Chapter 219: He seemed to have witnessed the Apocalypse Explosion firsthand.

Facing the camera, Jiang Zhe pondered for a moment before speaking about the subsequent strange phenomena.

"Next, let's discuss the strange aspects of the Tianqi Explosion that everyone is concerned about."

"The horrifying and bizarre part of this explosion is that after it occurred—houses instantly turned into powder, while the shattered corpses of people, animals, and plants fell from the sky together."

"Many people were crushed to death on the spot. The citizens of the capital were terrified, so they fled toward the outskirts of the city. In the crowded masses, multiple stampedes occurred, leading to even more deaths."

"This catastrophe also caused the elephants kept in the palace to flee in a panic, trampling and killing many civilians."

"And what's even more bizarre is that, whether dead or injured, they were all stark naked."

Hearing this, the audience nodded repeatedly.

"Right, right, right. An explosion is an explosion; it's reasonable for people to be killed by it. The strange part is that they were stark naked."

"Why? Could it be that ancient clothing wasn't as durable as modern clothing, so the shockwave blew it all off?"

"There is that theory, but there are also records of people being completely unharmed while their clothes were stripped away. Even if a shockwave could blow someone's clothes off, it shouldn't leave the people within that range uninjured, right?"

"I've also seen similar reports: An exquisite sedan chair for a woman was moving slowly down the street near Xuanhong Temple. Suddenly, a loud noise came from nowhere. At the exact moment the noise erupted, the top of the sedan was ripped off. The woman inside screamed; she was curled up on one side of the sedan, stark naked. Her perfectly fine clothes had instantly vanished. Even more bizarrely, she hadn't suffered a single injury!"

"And there's more! Over 20 large trees next to the Armory were uprooted and blown to Miyun in the blink of an eye."

"I've also heard from my elders: When the loud noise erupted, a scholar was on his way to Caishikou to buy things. Halfway there, he met a few friends and stopped to greet them. Who would have known that before he could even finish his bow, his head suddenly flew off to who knows where. Although his friends were scared out of their wits, they were completely unharmed."

"Besides that, in a nearby school, a teacher was giving a lesson to 32 students. After the loud noise, the teacher and the students vanished instantly and never appeared again. I suspect they were pulverized into dust."

"Hiss—it's getting more and more terrifying!"

"..."

The reports mentioned by these audience members were, to some extent, a mix of truth and fabrication.

However, most of them were pointing out that the power of that unimaginable explosion was extremely intense.

Professor Hua Yunfeng, Old Feng, and other historians also saw these comments, and soon, they all found the relevant records.

At this moment, Jiang Zhe's voice came from the large screen.

"I've seen the audience's comments. There is indeed a record in the journal of celestial changes."

"The journal of celestial changes records a scholar from Zhejiang named Zhou Jiyu. He had gone to the capital for his exams and was staying there to prepare. On the day of the explosion, he went out to buy a hat. While walking, he met six fellow students, so the seven of them stopped to greet each other."

"Just then, Zhou Jiyu's head was instantly separated from his body and swept into the air, while his six classmates were completely fine."

"Although the audience's versions vary, it wasn't that the scholar Zhou went to buy groceries, but rather that he went to buy a hat and encountered his classmates. Therefore, word-of-mouth accounts possess some truth, but they are not entirely accurate."

"Meanwhile, on another street, a young lady from a wealthy family was traveling in a sedan chair. At the moment of the explosion, the top of her sedan was ripped off. The sedan bearers and the young lady's clothes all vanished. They stood naked in the street, looking around in panic, completely unaware of what had happened. However, they were much luckier than the scholar Zhou Jiyu; although their clothes were gone, their heads were still attached."

"At the same time, this is the most bizarre and inexplicable aspect of the Tianqi Explosion: the vast majority of the dead and injured were completely naked, with their hats, clothes, pants, shoes, and socks all vanishing in an instant."

"Faced with such a disaster, there were also people who found humor in their plight. The journal of celestial changes also records that a man was trapped under a collapsed house and couldn't move. Lying on the ground, he witnessed women on the street fleeing while naked. Some used roof tiles to cover their lower bodies, some tore off their foot bindings to cover themselves, and some draped themselves in half a mattress or a bedsheet."

"That man was later rescued. After being pulled out from under the rubble, he recounted what he had seen and heard to those around him, caught between laughter and tears."

"Also, the sedan chair of the Vice Minister of Works, Xue Fengxiang, was overturned on his way to court, and his clothes suddenly vanished as well."

"His superior, the Minister of Works, Dong Kewei, had it even worse. Not only did his clothes vanish instantly, but both of his arms were detached from his body in that same instant."

"Then there were the Censors He Tingchu and Pan Yunyi, who lived in the southwest of the capital. After the explosion, both of their families were buried beneath the buildings."

"A clerk under He Tingchu received the news and came to help with the rescue. He shouted loudly over the broken bricks and tiles. After a while, he heard a woman's response and immediately rescued her."

"The rescued woman was He Tingchu's beloved concubine. She was [completely naked, covering her private parts with her hands, looking shy and at a loss]. The clerk had no choice but to take off his own clothes and lend them to her to cover herself, only then was she able to leave the scene in a panic. This woman was the only survivor from both the He and Pan households."

"According to the Veritable Records of the Ming Xizong, when the explosion occurred, Emperor Tianqi himself happened to be eating breakfast in the Qianqing Palace. While eating, he noticed the palace hall shaking continuously."

"Emperor Tianqi was a famous 'Carpenter Emperor' in Ming Dynasty history. Thanks to his love for carpentry and his rich knowledge of civil engineering and construction, he predicted that the palace hall could collapse at any moment, so he immediately ran out of the hall."

"Emperor Tianqi vanished in a flash; even the guards and eunuchs around him couldn't catch up. Later, a personal bodyguard barely managed to keep up, supporting him as they ran toward the Jiaotai Palace."

"As he passed the Jianji Palace, wooden thresholds and roof tiles began to fall wildly. Emperor Tianqi had already anticipated that these things would fall, so he forcefully shook off the bodyguard supporting him and ran forward with all his might."

"The bodyguard who had been shaken off hadn't even realized what was happening before his skull was crushed by the falling wooden thresholds and roof tiles."

"In the end, Emperor Tianqi ran to the Jiaotai Palace alone, found a rectangular wooden table he had made previously, pushed the table to a place less likely to collapse, and finally hid under the wooden table alone, narrowly escaping disaster."

"After this event, the Qianqing Palace where Emperor Tianqi had been eating breakfast collapsed entirely. The hall was severely damaged, and the dragon throne and imperial table were all overturned on the ground."

"The eunuchs who were serving his breakfast, because they didn't escape in time, were all crushed to death in the Qianqing Palace."

"The power of this explosion was beyond imagination. The stone lion on Shifuma Street that I mentioned before—that 2.5-ton stone lion was instantly blown away by the shockwave. The specific figure is that the shockwave blew the stone lion over 500 meters away. This shows just how immense the shockwave was; it is far from something a Category 20 typhoon, or even a typhoon of over 20, could compare to!"

"There were also many large trees that were uprooted and blown to the Miyun and Changping areas; even people could vanish into thin air. The teacher and students of a school, thirty-two people in total, all disappeared without a trace—this is also the phenomenon mentioned in the audience's comments earlier."

Having recounted this far, Jiang Zhe took a deep breath. "Later, after the disaster subsided, people discovered that most of the missing clothes were hanging on the treetops of the Western Hills of the capital. Clothes were even found hanging on the treetops in places far from the capital, such as Tangshan and Fengrun. The Changping drill ground was piled high with clothes, and the ground was covered with the body parts of people and poultry. Many of the arms and legs lost by survivors in the explosion landed here."

This long string of fluent, script-like recitation left his colleagues in the industry dumbfounded.

It was absolutely insane!

It was as if he had witnessed the Tianqi Explosion with his own eyes.

It was too detailed!

Wang Lin and Xiao Shiyi might have been okay, but Old Zhao, Old Wang, and Old Wang from the monitoring department were all collectively stunned.

Although they knew Jiang Zhe was excellent at impromptu speeches, this time it was as if he had personally traveled back to the Ming Dynasty and witnessed the Tianqi Explosion himself.

Even the traffic for the television station and the livestream room increased under this highly unique speech!

Meanwhile, Laozi, hearing this for the first time, looked stunned, feeling a bit of disbelief at Jiang Zhe's level of competence.

"Does he not need to look at a script? So many details and events, spoken so casually, and they are exactly the same as the historical data I've checked. Listening to him makes me feel like he was hovering above the Tianqi Explosion, overlooking everything as it happened."

Professor Zhuangzi, who was beside him, heard this and smiled. "Of course. How could someone I recommended be weak? Moreover, you have truly underestimated him. He barely needs to look up information to talk about these things; those materials are already etched into his mind."

Laozi asked, "Are you saying he memorized it all? Did he memorize it before the program, or did he memorize it a long time ago?"

Professor Zhuangzi pondered and shook his head. "Based on my analysis of him, he most likely possesses an extremely rare condition called hyperthymesia, or [Photographic Memory]. Anything he sees once is captured in his mind."

Upon hearing this, the playful expression on Laozi's face became even more pronounced. "If he has hyperthymesia, hmm, it's a burden on the brain, but if handled well, he is definitely a future high-level scientific worker. It just depends on whether he can handle this condition that places such a huge load on the brain."

The two of them were unaware that although Jiang Zhe possesses Photographic Memory, he can also selectively forget!

Therefore, Laozi's worry was completely unnecessary.

At this moment, in the livestream room, the audience frowned, and the comments became much fewer.

A shockwave blowing people away? Hmm, that's understandable.

A shockwave blowing people's heads off? Hmm, that's also understandable.

But what they don't understand is—logically speaking, a shockwave should be stronger the closer it is to the center and weaker the further away it is!

Why is it that within the range of the intense shockwave, some people were completely safe, some had their heads blown off, and even people near those whose heads were blown off were completely safe?

No matter how you listen to it or look at it, this isn't the fault of a shockwave; it actually looks more like there was another explosion after the initial explosion!

This is the part that the audience and experts find difficult to understand.

The Armory exploded, yes, it exploded. Logically, the explosion should only have caused a series of chain explosions near the Armory, and once the gunpowder was exhausted, it shouldn't have continued to explode!

Why do all the subsequent signs indicate that new explosions were generated after the Armory explosion?

Only if new explosions occurred could the phenomenon of severed limbs among ancient civilians far away from the shockwave exist; otherwise, the further away the civilians were, the more unharmed they should have been!

Without waiting for the audience to post comments, Jiang Zhe spoke directly to explain.

"Alright, the major events of the Tianqi Explosion have basically been finished."

"It's roughly this: strange explosions, strange severed limbs, strange flying clothes, and various strange signs."

"Next, there are several factors that explain this explosion, and the red fireball everyone is concerned about can also be explained."

Hearing this, the audience and experts once again held their heads high, their expressions extremely serious!