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

The sky slowly darkened.

The lingering echo of Zhu Dijun's words, "Rebuild our China, the glory of the Han and Tang dynasties," seems to have transformed into a tangible mark, burning hotly etched into every time and space, and into the depths of every person's soul.

The myriad realms and timelines fell into an eerie, deathly silence.

This deathly silence is not the end, but rather the suffocating stillness before the storm arrives.

The next moment, a storm swept across eternity!

……

Qin Dynasty, the first year of the Second Emperor, Yuyang.

A group of ragged soldiers were being driven by Qin officials with whips, struggling to move forward in the muddy rain.

They were nine hundred poor people from the left side of the village who were sent to guard the border in Yuyang.

The two burly men at the head of the group were named Chen Sheng and Wu Guang.

The continuous heavy rain had caused them to miss the deadline, and according to Qin law, being late for the deadline was punishable by death.

Despair, like the cold rain, seeped into everyone's very bones.

Just then, the image of the sky flashed through Chen Sheng's mind.

The chibi-style figures dressed in coarse cloth, the dark matchlock gun, the "heartless cannon" buried in the ground, and those resounding words!

"Are kings and nobles born with a special destiny?"

He used to only dare to shout these words in his heart.

But now, his descendants in the sky tell him that this is not just a shout, but a battle flag that can rally people all over the world!

It's "idea construction"!

He glanced at Wu Guang beside him, whose eyes were also gleaming. It was as if a spark was flying between the two of them.

That night, the soldiers huddled around a weak campfire, their spirits low and lifeless.

Chen Sheng stepped forward.

Unlike in history, he didn't resort to elaborate mystification like "a book hidden in a fish's belly, or a fox's cry by a campfire."

Because the heavens have given him a more advanced and direct "divine oracle"!

"Brothers! Missing the deadline means death! Moving forward also means death!"

Chen Sheng's voice was hoarse, yet it struck everyone's heart like a heavy hammer.

"Are we just going to accept our fate like this?!"

He paused, his gaze sweeping over everyone.

"Their descendants in heaven say it was called a 'revolution'! It was a revolution to overthrow the tyrannical Qin dynasty!"

"He even taught us how to do it!"

Chen Sheng took out a tattered cloth from his bosom, which he had secretly drawn with simple charcoal patterns.

Above is a crooked, disassembled diagram of a "matchlock gun" and the structure of a "palm grenade".

"The idea! We have it! 'Are kings and nobles born with a special destiny?'"

"Organize! Let's establish it now! I and Wu Guang will be the leaders, and we'll all swear a blood oath!"

"Weapons! Our descendants have already taught us the methods! We may not have iron, but we can make pottery! We can scrape clay from walls to make gunpowder!"

He pointed towards Xianyang in the distance, and his voice suddenly rose!

"What Zhu Yuanzhang, the Han emperor who rose from humble beginnings as a beggar, could do, we can do too!"

"Rather than wait to die, let's rebel! Let's fight our way out!"

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

The roar of the nine hundred garrison soldiers tore through the rainy night!

At this moment, the flames in Dazexiang were ignited ahead of schedule with an unprecedented and more violent force!

The fifth year of the Yongjia era of the Western Jin Dynasty.

The Central Plains were engulfed in flames of war. The Xiongnu, Xianbei, Jie, Di, and Qiang—the Five Barbarian Tribes—had invaded China, and the blood of the Han people had stained the banks of the Yellow River red.

Inside a fortified village besieged by the Jie army, the last Han Chinese troops are putting up a desperate resistance.

The owner of the fortified village was an old man with white hair and beard. He had been an official in the Jin Dynasty, but now he was just a country gentleman barely clinging to life.

Around him were thousands of displaced Han Chinese people.

Outside the city, the Jie people were engaging in inhumane shouting and slaughter.

Despair enveloped everyone.

"There's no hope..."

A young man slumped to the ground, muttering to himself.

"We...are all going to die here, treated like 'two-legged sheep'..."

"No!"

The old man suddenly stood up, and an astonishing light burst forth from his cloudy eyes.

He thought of the sky, and of the heart-wrenching screams of his descendant, Zhu Dijun.

"Expel the Tartars and restore China!"

These eight words were more shocking to him than any divine oracle, especially for someone living during the Five Barbarian Invasions!

"Future generations will say that our enemy is the 'Tartars'! Our goal is to 'restore China'!"

The old man, trembling, brought out several large notebooks from the secret room, filled with hastily written notes made with a brush.

The top was covered with gunpowder formulas, musket blueprints, and sketches of the "heartless cannon."

"Later generations also said that to deal with jackals, you must use a hunting rifle! To deal with beasts who don't treat us like human beings, you must use 'heartless' methods!"

He distributed the booklet to all the blacksmiths, carpenters, and potters in the fortified village.

"This is a divinely bestowed dragon-slaying technique!"

"Melt all our ironware! Go and roll up the gun barrels!"

"Bring out all our clay pots! Let's make 'Palm Thunder'!"

"Go to the toilet, go to the corner, go to the stable! Scrape up all the dirt you can, and I'll refine it into saltpeter!"

The old man's voice echoed within the small fortified village.

"I care nothing for the Jin dynasty! From this day forward, we fight only for ourselves, for the bloodline of the Han people!"

"Our organization will be called the 'Restoration Army of Han'!"

"Our banner is: 'Expel the Manchus, restore China!'"

Inside the fortified village, all the numb eyes were rekindled at this moment!

It was a flame mixed with hatred, hope, and madness!

They didn't know if they would survive, but they knew that before they died, they would make the beasts outside the city taste the anger forged by the blood and fire of the Han people!

……

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, the sixth year of the Xiande era of the Later Zhou Dynasty.

A commander named Zhao Kuangyin was leading a large army north to resist the combined forces of the Northern Han and the Khitan.

When they arrived at Chenqiao Post Station, the soldiers looked at the afterglow of the setting sun and discussed among themselves.

"The descendants of that time were right. In this chaotic era of the Five Dynasties, emperors changed faster than clothes. Whom are we fighting for?"

"Yes, in all this fighting, it's our Han brothers who die, while the Khitan dogs to the north benefit!"

"You all know, didn't Zhu Yuanzhang, the beggar emperor, also rise from a lowly soldier?"

"And what about the methods of using firearms and cannons taught by later generations? If we could master them..."

Each comment, like a spark, landed in Zhao Kuangyin's heart.

Looking at his battle-hardened elite force, an unprecedented idea began to sprout within him.

That night, his younger brother Zhao Guangyi and his trusted advisor Zhao Pu secretly entered his tent.

"Brother, this is the will of Heaven; we must not ignore it!"

Zhao Pu's eyes were filled with fanaticism.

"The 'revolution' that later generations speak of is not simply a change of dynasty, but the establishment of an 'ideology' that will last for ten thousand generations!"

"Expel the Tartars and restore China! These eight words are the righteous justification for our expedition!"

Zhao Kuangyin remained silent.

His thoughts went further than Zhao Pu's.

The techniques transmitted by the Heavenly Curtain are not only techniques for rebellion, but also techniques for strengthening a nation!

That "idea building", that "organizational network", that "firearms" that can be mass-produced!

If he could master it, he could not only replace the Later Zhou, but he could even accomplish the great feat that no dynasty in the Central Plains had ever achieved—completely eliminate the northern threat and recover Yan and Yun!

"Being adorned in the yellow robe" may be the will of Heaven.

But this time, Zhao Kuangyin wanted more than just a dragon robe.

What he wanted was to follow the path pointed out by his descendant Zhu Dijun and create a glorious and prosperous era that truly belonged to the Han people!

The Ming Dynasty, Hongwu Hall.

Zhu Yuanzhang looked at the "rebels" in the sky who had risen up in different times and spaces because of the words of his descendant Zhu Dijun, and instead of being angry, he was excited and his face was flushed, as if he were drunk.

"Okay! Okay! Okay!"

He shouted "Good!" three times and slammed his hand on the dragon throne, making the entire hall vibrate.

"This is what a true Han Chinese man should be like!"

"Write it all down!" he said, pointing to the historians who were writing furiously.

"Write down the deeds of all these people! Chen Sheng, that unknown old man, and Zhao Kuangyin! Their successes and failures will serve as teaching materials for the princes and grandsons of our Great Ming Dynasty!"

He looked at Zhu Biao and Zhu Di, his eyes burning with fervor.

"See that? What we're passing down is the art of slaying dragons! It's a spark that ignites a prairie fire!"

"This fire can burn down the grasslands of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, burn down the pigsties of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and burn down all tyrannies who dare to oppress our Han people!"

"This is 'revolution'!"

"This is the foundation upon which my Great Ming Dynasty was founded!"

This moment marks the transition from the mire of the late Qin Dynasty to the bloodbath of the Five Barbarian Tribes, and then to the chaos of the Five Dynasties.

Countless seeds of despair, resentment, and anger sprouted simultaneously, nourished by "ideas" and "technology."

An unprecedented and massive storm that has swept through thousands of years of Chinese history has already taken shape!

And the one who started all of this, Zhu Dijun, had just turned off the live stream, yawned, and was about to make a bowl of fragrant braised beef noodles.

He was completely unaware of the terrifying, towering waves that his "teaching lesson" had just unleashed in the long river of history.