making the entire hall resonate!

"I am punishing a rebel!"

"Those who obstructed my army during the Jingnan Campaign are all accomplices of traitors!"

"Those who followed the likes of Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng during the Jianwen reign, advocating for the reduction of the power of the princes and framing members of the imperial family, were all accomplices in the regicide and usurpation of the imperial edict!"

"My killing them is not indiscriminate slaughter, but a purge of our own ranks!"

"My execution of Fang Xiaoru's ten clans is not cruelty, but rather the elimination of a traitor for the sake of the country!"

"My infamy and the blood on my hands are all thanks to those traitors of the Khazar kingdom hiding in the gutter, and the remnants of the former Yuan dynasty in the court who have forgotten their ancestors!"

"Good, good, good!" Zhu Di said "good" three times in a row, and the flame in his eyes finally reignited, a flame of revenge that was enough to burn the whole world to ashes!

"Did they think that once I ascended the throne, the game was over?"

"No!"

"This game has only just begun!"

He abruptly waved his dragon robe, strode up the steps, and sat back on the dragon throne that symbolized supreme power.

"Issue my decree!"

A chilling voice echoed throughout the world!

"Firstly! Rewrite the 'Veritable Records of the Taizu Emperor' and the 'Chronicle of the Jingnan Campaign'! Record in history all that the heavens have revealed: regicide, usurpation of imperial edicts, and the calamity of the Khazars! I want all future generations of the Ming Dynasty to know why I raised an army! I want all the people of the world to see the true faces of those so-called 'wise and virtuous ministers'!"

"Secondly! Investigate the students and associates of Qi Tai, Huang Zicheng, Fang Xiaoru, and others. Thoroughly investigate anyone who has had close ties with them or who has cheered for them! If any connection is found to the 'tax farming system' or the 'remnants of the former Yuan dynasty,' the Embroidered Uniform Guard can handle it on its own without reporting it to the authorities!"

Upon hearing this, the courtiers were terrified!

This second decree is even more terrifying than the previous one that exterminated ten clans!

This is to uproot the civil service power of the Jianwen era, leaving not a single blade of grass behind!

However, this is not the end.

Zhu Di's gaze pierced through the main hall, reaching the boundless northern grasslands and the distant western sea.

His voice became distant and sinister.

"Did they think that by breaking up into smaller groups and going into hiding, I wouldn't be able to find them?"

"Do they think that by hiding overseas or in the northern deserts, I can't do anything to them?"

"I want them to know that all land under heaven belongs to the emperor!"

"Issue my third imperial decree!"

"Order Ji Gang, the commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, to establish a separate department within the Embroidered Uniform Guard, named—"

Zhu Di paused for a moment, then spoke slowly and deliberately.

"【Eastern Police Station】!"

"It's called the Eastern Depot! It's controlled by the Grand Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, and its sole purpose is to investigate and apprehend the remnants of the 'Khazar'! It bypasses the Three Judicial Offices and reports directly to me!"

"I will give you power! I will give you manpower! I will give you financial resources!"

"From high-ranking officials to ordinary peddlers, anyone suspected of colluding with the enemy 'Khazar' can be investigated, arrested, and interrogated by the Eastern Depot!"

"I will ensure that there is nowhere left in this Ming Dynasty where traitors can hide!"

At this moment, the wheels of history roared with a piercing sound.

The Eastern Depot, a terrifying institution that was originally slated to be born years later due to political struggles, was given an unprecedented, sacred yet bloody mission by the Yongle Emperor at this moment.

Its creation was no longer intended to check and balance civil officials.

Rather, it was to launch a total war of no return against a civilization that had been lurking for millennia!