The Ultimate Accelerator That Crushed the Ming Dynasty

The studio's blinding scarlet spotlight suddenly shone, and Zhu Dijun, who was about to turn around to point to the map of the southern sea area, abruptly stopped in mid-air.

He suddenly turned around and slammed his hand on the holographic keyboard, producing an extremely piercing buzzing sound.

"Family members! At the end just now, I gave you a preview of that anti-Japanese madman in the south. Aren't you all eager to see how he kicks the heads of the Japanese pirates around like footballs in Jiangnan?!"

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly against the podium, his eyes burning with a frenzied rage that seemed intent on utterly exposing the darker side of history.

"But hold on, damn it! Before we talk about him, we need to forcefully shift our focus back to Beijing!"

He grabbed a pure black marker and violently drew a huge black vortex on the whiteboard.

"Why?! Because the Ming Dynasty wasn't destroyed by Japanese pirates! The Gengxu Incident not only exposed the Ming Dynasty's military weaknesses, but also directly triggered the ultimate catastrophe that led to its demise! If you don't understand this whole mess, you simply won't understand why the Ming Dynasty died at the hands of a peasant uprising!"

The large screen suddenly shook, and a top-secret official report recording the post-war losses was highlighted and enlarged.

Four shocking blood-red characters slammed onto the center of the screen—【Two Million Humans and Animals】!

"What is this?! This is the work of that 'predator' Yan Song called a 'thief' who steals and runs away after he's had his fill!" Zhu Dijun's pointer lashed hard at the string of numbers, his voice hoarse as if dripping blood.

"Anda Khan rampaged across the area surrounding the capital, plundering as many as two million people and livestock! Countless houses were burned to ruins, and all the grain and farm tools were looted!"

"What was the result? From that winter to the following year, an epic famine broke out in the Gyeonggi region! People had no houses to live in, no food to eat, no oxen to plow their fields, and they sold their children and even resorted to cannibalism!"

Judy Jun approached the camera, angrily pointing at the screen.

"The heartland of the Ming Dynasty has become a living hell!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the "two million people and livestock" displayed on the sky. His calloused hands trembled as he pried a piece of hardwood off the edge of the imperial desk, blood seeping from under his fingernails.

"Two million people and livestock..."

Zhu Yuanzhang's voice was hoarse and inhuman, and his eyes were bloodshot.

"That old scoundrel Yan Song dared to deceive the emperor! Jiajing, you little beast, just to protect your dilapidated Taoist temple, you stood by and watched my people be trampled on by the barbarians! The faces of our Ming ancestors have been smeared into a cesspool by these unworthy descendants!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel brutally dug deep into Da Ming's wound.

"Faced with such a tragic situation, what did Jiajing do?! Not only did he not send troops to avenge the defeat, but he also, under the duress of Anda's curved sword, signed a humiliating treaty!"

Zhu Dijun wrote the four characters "Tonggong Mutual Market" on the whiteboard, and then forcefully drew a shameful red cross on it.

"Anda Khan declared: Give me money and trade with me, or I will attack you every year! Jiajing was frightened and compromised! The Ming Dynasty was forced to agree to open horse markets in Datong and other places!"

Judy Jun let out a chilling laugh.

"This isn't a trade market! This is the government admitting defeat! It's sending an absolutely deadly signal to all the foreign races in the world: the Ming Dynasty is a bleeding, rotting corpse, and anyone can take a bite out of it!"

The studio lights flickered violently, like the dying spasms of the Ming Dynasty.

"The nation's prestige has been tarnished, famine is rampant, and the granaries are empty. The capital's outer walls need rebuilding, and the border regions need replenished with weapons. Where will the money come from?!"

Judy Jun suddenly stood up straight, loosened his tie, and roared.

"Minister of Revenue Sun Yingkui has stepped forward! These civil officials are all useless when it comes to governing the country, but when it comes to how to squeeze money out of the people, they are all geniuses, one in a century!"

A series of official documents on salt administration reform quickly appeared on the screen.

"First move! Adjust the salt administration! The Ministry of Revenue has issued an explicit order to restore the old salt tax system in Shandong! What does that mean?" Zhu Dijun pointed his finger directly at the camera.

"They forcibly took the salt permits of those salt-producing laborers who had fled because they couldn't afford the heavy taxes—a total of over 12 permits—and used them to solicit investment from border merchants to raise funds for the army!"

"They don't even spare the bones of the dead and those who fled! Using the same methods as Zhongyan Salt, they continue to exploit the lowest-level salt producers, squeezing every last drop of profit from them!"

But this was just the appetizer. Judy pulled up a chair, sat down heavily, and sank into a somber shadow.

"Family members, the ultimate nuclear bomb that truly crushed the Ming Dynasty and completely wiped out its 276-year foundation has finally been detonated at this critical moment of despair."

In the very center of the whiteboard, he wrote four large, blood-red characters with great force and deliberation: "[Gengxu Increased Salary]!"

"To fill this terrifying military expenditure hole, the Ming court implemented an extremely heinous and outrageous system in addition to all regular taxes nationwide—additional levies!"

Zhu Dijun's voice echoed in the studio like a chilling wind from hell.

"For the first time nationwide, an additional 1.15 million taels of temporary military pay will be levied! Family members, please pay attention to the words 'additional levy'!"

He grabbed the blackboard eraser and slapped it onto the whiteboard.

"The land tax in the Ming Dynasty is governed by ancestral rules and cannot be increased arbitrarily. But the civil service has come up with this trick! Since the regular tax cannot be touched, then I'll use 'national crisis' as an excuse to forcibly impose a temporary tax on you!"

"Considering what I just mentioned about the 'Single Whip Law' and the 'Land Tax in Silver,' do the math! The common people were already bankrupted by the silver scissors imposed by the government and gentry, and now they've been burdened with over a million taels of military pay out of nowhere! Who's going to pay that?!"

Zhu Dijun's eyes were bloodshot.

"Would those like Xu Jie in Jiangnan, who own hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile land, pay?! No! They have tax-exempt privileges! This 115 million taels will be entirely burdened on those impoverished farmers who have just been robbed by the Mongols and have nothing left to eat!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

A deathly silence fell over the Forbidden City. Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, stared intently at the four dark red characters on the sky: "Gengxu Increase in Military Pay." He was struck dumb as if by lightning and slumped onto his dragon throne.

"Additional levies... the beginning..."

Emperor Chongzhen's face was ashen, and tears of despair welled up in his eyes. He had been desperately trying to raise money and increase taxes, and all the officials in the court told him that this was an emergency measure. But he never knew that the poison that would lead to the downfall of the country had already been sown a hundred years earlier during the reign of Emperor Jiajing.

"And family members!"

Zhu Dijun's voice suddenly rose, piercing everyone's eardrums.

"Have you ever seen a feudal dynasty take the temporary taxes it collected and then bring them back down the same way?!"

On the holographic screen, the four characters "Gengxu Increase in Taxes" began to multiply and split wildly, transforming into three colossal black beasts that blotted out the sky, tightly gripping the throat of the Ming Dynasty's territory.

"Once this loophole is opened, it can never be closed again! This is the absolute source of the infamous 'Three Taxes' of the late Ming Dynasty—the Liaodong Tax, the Suppression Tax, and the Training Tax!"

Judy Jun brandished his pointer and lashed it hard at the screen.

"The Jiajing Emperor lacked funds to deal with the Mongols, so he increased the levies! The Wanli Emperor lacked funds to fight the Sarhu rebellion, so he increased the levies! The Chongzhen Emperor lacked funds to fight the Jurchens and suppress bandits, so he continued to increase the levies at an insane rate! In the face of any crisis, the court's only instinct was to bleed the poorest people dry!"

"What was the final result?!"

Zhu Dijun spread his arms wide, making an extremely cruel, explosive gesture.

Boom! The map of the Ming Dynasty on the big screen completely collapsed, turning into endless flames and an army of refugees.

"Poverty breeds rebellion! The common people couldn't pay their regular taxes or the surcharges, so they were forced to raise the flag in rebellion! Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong's armies swept across the country, forcing Emperor Chongzhen to climb that old crooked tree on Coal Hill! And the seed of that tree was planted by those upright civil officials themselves at the spoils-dividing meeting after the Gengxu Incident in the 29th year of Jiajing's reign!"

The live stream chat fell silent for more than ten seconds before erupting into unprecedented despair and anger.

"This is the truth! The so-called emergency response is just driving the lower classes to the brink of despair!"

"The root of all evil! Emperor Chongzhen was essentially paying off this deadly high-interest loan for Emperor Jiajing and the civil service!"

["Those brilliant minds who previously claimed they could save the Ming Dynasty if they were Emperor Chongzhen, please travel back in time and save the Ming Dynasty. Both Emperor Chongzhen and Zhu Yuanzhang would wholeheartedly agree."]

"The Ming Dynasty died because of its finances, because of the increased levies, and because of these hypocritical beasts who not only refuse to pay taxes but also leech off its wealth!"

The studio lights suddenly went out, leaving only a dark red afterglow that shone on Judy Jun's face, which was filled with extreme mockery.

"Compromise in trade masked the weakness of the military. The levy increase in 1930 destroyed the economic foundation of the empire. From that year onward, the Ming Dynasty was like a heavy truck with its brakes completely failed and its accelerator welded shut, hurtling headlong towards a precipice."

He casually tossed the blackboard eraser onto the table, patted the chalk dust off his hands, and his eyes turned extremely dark.

"The north was forced open by Altan Khan, starting a deadly cycle of self-destruction. In the south, due to the central government's rampant levies and additional taxes, the coastal people who could not pay taxes, the bankrupt cooks, and the unemployed sailors were driven to the brink of despair."

Zhu Dijun turned around, and the holographic screen lit up again the turbulent Jiangnan sea area covered with skull and crossbones flags.

"They took up Japanese swords, shaved their heads, and joined Wang Zhi's smuggling fleet. An extremely brutal internal struggle, forced upon them by their own people, was the Jiajing Great Japanese Pirate Raid, which officially turned Jiangnan into a battlefield."

He leaned slightly forward, a chilling murderous intent flashing in his eyes, his voice extremely low, like the sound of a demon sharpening its knife before execution.

"Alright, family, if we go back in time to the Ming Xiaozong era and the 'color-rating system,' and then pull back to the point of the Ming Dynasty's demise, what would you all find shocking?"