After Yang Wenguang captured the city of Huili, the Western Xia sent an envoy to Tokyo, demanding that the Great Song withdraw from Huili and restore the pre-war borders. At this time, the official family and the public with the Song army of the great victory, categorically rejected the request of the Western Xia, the strategic value of the will is too important, before the Song army attacked the Western Xia must cross the Hengshan Mountains, the Great Song and the Western Xia each established many walled cities in Hengshan, the two sides of the walled city is in a staggered state, so the Great Song Dynasty from Hengshan attack most of the divisions are unfavorable, the loss of troops and generals. Although the border between the Great Song Dynasty and the Western Xia has gradually formed a strategy of "building cities and forcing cities, moving villages and attacking villages", at present, the Great Song Dynasty has gained the upper hand in the Hengshan region with its strong national strength, and has gradually recovered a lot of territories occupied by the Western Xia, and firmly controlled it in the hands of the Great Song Dynasty. This is a cannibalization strategy in the style of boiling frogs, but it takes a long time, the effect is slow, the cost is large, and the combat power of the Song army is lower than that of the Western Xia army.

Since the Song army opened up the Hexi Corridor and pushed the territory of the Great Song Dynasty to Yumen Pass, the smooth flow of the Silk Road has been restored, and the commercial and trade ties with the Western Regions and even the Far West of Daqin will be re-established, and the glory of the Silk Road will be restored. Therefore, if the Great Song Dynasty wants to hold this hard-won territory, it will inevitably continue to fight with the Western Xia, so the border defense strategy proposed by Meng Ming against the Western Xia is effective, especially after the occupation of Huili City, the door of Xingqing Mansion was opened, and it was directly threatened by the soldiers of the Song army, and the cavalry of the Song army would only take half a day to attack the city of Xingqing Mansion.

Meng Ming came to the Vertical Arch Palace, and the ministers of the political affairs hall: Lu Yijian, Tongping Zhangshi, Wang Zeng, Zhang Shixun, Qian Weiyan, the three envoys Li Di, Xue Kui of the Privy Council, and Lu Zongdao of the Imperial Historian; the Shangshu and Shilang of the Six Ministries; The three yas are the commanders and deputy commanders of the front division of the palace, the guard horse military division, and the guard infantry division; There are also scholars from the Senior Pavilion, only Kou Zhun and Meng Ming, a total of twenty people attended the court meeting.

Zhao Zhen and the Empress Dowager Liu E arrived from time to time, and after Zhao Zhen sat down, he went straight to the point and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, now that my Great Song Dynasty has fully recovered the Hexi land of the former Tang Dynasty, it belongs to the merit of opening up the territory and expanding the territory. Lu Yijian stepped forward to receive the order, Zhao Zhen continued: "Yesterday, I received the good news that the partial general Yang Wenguang captured the Western Xia Huili, General Yang repelled the Western Xia for nearly a month of crazy counterattack, and killed, wounded, and captured nearly 50,000 Xia army generals, so that the Western Xia was unable to fight again, and achieved an unprecedented victory. After Zhao Zhen finished speaking, all the ministers below congratulated him. After all, since Li Ji moved to his son Li Deming in the Western Xia, the Song army and the Western Xia army have mostly lost more and won less, and most of them have suffered heavy defeats, which makes the monarchs and ministers of the Great Song Dynasty talk about the Western Xia military affairs and leave a shadow in their hearts. Yang Wenguang's big victory this time swept away the haze in the hearts of the monarchs and ministers, and everyone raised their eyebrows. Zhao Zhen said: "According to General Yang's good news, a traitorous Song scholar, named Zhang Yuan, he formulated the counteroffensive strategy of the Western Xia, if it were not for the anti-water of the Western Xia in the city, it is very likely that Huili will not be able to hold it, this Zhang Yuan is deeply appreciated by Li Deming and Li Yuanhao father and son, in the past four years, most of the strategies of the Western Xia to attack the Song Dynasty came from the hands of this person, so that the Great Song Dynasty repeatedly lost troops and suffered heavy losses on the border, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties of the convenience and border troops. I asked the Imperial City Division to search for this person's information, and learned that this person was defeated in the palace examination of the first emperor, and was beaten and humiliated by the county order in his hometown. Such a great talent is not used by the imperial court, and it is my fault to go to the enemy country, and all the ministers must think of a good way, so as not to let a great talent like Zhang Yuan be lost in the wilderness, and then defect to the enemy. It was precisely because of Zhang Yuan's betrayal of the Song Dynasty that he gave the Song Dynasty a great shock and a lesson. Zhao Zhen came up with his own plan and said: "Zhongqing's family, I have a way to deal with it, I want to reform the current imperial examination to implement the admission system of elimination at the end of the imperial examination, and all those who have won the jinshi will be awarded the jinshi background!" Even if the results of the imperial examination may not be too good, they will also be awarded the "same jinshi background" to prevent the defection of literati and the use of the enemy as much as possible." The ministers and other ministers of the government hall praised the good ones one after another, and agreed to carry out the next palace examination.

For the offensive and defensive strategies of the Great Song Dynasty and Western Xia, it was necessary to formulate a long-term, stable, and effective strategy.

In fact, Meng Ming drew a map of Western Xia from his mobile phone, and the scale was one to two hundred thousand, that is, one centimeter on the map represented the actual distance of two kilometers. It is marked with various terrains: mountains, rivers, deserts, plains, etc., and is marked with different colors, so that people can see it at a glance. Then there are the towns, passes, military towns, and garrisons of the nine major military divisions in the territory of Western Xia, as well as road directions, Yellow River routes and other transportation routes. The most important thing is the distribution map of the military towns and walled cities of the Great Song and Western Xia on the Song-Xia border, especially the topographic map is very detailed, and the altitude of the mountain peaks, the direction of the road, and the hidden and important mountain trails are marked. And part of the Liao country has also been marked, as well as the map of Qingtang and Tubo, this map is one zhang long and more than two meters wide.

Meng Ming took out the map at the court meeting, Zhao Zhen and the ministers came to watch, and finally Zhao Zhen called the eunuch of the Yellow Gate and hung the map on a wall, and the map of Western Xia could be intuitively displayed in front of everyone. Lu Yijian said: "The map presented by Meng Juma is really a work of genius, intuitive, accurate and easy to understand, and can be used both for civilian and military purposes. "Everyone was amazed. In the end, everyone's eyes were gathered on the border of Song and Xia, from east to west, the distribution of the seven major military divisions of the Great Song Dynasty was clear at a glance, namely: the Volcano Army and the Jinning Army on Hedong Road, the Suide Army, the Security Army, and the Dingbian Army on the Yongxing Military Road, and the Zhenrong Army and Huaide Army on Qinfeng Road. There are also more than a hundred walled cities. Meng Ming said: "Ladies and gentlemen, you see, we had better occupy the territory south of the Western Xia in advance and push the border of the Great Song Dynasty to the Great Wall, then we don't need to build hundreds of walled cities, I calculated it, build 200 walled cities, if they are built in five years, a total of 20 million will be needed, there are 600,000 Song troops on the Song-Xia border, and the military expenditure for five years is 50 million, and the average annual military expenditure is 14 million Guan, which is equivalent to 50% of the financial revenue of the Great Song Dynasty, so if the Western Xia problem is not solved, the Great Song Dynasty will sooner or later be dragged down by the military expenditure of the Song-Xia War. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a strategy to solve the Western Xia problem once and for all. The officials and the ministers agreed.

Meng Ming said: "In the first five years, seize the territory south of the Great Wall of Western Xia. Here I have to say that the combat power of the Great Song army, the combat power of the Song army is far inferior to the combat power of the Western Xia army, this is an indisputable fact, and the main reason is generally caused by "emphasizing literature and ignoring military force". The frequent mutinies in the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties made our dynasty, monarchs and scholars develop a deep-rooted prejudice. They all believe that the military general's position is respectful and powerful, and it will inevitably be a big tail, forming the trouble of dividing the town. Therefore, the generals were unreasonably suspicious and took precautions in every possible way, emphasizing literature over military force, using literature to control military force, and weakening and restricting the command power of generals by means such as using civil servants as the main army, using eunuchs to supervise, and using such means as "generals from the middle of the court". But he never thought about the real root cause of the rebellion in the Tang Dynasty. As a result, under the influence of the practice of emphasizing civilians over military force, most of the civilians have not been in battle formations and lack the actual ability to lead troops in battle. ”

Meng Ming then said: "In order to prevent the generals from supporting the army and respecting themselves, the imperial court established the system of the Privy Council and the three yamen commanding the army. The establishment of the Privy Council's three-government military command system cleverly divided the military power into three. The Privy Council has the power to transfer troops, but it does not control the army; Sanya is in charge of the army, but has no right to transfer troops; In the event of war, the emperor appointed his ministers to lead the troops to the battle, thus realizing the separation of "the right to send troops" and "the weight of holding troops". This system has indeed played a major role in eliminating the situation of separating feudal towns that has lasted for more than 200 years since the Tang Dynasty. However, due to the excessive centralization of power, it inevitably brought some drawbacks. In the process of fighting with the Western Xia, the authority between the troops and the troops was unclear, and the government was multi-departmental, and they could not coordinate with each other, and the result was inevitably to go their own way, and they would inevitably be broken by the Western Xia army, and they could not rescue each other.

Acting flexibly according to the ever-changing situation of the enemy on the battlefield and in light of the situation of the enemy on the battlefield is the minimum requirement of operational command. However, our dynasty is not the case, and the implementation of "will be from the middle of the palace". Staying away from the central ministers of the front, they draw up battle formations on the basis of subjective conjectures, so that the generals of the conquest are like puppets who have been raised, pinned down and deprived of the right to command maneuver on the battlefield, so that those famous generals are unable to display their outstanding strategies, can only stick to the formation map, and can only watch the planes miss and do nothing. Under the circumstance that the communication and liaison conditions of the front-line troops are extremely unsmooth, relying on the pre-drawn formation map and fighting remotely without changing it is undoubtedly an extremely absurd and ridiculous practice; how can the enemy fight according to our formation map? This is simply a move to cover up and steal the bell, and it is bound to be defeated. ”