The internal complexity of the Great Song regime was not inferior to the current international situation, and although the supreme leader headed by Zhao Huan was weak and incompetent, he still had to take into account the pressure from inside and outside the government and the opposition to the cession of land. Even Zhao Huan and his prime ministers themselves also had two sides: when the Jin soldiers were pressing the city, they were the surrender faction that rushed to the front, and after the Jin soldiers retreated, their judgment of the situation went in the other direction -- they believed that they could maintain the current situation without cutting off the three towns and increasing their war readiness. The policy of the Great Song Dynasty was such that it was always hesitant, and it was unable to make up its mind whether it was war or peace talks.

This hesitation was manifested in the military operations in Hebei and Hedong, that is, after Zongwang withdrew his troops, he immediately abandoned the alliance under the city and began to organize troops to slowly advance northward to recover the prefectures and counties south of the Taiyuan-Hejian-Zhongshan line, and dispatched heavy troops to rescue Taiyuan. However, although the Song court took action, it could not resolutely launch a military campaign to defend the frontier with the determination of the whole country, but wasted most of its energy on internal fighting - in mid-March, Emperor Daojun was about to return to Beijing, so Zhao Huan naturally had to devote most of his mind to this. In Yang Yingqi's view, the Great Song Dynasty did not really learn a lesson after the almost fall of Bianliang, because he felt that the next military layout of the Song army was in response to Zonghan's offensive, and did not carry out long-term and overall planning.

On the Jin side, because Zongwang's Eastern Route Army and Zong Han's Western Route Army were originally relatively independent actors, the Western Route Army did not stop military operations because of the Eastern Route Army's division, on the contrary, Zong Han launched an attack on the Great Song Dynasty more violently because he had not received a rich reward like Zongwang. Because the Eastern Route Army had already been divided, the Song court was able to concentrate its forces to deal with Zong Han's southward advance in a short period of time, which made Zong Han feel very difficult: directly in front was Taiyuan Jiancheng for a long time, in the east was the harassment of thousands of loyal troops coming and going, and in the west was the elite of the Great Song Dynasty, the soldiers and horses of the Shaanxi Soldiers.

In order to contain the Shaanxi soldiers and horses that came to the east to aid Hedong, Zong Han used diplomatic means to cut the land of Tiande, Yunnei, Jinsu, Heqing and Wuzhou to the Western Xia, and asked the Western Xia to send troops to the Great Song Linzhou. This vast land of Zonghan Xu is almost including the old territory of the Great Liao from the northwest of the Great Wall to Yinshan, and the world-famous Eilechuan is also among them, and the Western Xia has coveted this territory for a long time, if you can get this land, the Western Xia will be able to have a complete Hetao! Therefore, after receiving Zong Han's promise, the Xia lord immediately sent troops, crossed the river to take the four armies and eight pavilions, and broke through the Great Song Town Weicheng. From then on, the Western Xia was deeply involved in this battle for the Central Plains and could not extricate themselves.

The situation within the Han Ministry is even more complicated: the official, the businessman, and the public opinion are completely in three directions!

The Han Ministry of China headed by Yang Yingqi did not dare to openly intervene in the Jin invasion of the Song Dynasty because of the house arrest of Zhi Yanchong, but continued to adjust the economy of the entire East China Sea, accumulate money and grain, strengthen the internal army building, and at the same time accelerate the economic and cultural infiltration of the Jin and Song countries. During this period, the newly formed naval and land amphibious forces of the Han Ministry began to intervene in the chaos of Japan under the orders of the Tsumen Center, and mediated the increasingly heated war between the Haikou regime and the shogunate regime. In this mediation, Yang Yingqi used both economic and military means, and many recruits from the Han Department were brought to the island to maintain peace.

However, what made Yang Yingqi a little frustrated was that the scholars in Jinmen, Tanggu and Dengzhou did not pay much attention to the success of the Han army in overseas peacekeeping. In the eyes of the scholars, what was happening in the Great Song Dynasty was ten times more important than going to help the Japanese state maintain peace! Zong Wang's brutal killing and plundering in the later stage of the retreat aroused great indignation among the Han scholars! Of course, they would not advocate an open break with the Jin State when Zhi Yanchong was still under house arrest, but in some private gatherings, the most discussed among the scholars was how to rescue the general, and then unite with the "Zhao Clan" to fight against the Hu people! In the discussion after discussion, a kind of collective psychology began to gradually take shape, that is, the scholars' hearts became more resolute: the Han and Song were Hua and the Jin State was Yi -- at the same time, in the Chinese system, the Han and Song families were two surnames that coexisted! This argument did not originate in Jinmen, but in Tanggu, and quickly spread through Dengzhou and Cangzhou to some scholars in Hebei and Shandong. Of course, this argument was also resisted by some of the Zhao diehards, but this contradiction did not intensify when the Jin army was pressing, because in the minds of most people, the Jin people were still a strong enemy that the Song and Han sides needed to face together! The Han Department is also a joint object that the Great Song Dynasty can strive for.

However, interest in these articles and ideas is mainly limited to intellectual circles, and for unscrupulous businessmen, the most important thing in front of them is to make money! Make hay! Make hay! Dajin and the Han were completely separated ideologically, but the administration was still the same country, at least formally, and one of the terms of peace negotiated after the Jin-Han War was to allow Han merchants to have the right to trade in various parts of the Jin Kingdom as they had before the war - after all, all ethnic groups in the north, whether Jurchen nobles or lower-class people, were already accustomed to having Han merchants. The intellectuals over there were scolding in the schoolhouse, but the merchants here smoothly entered all parts of the Jin Kingdom to trade with the various ethnic groups in the north under the wings of Yang Yingqi and Ouyang Shi. In this situation, even Zong Han, who had always been very contemptuous of merchants, began to change his stubborn attitude, and even offered some preferential conditions to compete with the Han for the hearts and minds of the merchants. These measures of Zong Han did also encompass some merchants, but after all, the sudden enlightenment of the head of the Jin State could not be compared with the strength of the Han system, including law, politics, economy, industry and other supporting systems, so the attraction of the Han regime to merchants was still increasing.

Chen Chu's caravan traveled west in such a general environment. Along the way, there were constantly war reports from Taiyuan, Zhongshan, and Hejian, and most of the trade routes they took had become stable, so the war in the south sounded quite distant, so far away that Chen Chu almost forgot that his homeland was suffering.

"Great Song ...... Hey! What if it is destroyed? Chen Chu drank a little mare's milk wine and hummed the nonsense he had just learned. He has the mentality of a player that Yang Yingqi covets but cannot obtain, and can watch the rise and fall of a nation with a mentality of watching the changes of the chess pieces on the chessboard, even if this nation is his mother clan. From a utilitarian point of view, such a person may be stronger than an emotional person, but from a moral point of view, such a person is too cold.

The caravan finally passed through Yunzhong, because Yunnei (about 100 miles southwest of present-day Hohhot) had been ceded to Western Xia, as long as he left the old site of the Great Wall, Guo Zhenwu could enter the territory of Western Xia. Western Xia has always been in awe of Zong Han, Chen Chu has already bought the customs clearance documents of Han Qixian, the chief civil officer of Zong Hanjun, and now the relationship between Jin and Xia is good, so it should be relatively smooth after entering Western Xia according to the expected assumption.

"Even if you can't find a thousand miles this time, you can make a lot of money back and forth this time!" An old caravan operator said: "After the first battle of Liaokou, the trade route from the Han to the Western Xia and the Western Regions was cut off. This time, we will renew it, and at least we can double our net worth - the Jinmen side is looking forward to the goods in the northwest, and I heard that the Xixia side is also there. God bless, I hope to return to Liaokou safely this time. ”

Chen Chu smiled: "Don't worry! I have a hunch that we're going to be able to make a big deal this time! ”

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[Abo's self-made watermark: the first http://www.17k.com/html/bookAbout.htm?bid=10844 of this book]

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