The news of the Han Emperor Zhe Yanchong's personal expedition had spread throughout Mobei before the emperor himself left the site of the Great Wall. If Xiao Tienu's arrival caused a high degree of vigilance among the Mobei clans, then the arrival of Zhi Yanchong caused an unprecedented panic!

Although Zhe Yanchong is suspected of being Hu in the eyes of some scholars in the south of the Yangtze River, he is an out-and-out Han emperor in the eyes of the Mobei tribes - no matter what kind of Hu origin the emperor himself has, the current Han court inherits the grand mind and tradition of the Han and Tang dynasties in terms of political system, culture and ethnic policy. However, has any Han emperor personally conquered Mobei? No! Never! For thousands of years, the Han people conquered Mobei by generals at most, not emperors.

The last time Xiao Tienu advanced into Mobei, there were many strongholds along the way, and the strongholds near Monan and Northeast still existed, which provided accurate signposts for Zhe Yanchong's army. As the backbone of Han Ting's unprecedented northern expedition, the army with a total of more than 100,000 in the front, middle and rear was the backbone of this army: the front army of this army was centered on the old Xiaoziqi of Monggul, and it was the most suitable unit for the Mobei battle in the entire army at present; The Chinese army is the elite team of the Han army that has accompanied the emperor for many years, if you use the old Song Dynasty, it is the forbidden army, and in the Western Han Dynasty, it is the Imperial Forest Army; Finally, the rear army led by Wang Xuan, the composition of the soldiers includes some of the generals brought by Wang Xuan from the south, a part of the Mizhou Weiyuan New Army Army, and the new army that has been recruited and trained for more than a year through the new military service law, of which the Weiyuan New Army is equipped with firearms, but at this time, the generals in the army are not very confident in the power of firearms, and the other two are either southerners or newcomers, so the military high-level is quite distrustful of Wang Xuan's 30,000 people in Mobei's combat effectiveness, and arranged it as a rear army, mainly responsible for the safety of the grain road.

The regular army was accompanied by tens of thousands of armed immigrants. Armed immigrants were the traditional weapon of the Han Dynasty to expand the territory and open the border, and Yang Yingqi relied on hundreds of thousands of armed immigrants to obtain the actual control of the western Liaoning corridor, and the influence of the Han Dynasty continued to expand in the east, west and north directions, so as to protect the security of the central area of southern Liaoning. This armed immigration, in the system, is based on the temptation of knighthood, allowing the meritorious warriors who have passed the examination to lead the clansmen and recruit displaced people to the north, and those who can gain a foothold in the northwest of Songzhou, Bei'an, and Luanhe will be awarded titles by the Han court, and the farther the territory is expanded, the higher the title, and their hereditary replacements are allowed. The money and food for organizing armed immigrants have to be raised by themselves, but they can buy weapons from the government at a relatively favorable price. At this time, the commercial share of the Northeast and Gyeonggi areas had been divided by major businessmen led by Cho Lumin, Ayimusi, Yoo Jie, and Lee Sang-ryong, and this was undoubtedly an opportunity that could not be missed for the emerging business forces that wanted to expand new trade routes. And some powerful people with military force see that peace is approaching, and if they want to leave a deep well for their descendants, then going north will be an excellent choice. Combined, these two forces have gathered more than 50,000 troops in just a few months, and behind these 50,000 people, there are still many people who are ready to move. These tens of thousands of armed immigrants accompanied the army gradually northward, generally with 100 to 500 people as a unit, and set up one after another half-farming, half-herding, half-army and half-civilian strongholds in various places in the south of the desert.

In addition to the regular army and armed immigrants, there are also hundreds of thousands of servants with three identities as the main body, including herdsmen, craftsmen, farmers, and merchants. The reason why the very uncertain figure of "hundreds of thousands" is used is that even the Han government cannot accurately count this number. Even Han Fang and Guo Hao could only say: "Maybe it's more than 200,000, maybe it's more than 300,000 ......" This huge crowd is not only providing logistics supplies for the army, but also consuming a lot of food. Most porters are actually unemployed people from poor backgrounds, otherwise who would do such a hard job for a little money? Therefore, after they picked out the grain from the old site of the Great Wall, many of them simply did not go back, and directly found a stronghold of armed immigrants to take refuge and became new residents of the south and north of the desert.

The amount of money and food that would be spent on such a large-scale population movement can be imagined. The administrative expenses required for this expedition were a nightmare for Chen Zhenghui, but in the eyes of businessmen, it was a major move to stimulate the economy of the Northland. The three trade routes stretched from Miyun, Dadingfu, and Linhuang to the west and north, converging on the way, and then pointing to the distant city of Kedun. The road was extremely hard, and the corpses of merchants, porters, and samurai were buried in the yellow sand on both sides of the road, but the footprints on the yellow sand still gave people hope. These heroic armed immigrants, in particular, are able to take root once they find a suitable place to live, and go from being fully consuming to consuming and producing, and where possible, even from a consuming unit to a productive unit. Once the armed migrants along the trade route gain a foothold, they will in turn ensure the safety of the trade route, and for the merchants, the safety factor of the trade route is directly proportional to the profit, especially if there is a demand ahead.

Yang Yingqi had always believed that this administrative expense of the Han court was worth it in the long run, the greatest value of which was of course to expand the territory and ensure the security of the northern Han land by attacking, and the added benefit was that this expenditure could become a starting point for the prosperity and development of this trade route—of course, provided that the Han army could win the northern expedition. Although Yang Yingqi made a long-term plan, the power of commerce had even been exerted in this war, especially those Wuer merchants who had been walking in the desert north all the year round, and they took advantage of this northern expedition to show their amazing skills, they not only provided the Han army with environmental information and enemy information that was almost comparable to that of the American army's reconnaissance and cavalry, but also could even buy cattle, sheep and even horses from the tribes hostile to the Han court to supplement the lack of the Han army.

It can be said that the northern expedition of the Han Dynasty is not like a simple military operation, from the northeast and Han to the north and south of the desert is not just an army, but a huge economy opened by the army, for the Mobei tribes, what they see is not a lone army entering, but a country moving. In this era, no tribe or tribal alliance in the north and south of the desert dared to confront such a powerful force head-on, and when the Mughal arrived in Monan, all the tribes that had not surrendered when Xiao Tienu entered had all surrendered to Mobei, except for a small number that fled to Mobei. Because the Mughul army had removed the obstacles, the Chinese army of Zhe Yanchong had not fought a battle at all when they marched thousands of miles to the south of the country, and the whole trip was a ceremony of accepting submission and enslaving the tribes.

However, the tailwind of the Han army in the north became weaker the further north it went, and the armed immigrants adapted quickly in Monan, but it was not very popular in Mobei. This is true not only of armed emigrants, but also of the military. Judging from historical experience, the achievements of the Han army in the northern expedition of the past dynasties in Monan are both brilliant and fragile, because the most difficult battle for the Han people is not in Monan but in Mobei, and the Han army can only win if it really wins in Mobei, otherwise even if it wins a thousand times in Monan, as long as it loses once in Monan, it may lose all the capital, and the previous victory in Monan may also become useless.

In 1683, before the Han army could see the city of Kedun, winter came again. The hateful tribes of Mobei were all cursing, hoping that a heavy snow would fall from heaven and freeze all the Han troops to death, so that they could drive these hateful Han people back without much effort.

In November, the front army of the Mughal clashed with an enemy martyr. Although the Han army has 100,000 people, including the logistics team, there are hundreds of thousands, but on the specific battlefield, the number of people who can really exert their combat strength is usually not much. The scale of the conflict was small, but it was important for both the Hu and Han sides. In this battle, the Mughul invested 1,200 men, while the enemy martyrs had 800 men, and the result of the battle was that the Han army lost 200 men, and the enemy martyrs took the initiative to retreat when they saw the Han army's support coming after losing less than 30 men. After the news reached the Chinese army, Zhi Yanchong deduced that the tailwind of the Han army might have ended. This cold winter is not only a natural winter for the Han army, but also a military winter.