A Courtesan's Suppression of Japanese Pirates and the Unofficial History of the Bla

The studio's dim gold lighting resembled a pool of solidified rust.

Zhu Dijun bent down, grabbed two bottles of Wahaha mineral water from the podium, unscrewed the caps, and gulped down two mouthfuls in quick succession. The icy water suppressed the violent anger churning in his chest.

"Bang"

With a loud thud, he crushed the empty plastic bottle and slammed it into the wastepaper basket.

Zhu Dijun took a deep breath and placed his hands on the holographic control panel.

"Family, let's catch our breath first." His voice was hoarse, tinged with extreme sarcasm.

"Those official histories were too damn bloody; the Ming Dynasty was such a rotten cauldron that it made me want to vomit. Now let's change things up and see how those literati in Jiangnan, wielding their pens, fabricated unofficial histories and profited from human suffering in this desperate situation of mountains of corpses and seas of blood!"

He slammed his fist on the holographic keyboard several times with extreme violence, and several yellowed Ming Dynasty opera scripts and storytelling fragments crashed onto the large screen.

Several large, gleaming gold characters pierced through the dark gray background—"The Tale of Kim Van Kieu"!

"This is the most widely circulated and almost household name in the Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui regions back then—the legend of Wang Cuiqiao!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed a red laser pointer, fixing the light spot firmly on the woman's portrait on the page. "How is it recorded in official history? Extremely brief! Xu Hai was defeated and killed, and his wife, Wang, drowned by jumping into the water while being escorted to Nanjing. Just that one sentence!"

He slapped the screen:

"But in the mouths of these storytellers and opera singers from Jiangnan at the end of the Ming Dynasty, it became an epic drama even more melodramatic than a Hollywood blockbuster!"

The changing images on the holographic screen depict legendary scenes from unofficial historical accounts.

"How did these people make this up? They say Wang Cuiqiao was originally a stunningly beautiful courtesan on the Qinhuai River, who was taken in by Luo Longwen, the Huizhou merchant and a black glove of the Yan faction we mentioned earlier. Later, she ended up at sea and was forced to marry Xu Hai, a major leader of the Japanese pirates!"

Zhu Dijun sneered with disdain, "Popular rumors say that Hu Zongxian sent Luo Longwen with a large sum of money to Xu Hai's camp to persuade him, not because of any divisive tactics or high-ranking positions, but entirely because of Wang Cuiqiao's pillow talk!"

On the big screen, lyrics from a traditional opera, featuring Wang Cuiqiao tearfully persuading Xu Hai to surrender, appeared.

"It was all thanks to this woman's persuasion that Xu Hai fell into the trap, leading to infighting that resulted in the deaths of Chen Dong and Ma Ye, before he was finally trapped and died in Shenzhuang!"

Judy Jun's voice gradually rose, tinged with a chilling mockery.

"That's not all! After Xu Hai's death, unofficial histories say that Hu Zongxian, seeing how beautiful Wang Cuiqiao was, became lustful and wanted to take her as a concubine! Wang Cuiqiao, with righteous indignation, angrily rebuked the Ming official on the spot:"

"I single-handedly pacified the pirates and quelled the rebellion for the country, only to end up as a plaything of you corrupt officials! A true man has lost his integrity, and the court has betrayed me!" He then traveled to the mouth of the Qiantang River, threw down his gold and silver jewelry, and leaped into the raging tide to commit suicide.

The red laser pointer drew an extremely glaring wavy line on the screen.

"The common people even spread rumors that the annual raging tides of the Qiantang River were all caused by Wang Cuiqiao's overwhelming resentment! Later, this story spread to Annam, which is now Vietnam, and was directly adapted into their national classic, 'The Tale of Kim Van Kieu'! This is the first folk tale of the Jiajing Emperor's resistance against Japanese pirates!"

The parallel Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Di listened to this "legend" from the sky, and the expression on his face changed from astonishment to extreme rage.

"fart!"

Zhu Di swept the blue-and-white porcelain cups off the imperial desk, smashing them to pieces.

He had fought his entire life, and he knew all too well that victory on the battlefield was earned through licking blood from blades and rolling through piles of corpses. The life-or-death battle involving tens of thousands of pirates, in the mouths of Jiangnan literati, was supposedly all due to the pillow talk of a courtesan?!

"This is trampling the blood of Ming soldiers into the mud and wasting it!"

Zhu Di's eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at the sky, his voice seemingly squeezed out from between his teeth.

"These pedantic scholars from Jiangnan, wielding their pens, fled at the first sign of battle, yet after the war, when it came to recognizing merit, they portrayed the soldiers' lives as the charity of a prostitute! Their hearts are despicable! Their hearts are despicable!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the crooked tree on Coal Hill, Zhu Youjian listened to this extremely familiar tale of talented scholars and beautiful women, letting out a chilling laugh.

"A courtesan quelling a rebellion... What a righteous and awe-inspiring courtesan, what a treacherous and corrupt official!"

Emperor Chongzhen frantically tore at his hair. "How is this any different from those literati of the Fushe Society who made the Eight Beauties of Qinhuai famous?! When the country is in peril, instead of writing about generals who fought to the death, they all go and erect monuments to courtesans! The literary style of the Ming Dynasty is so utterly rotten!"

On the sky, Judy Jun's scalpel mercilessly sliced ​​into the vicious core of this absurd story.

"Family members, if anyone actually believes this ridiculous and absurd history, they've definitely lost their mind!" Judy Jun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, his eyes radiating an extremely cold light.

"Let's examine this using the most fundamental, ironclad law of history—'who benefits, who suffers'—to see! This is nothing but a complete partisan smear campaign!"

He grabbed a black marker and drew a large X on the whiteboard with tremendous force.

"What was Hu Zongxian's status back then? He was the Governor-General of Military Affairs of Zhejiang, Zhili, and Fujian! He also held the title of Vice Minister of War! He wielded the power of life and death over several provinces! Did such a powerful first-rank official lack women? He only needed to give a slight hint, and the wealthy merchants and gentry of Jiangnan could send hundreds of beautiful young women from Yangzhou to his bed! Was he out of his mind to risk being impeached and killed by censors to forcibly take the wife of a bandit leader and a pirate widow and cause himself so much trouble?!"

In the live stream, many netizens who were clear-headed typed "I don't know".

The studio's dark gold lights flickered violently, like venomous snakes.

"What's so malicious about this kind of rumor? Don't assume it's true just because someone has the loudest voice or controls the discourse on opera and storytelling!"

"Hu Zongxian was promoted by Yan Song's faction. Later, the Jiangnan Qingliu and Donglin Party, in order to criticize Yan Song, had to completely erase Hu Zongxian's contributions! How to erase them? This was the most disgusting trick!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his knuckles pounding the podium with a resounding thud, each word dripping with anguish:

"They blatantly denigrated Hu Zongxian's painstaking counter-espionage strategy and Yu Dayou and Qi Jiguang's unparalleled victories at Zhapu and Shenzhuang, saying, 'Oh, you generals and governors are all a bunch of lecherous good-for-nothings! Tens of thousands of Japanese pirates were dealt with by a prostitute's pillow talk!' This isn't just smearing Hu Zongxian; it's literally tearing out the backbone of every Ming soldier who died fighting the Japanese pirates and stuffing it into a latrine!"

The live stream chat room was instantly ignited with comments.

"Disgusting! These Jiangnan literati are absolutely disgusting!"

"No good at fighting, no good at claiming credit, but he's the best at writing erotic fiction and smearing people!"

"This is the propaganda war of the Ming Dynasty! Those who control the pen can kill without shedding blood!"

Zhu Dijun casually threw the blackboard eraser on the ground, sneering repeatedly:

"This is Jiangnan in the late Ming Dynasty! Prostitutes can be hailed as saviors of the nation, while blood-soaked generals are trampled on as lecherous corrupt officials! In this kind of public opinion, how can you expect the country to prosper?"

He turned around abruptly, and the laser pointer swept across another local county chronicle on the big screen.

"After watching Wang Cuiqiao, let's look at the male lead—Xu Hai!"

Three black characters, resembling scribbles, appeared on the screen: 【Xu Hai Seng Yuan Yi Wen】.

"According to popular legend, Xu Hai became a monk at Hupao Temple in Hangzhou in his youth, with the Dharma name Pujing. It's said he was born with unusual features, his eyes gleaming with a blue light, and he could understand the language of the Japanese!" Zhu Dijun spoke rapidly.

"And there's an even more fantastical story: when he was at sea in his early years, he encountered a fierce storm, and a giant fish suddenly emerged from the water and carried his ship to Japan! That's why he gathered so many true Japanese and called himself the Great General Who Pacifies the Seas by Heaven!"

The screen then transitioned to the stormy night in Shenzhuang, with flames raging overhead.

"On the night Shenzhuang was besieged, someone in the military camp swore that he had personally witnessed a black wind carrying a phantom figure in a monk's robe, which disappeared directly into the river! So the people spread the word that Xu Hai's true body had turned into water and escaped, and that the body burned to death by Hu Zongxian was just a substitute!"

Zhu Dijun spread his hands, his eyes revealing extreme sorrow and mockery:

"Family members, a giant fish carrying a boat? A black wind escaping through the water? Is this some kind of 'Journey to the West'? Why are these absurd and fantastical legends circulating so wildly among the people of Zhejiang, Fujian, and Jiangsu?"

He lowered his voice, each word like a dull knife cutting into his nerves:

"Because the local government of the Ming Dynasty is too corrupt! The people are terrified by these pirates and have lost all their courage! In their eyes, a few dozen Japanese pirates can kill through thousands of regular Ming soldiers. This is not something a human could do. It must be sorcery! And the government, in order to cover up its incompetence, even secretly allows this kind of legend to spread—look, it's not that our garrison soldiers can't fight, it's that the enemy knows sorcery!"

On the big screen, Xu Hai transformed into a cloud of black mist and dissipated into the night sky.

"This also proves one thing: at this point in the thirty-fifth year of the Jiajing reign, the backbone of the entire Jiangnan region of the Ming Dynasty, from the official to the common people, was completely broken. Faced with pirates, they could only pray to gods and Buddhas, fabricate ghost stories, or write erotic novels to amuse themselves."

All the lights in the studio went out at that moment.