Unraveling the Network of Interests Behind National Humiliation

The crimson spotlight in the studio seemed to shoot out from the depths of hell, casting an extremely long shadow of Zhu Dijun. On the big screen, the blood-stained characters of "Gengxu Increase in Salary" had not yet faded when he suddenly turned around and slammed his fist into the center of the whiteboard.

"Family members! We just reviewed the past, so let's combine that with this national humiliation and broaden our perspective! If we look at this land from the perspective of practical interests plus a touch of conspiracy theory, you will discover something horrifying!"

Judy Jun's eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was hoarse and cracked from extreme excitement and anger.

"From the 'compensation for taxes' during the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Ming to the 'Gengxu tax increase' during the reign of Emperor Jiajing, this was not a passive reform to deal with a crisis at all. It was a grand, century-long scheme orchestrated by the Ming civil service and the Jiangnan smuggling tycoons to completely destroy the dynasty!"

The holographic screen shook violently, and the city of Beijing, the nine border garrisons, and Yangzhou in Jiangnan on the map of the Ming Dynasty were tightly bound together by three thick, blood-red chains.

"Let's start by dissecting the top traders inside the Forbidden City!"

Zhu Dijun's pointer, like a steel scalpel, pierced directly into the portrait of the Jiajing Emperor. "During Jiajing's twenty-nine-year reign, Altan Khan repeatedly requested trade, but Jiajing, extremely resolute, executed Altan's envoys three times! He resolutely refused to accept tribute! Tough guy, right? Sturdy, right?!"

Judy Jun let out a burst of laughter that could have blown the roof off.

"What a load of bull! He's just providing the strongest political shield for the Jiangnan interest groups! Think about it, if the imperial court opens up legal trade, then Ming Dynasty silk and ironware can be sold to the Mongols openly. Who will suffer the most? It's the Jiangnan merchants and civil officials who monopolize the underground smuggling channels!"

A red line instantly stretched from Jiajing to Yan Song's face.

"And look at Grand Secretary Yan Song! During the Gengxu Incident, he held absolute power. Why did he stop the Ming army from leaving the city and insist on 'fortifying the walls and not fighting,' watching the civilians being slaughtered?! Because the Yan family had to collect a full 200,000 taels of 'tribute silver' from the Lianghuai salt merchants every year! Yan Song knew very well that Anda was robbing the people of the capital region, but as long as Jiangnan was not touched, the smuggling routes would remain intact, and the extra million taels of military pay after the war could become their new spoils fund!"

The pointer suddenly spun and struck Xu Jie on the other side.

"Was Xu Jie, Yan Song's arch-enemy, the one who advocated 'temporarily allowing tribute to buy time' a good person? Absolutely not! Xu Jie's family had long ago secretly intermarried with the Huizhou salt merchants! His delaying tactic wasn't for the Ming Dynasty at all, but to buy time for the Jiangnan Group to adjust its logistics routes and prevent Anda from resorting to desperate measures and completely destroying the smuggling network! These three old foxes, in this national crisis, have a remarkably consistent goal—to maintain smuggling order!"

In a parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared intently at the sky, trembling with rage. He swept the paperweight off his desk, sending it crashing into a pillar and shattering into pieces.

"Traitors! Traitors!! This isn't the imperial court; it's a den of ghouls sucking the blood of the Ming Dynasty!"

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth twitched with rage.

"Isn't this the same method used by those scumbags in the Guo Huan case and the Empty Seal case back then?! Uncontrolled and rampant, they've even dared to borrow weapons from foreign tribes! These traitors deserve to die! Zhu Houcong, that good-for-nothing hiding in a Taoist temple, deserves to die even more! It's pitiful that our innocent people of the Ming Dynasty have become victims of these heartless, beastly monsters!"

Against the backdrop of the sky, Zhu Dijun's scalpel had already dissected the rotting flesh of the border, and a pungent stench assaulted the senses.

"A tacit agreement was reached in the imperial court, and the lackeys in the border towns immediately began their work!"

Six large, jet-black characters appeared on the screen: "[General Qiu Luan of Datong]".

"This Qiu Luan became a general by bribing Yan Shifan. When Anda Khan attacked Datong in June, Qiu Luan not only refused to fight, but also bribed Anda Khan with a large sum of money to attack Beijing instead!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his knuckles pounding the podium with a loud thud.

"My fellow collaborators! Why is Anda Khan so obedient? Because Anda Khan was originally a 'smuggling ally' of the Jiangnan Group in the borderlands! Thirty percent of the firearms equipped in Anda's army were sold to him by salt merchants from Lianghuai through smuggling channels! The reason Anda was able to invade the Great Wall was essentially because the Jiangnan Group cut off supplies; he was helping the tycoon stage a veritable armed protest to demand back wages and force the emperor to abdicate!"

The image on the large screen flashed, showing the bloodied head of Ding Rukui, the Minister of War, rolling on the ground.

"In this frenzy, the only Minister of War, Ding Rukui, who wanted to examine the accounts and reorganize the border troops, was forced to stay in the camp by Yan Song and forbidden from going into battle. In the end, Emperor Jiajing dragged him out and beheaded him to take the blame! After that beheading, no one in the Ming Dynasty dared to touch the smuggling cake of the Jiangnan Group again!"

The studio lights and shadows changed rapidly, and endless gold and silver poured onto the screen like a waterfall.

"Next! Prepare to face the true mastermind behind this elaborate scheme!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser and slapped off all the officials' names, replacing them with three names that would make the lower classes of the Ming Dynasty tremble at the mere mention of them—[Wang Zonghui of Shexian County], [Wu Jizuo of Xiuning County], and [Wang Yu of Jingyang County]!

"The Eight Great Merchants of Lianghuai! The absolute core of the Jiangnan financial clique! What shocking role did they play in this Gengxu Incident?!"

Zhu Dijun used a red pen to draw a huge closed loop of interests on the map.

"Wang Zonghui of Shexian County is a tycoon with tens of millions of taels of silver in his hands! Before the war even started, he sent his confidants to Datong to meet with Qiu Luan and Altan Khan, finalizing the Mongol cavalry's 'route to attack the capital'! They deliberately bypassed Yangzhou, where the Salt Transport Office was located! This was a targeted attack, using the flames of war to plunder the capital, creating the perfect panic to force the court to issue the 'Gengxu Tax Increase'!"

"Wu Jizuo of Xiuning! The bigwig who controls the border supply lines! Under the guise of paying military salaries, he gave Qiu Luan a full 300,000 taels of silver in one go! This isn't military salary; it's money to buy lives! It's the funds for Qiu Luan to bribe Anda! After the war, the common people were taxed an additional 1.15 million taels, and this money, through the deduction of military supplies, flowed into Wu Jizuo's pocket! From one hand to the other, the profit tripled!"

Zhu Dijun suddenly kicked the chair next to him away, his voice hoarse like a broken gong.

"The most ruthless and insane one is Wang Yu of Jingyang! He's the chief logistics manager! Anda Khan robbed the food supply of two million people around Beijing, and stole the wealth accumulated by countless Ming Dynasty citizens over generations! Wang Yu immediately mobilized a smuggling fleet to transport these blood-stained silks and porcelains directly from Tianjin Port to Jiangnan, and then resold them at exorbitant prices to Japan via Wang Zhi's armed pirate ships! Earning an astonishing 500% profit!"

"Al-Dhammachatha raided! Smuggled and resold! The tycoons profited!"

Zhu Dijun squeezed out these twelve words, one by one, through gritted teeth.

"A perfectly closed loop of interests! The lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the capital region, the decline of the Ming Dynasty's prestige—in the eyes of these salt merchants in Jiangnan, it's all just the most dazzling profit on their balance sheets!"

A parallel universe of the Qin Dynasty.

Inside the Xianyang Palace, Qin Shi Huang, Ying Zheng, stood with his hands behind his back, his deep gaze fixed on the vast and suffocating closed loop of interests on the sky. A rare, extremely complex and cold smile appeared on his imposing face.

"What a clever tactic..."

Ying Zheng coldly uttered four words. He was all too familiar with this trick. Those clans within the Qin Dynasty that had annexed land and become too powerful to control, which would later evolve into aristocratic families and powerful clans, were all wiped out in Chang'an by a descendant named Huang Chao with a tower of human heads, and then transformed back into large landowners.

The name may change, but the cannibalistic nature of the cannibals has never changed.

"They're all bloodsuckers of the exploiting class!"

Ying Zheng turned around, his cold gaze sweeping over the princes standing in the main hall, and he couldn't help but shake his head. These good-for-nothings like Fusu and Huhai, if thrown into the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty, wouldn't even survive the Renyin Palace Coup in the first episode; they would definitely be strangled to death on the dragon bed by those palace maids.

"Later generations said that Jiajing could rank among the top ten emperors of all time in terms of political maneuvering, and it is indeed true."

Ying Zheng muttered to himself coldly.

"To survive for twenty-nine years in a hellish place where every official was a traitor and the world was full of merchants, and even to maintain imperial power through the art of balancing, he was indeed a formidable and ruthless figure. Unfortunately, while he protected his Taoist temple, he completely broke the backbone of the empire."

On the celestial screen, Zhu Dijun had retreated to the edge of the holographic display, letting the enormous web of interests flicker wildly in the cold, dark red light.

"Family members, did you understand?"

Judy Jun's voice was no longer roaring, but rather extremely suppressed, carrying a chilling, bone-deep coldness that sent shivers down one's spine.

"When 1.5 tons of silver from across the land flowed into the Ming Dynasty from overseas, it all ended up in the cellars of the wealthy Jiangnan tycoons! They were richer than any country, yet they didn't pay a single penny in taxes! The soldiers on the front lines couldn't even get a complete set of armor, while the silk wrapped around a single pillar in Shen Wenrong's house was more expensive than the dragon robe worn by Emperor Chongzhen!"

He casually tossed the marker onto the black podium, making a dull thud.

"The Ming Dynasty didn't die at the hands of the Buryat barbarians, nor at the hands of Li Zicheng. Instead, it was brutally torn to pieces by this interest group through a century-long conspiracy! This is the true Ming Dynasty, which history books will never explicitly state, but you can smell the overwhelming stench of blood by following the flow of money!"

The studio lights went out all at once, plunging the world into a deathly silence. Only Judy Jun's wolf-like eyes remained fixed on the camera in the darkness.

"The Gengxu Incident is over, so please give me some time, everyone. I will dig deep into their profit-making smuggling network and find out who is involved, because these beasts are the masterminds behind the downfall of the Ming Dynasty."