The Unofficial History of Jiajing's Second Time with Palace Maids

The oppressive, cold spotlight in the studio pierced the darkness like an icicle. Zhu Dijun stood behind the podium, his chest rising and falling with his slightly heavy breathing. He grabbed the blackboard eraser from the control panel and violently wiped away the remnants of the Northwest earthquake from the whiteboard.

He slammed his hand on the holographic keyboard, and the lights in the entire studio instantly switched to an extremely eerie, ethereal dark purple, like wisps of smoke.

"Family members, we just talked about some historical tales from the Northwest and Zhejiang that are half true and half false, and were created with the blood and tears of ordinary people."

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly against the podium, his bloodshot eyes staring directly at the camera, radiating a chilling ferocity.

"But in the same year, right there in the Forbidden City in Beijing—the highest and most sacred political center of the Ming Dynasty—another absurd and unofficial history belonging to the Jiajing Emperor himself was unfolding!"

Several ancient book phantoms, reeking of strong incense ash, crashed onto the holographic screen.

"Today, let's delve into the Taoist secrets of the highest ruler of the Ming Dynasty, as revealed in the late Ming Dynasty's *Wanli Yehuo Bian* and eunuch's private records!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the red laser pointer, like a bloodstained scalpel, and plunged it firmly into the illusory figure in the Bagua Taoist robe in the center of the screen.

"Look at what heinous acts our Zhu Houcong was committing in those years of carnage, in this unofficial history or a history embellished with embellishments!"

The timeline suddenly shifts.

"The great disaster had just passed, and the Japanese pirates in Jiangnan were burning, killing, and looting. Jiajing, believing the nonsense of the Taoist priest Lan Daoxing, issued an edict that would soak the entire harem in blood!"

Zhu Dijun wrote an extremely glaring number on the whiteboard with a red pen.

"He demanded that three hundred girls aged thirteen or fourteen be selected from both northern and southern Zhili provinces to enter the palace!"

The screen instantly switched to the biting cold of Beijing.

"What are you going to do by being selected for the palace? Do you think it's to be a regular palace maid serving you? Bullshit!"

Judy roared.

"These young girls were forcibly crammed into a Taoist temple, and every day before dawn, eunuchs with whips would drive them to the Imperial Garden to do something extremely cruel—collect dew from flower petals with their bare hands!"

In the holographic image, dozens of girls dressed in thin clothes, shivering from the cold, carefully scrape off dew from a flower bush covered in frost, holding small jade cups.

"My family, it's the dead of winter in Beijing! Water freezes instantly! Lan Daoxing says this is called 'Primordial Rootless Water,' the best material for refining the elixir of immortality!"

Zhu Dijun kicked the side of the podium.

"Three hundred girls, aged thirteen or fourteen, were left outside in the freezing cold every morning. Just for a few drops of dew, their hands and feet were covered in chilblains, cracking and oozing pus, even their skin ulcerated and peeling off!"

The chat room across the entire network was instantly filled with an extremely oppressive sense of nausea.

"Is this something a human could do?! This is something a vampire would do!"

"To cultivate immortality for his own sake, he used a little girl's life as a sacrifice! A tyrannical and incompetent ruler!"

"Back then, medical care was so poor that if your hands and feet got frostbite, you were basically just waiting to die!"

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

"After this news spread throughout the capital, the common people couldn't contain their anger any longer! Rumors spread like wildfire in the streets—the emperor's pursuit of immortality is depleting the lifespan of young girls, which is shortening the lifespan of the Ming Dynasty!"

He turned around abruptly and drew a bloody noose heavily on the whiteboard with a black pen.

"These palace maids, who have suffered so much, are not made of clay! When driven to the brink, even rabbits will bite! The palace maids began to secretly plot and spread rumors, planning to emulate Yang Jinying of yesteryear and stage another palace coup in the year Renyin, strangling this tyrannical emperor who cultivates immortality to death on his dragon bed!"

Zhu Dijun let out an extremely cold and mocking laugh, "A monarch who has driven himself to the point where even a fourteen-year-old girl by his side wants to kill him, does the imperial power of this Ming Dynasty still have the slightest bit of authority left?"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

A deafening crash echoed through the Fengtian Hall. Zhu Yuanzhang cleaved the broken imperial desk in two with a single blow, splinters piercing his palm and dripping blood onto the gold bricks, yet he seemed oblivious.

"You beast...you're worse than a pig or a dog!"

Old Zhu's weathered face twisted into a shape of extreme rage. He drew his Emperor's Sword, pointed it at the phantom image of Jiajing in the sky, and roared wildly.

"Back then, we drove out the Mongols so that the children of the world would have food to eat and clothes to wear! This unworthy descendant, Zhu Houcong, actually used the daughters of our Ming Dynasty citizens to exchange for his non-existent immortality?!"

Beside her, Ma Xiuying covered her mouth tightly, tears streaming down her face. Looking at the thirteen or fourteen-year-old girls with frostbitten hands and feet in the sky, her heart felt like it was being ripped apart. Those were her own flesh and blood, born of her mother and raised by her parents!

Send someone!

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes were bloodshot, like those of a bloodthirsty lone wolf.

"Go find them! By any means necessary, find Lan Daoxing's ancestors beforehand! Tear them apart by five horses! Drag all those eunuchs who selected girls for Jiajing out of the Meridian Gate and execute them by a thousand cuts!"

The parallel Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Di sat upright on the dragon throne, his facial muscles twitching violently. He had fought wars his entire life and considered himself a ruthless emperor, but those he killed were all political enemies and mortal foes from the battlefield.

"He drains the yin to replenish the yang, and sucks the blood and bones of young girls."

A hoarse sound, like the grinding of cast iron, escaped Zhu Di's throat as he gripped the hilt of his sword tightly.

"This is the dead end for a tyrant! That bastard Zhu Houcong has chewed up the faces of all the previous emperors of the Ming Dynasty to pieces in a latrine!"

On the backdrop, the studio's dark purple lights became even thicker and more murky.

Zhu Dijun casually ripped off his tie and threw it on the ground, unleashing a hysterical outburst of mockery.

"Family members, do you think forcing virgins to collect dew was the most absurd and depraved act in the Jiajing era? You're sorely mistaken! With the support of Ming Dynasty civil officials, this farce of cultivating immortality could be made even more outrageous and maddening!"

He slammed three fingers down on the holographic control panel. A portrait of a burly Ming Dynasty official with a menacing face suddenly appeared on the screen—[Gao Yao].

"As we mentioned before, the Northwest is plagued by disasters, and the South is ravaged by war. The national treasury is so empty that even a mouse that goes in would come out with tears in its eyes. In order to fight the war, the court has no choice but to increase taxes on the poor people across the land. The Ministry of Revenue is constantly crying poverty in court!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the pointer and pointed it directly at Gao Yao's portrait. "And what happened?! This man named Gao Yao happened to be the Minister of Revenue of the Ming Dynasty at the time! The one in charge of the nation's treasury!"

The red laser pointer drew an extremely glaring line of money transactions on the screen.

"The nation has no money for disaster relief, and the front lines have no money to pay soldiers' salaries. But our Minister Gao has his own money! Emperor Jiajing needed precious spices for alchemy, and Gao Yao secretly spent an astronomical sum to buy a piece of top-grade ambergris left over from a fire in the palace from an old eunuch!"

On the holographic screen, Gao Yao, holding an extremely luxurious brocade box in both hands, knelt outside the Xiyuan Taoist Temple, fawningly raising the piece of ambergris that emitted a strange fragrance.

"Jiajing has obtained the ambergris, and he is overjoyed!" Zhu Dijun slammed his hands on the podium, his roar deafening.

"A Minister of Revenue who should have been raising funds to aid disaster victims and fund the military was promoted and given a raise simply because he sent a special spice! Emperor Jiajing immediately issued an edict, granting Gao Yao the title of Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent! He was promoted and given a raise!"

The entire studio echoed with Zhu Dijun's extremely shrill, maniacal laughter.

"A single furnace of dragon's saliva, exchanged for the position of Minister!"

He picked up a black pen and wrote those eight large characters on the whiteboard, each stroke seemingly about to tear through the paper.

"The officialdom in the capital has gone completely mad! Generals who do the real work are fighting to the death, only to be falsely accused and beheaded; while corrupt officials at the top, who fawn over their superiors, can rise to the highest ranks simply by offering a piece of spice! Ordinary people are pointing at the Forbidden City and cursing, saying that not a single penny of the Ming Dynasty's taxes has been spent wisely; it's all been taken by these corrupt officials to make elixirs for the emperor!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

The old, crooked tree on Coal Hill wailed like a ghost in the cold wind. Zhu Youjian knelt in the icy, bone-chilling mud, his eyes blankly staring at the ambergris in the sky.

"The Minister of Revenue...is promoted for presenting spices..."

Emperor Chongzhen frantically dug at the frozen ground with his withered hands, his fingernails cracking and oozing black blood.

"I wear patched clothes in the palace, dare not even eat a bite of meat, and beg the officials to donate money to pay the army every day, but they all cry poverty to me. It turns out... it turns out that their ancestors in the Jiajing era had already used the Ming Dynasty's treasury as an ATM to buy official positions in the Western Garden!"

He looked up at the overcast sky and let out a bloodcurdling scream, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

"Your Majesty Jiajing! You're not cultivating immortality; you're cultivating a death warrant for the Ming Dynasty's demise!"

On the backdrop, all the dim purple lights in the studio went out, leaving only an extremely cold and glaring white light shining on Zhu Dijun's tall figure.

He smashed the broken pen in his hand into the wastepaper basket, exuding an aura of icy dissection.

"Family members. Let's piece together this magical picture. On the front lines in Jiangnan, large numbers of soldiers are being slaughtered by Japanese pirates on empty stomachs; in the ruins of the Northwest, 830,000 corpses cannot even get a single grain of wheat for disaster relief; while in the magnificent capital, the Grand Secretary Yan Song and his son are selling official positions and accumulating mountains of silver, the Minister of Revenue Gao Yao is spending a lot of money to buy spices to get promoted, and the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty is using the blood of a girl with frostbitten hands and feet to refine his dream of immortality."

On the holographic screen, the map of the Ming Dynasty is burning, rotting, and collapsing.

"Such a state apparatus, rotten to the core, insane to the extreme, and devoid of any humanity, no longer deserves to be called a dynasty; it is a meat grinder that grinds hundreds of millions of lives to death."

Zhu Dijun's voice was lowered to the minimum, yet it was like a thunderbolt about to explode, making the entire space go numb.

"Expecting these bureaucrats in their flying fish robes and wielding imperial swords to save the country? Dream on! The entire upper echelons of the Ming Dynasty have been utterly and completely destroyed by this extreme absurdity."