In the seventh year of Han Yuanxing, 1691 AD.

Zhao Liangdong, the governor of Hangan and Shaanxi, the general of Koubei, moved slowly, and beside him, thousands of cavalry formed a long dragon and meandered forward in the dusk sunset.

The yellow sand is vast, and the long grass in the grassland is dotted far and near, adding a bit of vitality to this dead and silent world. Zhao Liangdong raised the monocular in his hand and looked aimlessly ahead—this move was subconscious and meaningless, not so much to reconnoiter the enemy's situation, but to cover up the anxiety in his heart.

The situation in the northwest is not optimistic.

In 1690 A.D., the Lin and Han empires completed the unification of the vast area within the Great Wall, and as of the day before yesterday, the imperial court's Tang Bao had clearly distributed the personnel appointments and local revenues and expenditures of various provinces, prefectures, prefectures, and counties in Yunnan and Guizhou. In just over six months, most of the more than 700,000 puppet Qing Green Battalions, remnants of the peasant army, bandits, and the township brave militia of the landlord clans, including the Southern Zhou and Shang Kexi troops, were dismissed and returned to their hometowns, and the other part, about 250,000 people, were accepted by the General Staff Headquarters and the Metropolitan Procuratorate respectively, and were reorganized into eight armies, as well as the government soldiers and metropolitan guards of the governors and governors of various localities.

In the War of Unification, many Han army generals such as Rick, Ma Ying, Wang Dahai, Liu Laosi, and Wang Fuchen made great contributions and were widely praised by the people of the world, and among the important generals of the imperial court who were on a par with them, only he, Zhao Guangyuan, Daniel Zhang, and Wang Jinbao were thrown in the north, silently defending the north for the empire.

For General Zhao Liangdong personally, this is a very serious matter. Nowadays, Shenzhou was initially decided, the Han Dynasty was established, and the people in the world knew that the imperial court was about to be rewarded among the founding fathers, according to the traditional etiquette: military merit is higher than the field, and the great is the opening of the territory, but I have never heard of anyone who can get any great merit because of the repair of the bunker, and he Zhao Liangdong, although he was born in the army, but he has always been arrogant and self-appreciative, thinking that he is a famous general like Le Yi and Chen Qingzhi, and once led more than 10,000 troops, drove thousands of miles to the north, and fought the Tartar Khan to flee from the wind. People like themselves, in the history of China, except for a few such as Wei Qinghuo Qubing or Xu Dalan's 'jade', how many can be compared? !

However, what makes Zhao Liangdong feel heavy is that in this era, in this empire, there are too many heroes like him. There is a folk proverb: The seven generals under the King of Han, Zhou Zhao Marui Wang Liu Zhang - Zhou, refers to Zhou Peigong, chief of the General Staff; Zhao refers to the 'Mongolian' ancient general Zhao Guangyuan, Ma refers to the general Ma Ying, and Rui refers to the 'Se' man and Yulin general Ruike? Rachel; Wang refers to Wang Dahai, the general of Pingliao; Liu, is the designated southern general Liu Laosi; Zhang, referring to Daniel Zhang, the general of Anxi.

This is the public opinion of the Chinese in today's era, and it is the ranking of the list of good men recognized by everyone in the whole world, and even the bureaucrats of the imperial government and the opposition think so, these seven people in the ranking are already destined to share the great name with this huge and powerful Han Empire, no matter what Lin Feng holds, when rewarding the Yuan, these people must overpower their colleagues.

However, this is undoubtedly very unfair to General Zhao Liangdong, and in terms of military merits, status, and military status, General Kou Bei and the Northwest Corps will not be inferior to any of them, and the only unfortunate thing is that his most brilliant battle of Xinzhou was all overshadowed by the brilliance of His Majesty the Emperor.

This is a thing that cannot be argued, the emperor commanded the army in person, fought Geldan, broke the enemy in the foothills of the Taihang Mountains, chased the dead to the north, and made great achievements, this is the history that all Chinese know, and it is also the official tone of the imperial government - he, Zhao Liangdong, as a human subject, still dares to compete with His Majesty the Emperor?!

That's it, with Zhao Liangdong's skills, even if Shanxi was ceded to the emperor in the first battle, it was nothing, it was a big deal to get it back on the battlefield, but unfortunately, since then, he has never had such a chance.

Forced by the threat of Dzungar Khan, the Linhan Empire established the Northwest Corps in 1688, before that, the Corps had two field armies, the Fifth Army and the Thirteenth Army, as well as local troops in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, of which the Fifth Army was the Fifth Army of the headquarters of Zhao Liangdong, the governor of the Corps, and the Thirteenth Army was the Southern Zhou Army reorganized after the pacification of Sichuan; Emperor Lin Feng regardless of the previous suspicions, still appointed the general Wang Pingfan as the commander, awarded the rank of major general of the army, called "Zhaoyi Zhonglang General", plus this main force, the total strength of the Northwest Corps totaled more than 40,000 people, responsible for garrisoning the vast front from Anxi Prefecture to Qingyang Prefecture, this front across Gansu and Shaanxi, spread and undulating along the grassland and mountains, up to a thousand miles, most of the sides are endless yellow sand and grassland, sparsely populated, the road is remote, the supply is difficult, more than 40,000 people in the two armies are scattered, almost a bubble is gone, the strength of the embarrassment to the extreme.

Therefore, since the unification of Central and South China by the empire last year, several main forces rushed to the north almost non-stop. Among them, the Western Front Corps of General Yulin Rick and the Central Plains Corps of General Po Ju were abolished, and the armies under their jurisdiction were successively repaired and moved north to supplement the garrison in various parts of the empire's northern frontier except for the corps commander's headquarters.

At the beginning of the sixth year of Yuanxing, all units above the brigade level of the Han Empire received an order from the Ya'men of the General Staff to reorganize the army: the Han Empire was preparing to redivide the defense area throughout the country, and planned to set up eight town governors, namely: Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian provinces set up Fujian and Guangdong governors; Yunnan and Guizhou provinces set up Yunnan-Guizhou Governor's Mansion; Hunan and Hubei provinces have two lakes governors; Jiangsu, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang provinces have set up two river governors; Gansu, Shaanxi, Qinghai provinces set up the Ganxi Governor's Office; Sichuan and Tibet set up the Sichuan-Tibet Governorate; Shanxi and Chahar grasslands set up 'Mongolian' ancient governors' offices, and the east and north of the Liaohe River set up Nuergan governorates; The four provinces of Henan, Zhili, Shandong, and Ningjin north of the Qinling Mountains and the Yellow River are the defense areas of the Guards, and there is no governor, and they are directly under the jurisdiction of the emperor.

Judging from the current situation, the greatest military pressure is on the Gan-Shaanxi Prefecture and the 'Mongolian' Ancient Prefecture, which are facing tremendous military pressure from the eastern and western 'Mongolian' ancient khanates; that is, the Fujian-Guangdong Prefecture and the Sichuan-Tibet Prefecture, of which the Fujian-Guangdong Prefecture is facing the pressure granted by the imperial court center to seize Taiwan, while the Sichuan-Tibet Prefecture is also shouldering the mission of seizing Tibet.

According to His Majesty the Emperor's vision, aside from the overseas colonies of the Ryukyus, the sacred and unshakable territory of the Han Empire should include the Western Regions (Xinjiang and parts of Kazakhstan), Tibet, Qinghai, Mongolia, Taiwan, Nuergan and other vast regions, which is also the target of the General Staff and other war machines of the Empire, and must be taken down within five years.

This meant that the army of the Linhan Empire had to eliminate the Western 'Meng' Ancient Zungar Khanate, the Eastern 'Mongolian' Ancient Korqin Alliance, and the large and small Tusi, tribes, and local warlords in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other vast regions within five years, and bring them all under the control of the imperial court.

Except for doubts and disputes over the time limit, the government and the opposition of the Lin Han Empire did not have too many opinions. This is also a thing that surprised Lin Feng, originally according to his expectations, when this determination and goal was promulgated, most of those ministers probably rushed up and said: "Poor soldiers, raise troops outside and cripple inside" and other slogans, but he didn't expect that except for some imperial histories of the Imperial Procuratorate, most of the feudal officials were either silent or supportive, and there were not too many objections, but in Yeshilin expressed their appreciation, and out of thin air they put on a few tops for Lin Feng to "educate the barbarians, defend the etiquette and religion" Big hat.

Doesn't it mean that the Grey Grandsons of Confucianism have always been pacifists? How did they all look like warmongers at this point?!

What he didn't know was that in the current China, the force against the empire had reached a rather 'superstitious' level - just think about it, how long did it take Lin Feng from the beginning of the army to the seizure of the ruling power of the whole of China?! It's less than ten years!!

A civilian, in less than ten years, almost unified the whole of China, what kind of martial arts is this? Turning over the history of the Three Emperors and the Five Emperors, who has been able to do it for thousands of years? It's just like a legend, such a powerful army, and what kind of enemy they can't defeat ?!

Moreover, from a historical point of view alone, every emerging dynasty will inevitably carry out expansion wars abroad, whether it is the Sui, Tang or Ming, and even the Song Dynasty, which is known for its weakness, has attacked the north in the past years, which is a 'tide' and a historical law, and there is no way to avoid it.

How can any bureaucrat with a Confucian background who is also a historian not even know this?! In fact, at present, within the political fǔ, the views held by the officials are exactly the opposite of Lin Feng's judgment.

Confucian officials naturally have their opinions, the great Confucians of the past dynasties have already summed up the experience according to history, that is: when a dynasty is the most powerful, it is just the time when the country is founded, and this is the time when "the heroes of the sea are gathered together, and the people of the tiger are entangled in the ranks", and after that, once the old emperor dies, the Lingyan Pavilion is turned into loess, and the court is heavy and accumulated, then I am afraid that it will no longer be able to expand externally, so if you don't grit your teeth to your children and grandchildren at this time. Get a little bit of family business, and the Han Empire will probably live under the humiliation of the New Year's coin or the relatives like the Song Dynasty in the future.

Zhao Kuangyin attacked the Northern Han Dynasty several times, but the Song Confucians did not stop it; Ming Chengzu repeatedly plundered the 'Mongolian' ancients, and the Ming Confucians did not oppose it; now that Lin Feng wants to cut down the three sides, the Han Confucians will not oppose it either.

Therefore, under the influence of this concept, Lin Feng's expansion policy was quickly adopted and implemented. Beginning in 1690, the million-strong army of the Han Empire underwent a vigorous reorganization and reformation, and the former Governor of the Western Front Corps was recalled to the Beijing Division, and the First Guards Infantry Army was returned to the establishment; Ma Ying, the former governor of the Central Plains Corps, was commanded by the Sixth Cavalry Army to return to Nuergan; The Southern Corps was also abolished, with the Pingliao general Wang Dahai serving as the governor of Liangjiang, and the Dingnan general Liu Laosi serving as the governor of Fujian and Guangdong; The Sichuan Corps was renamed, and the Dingxi general Daniel Zhang became the governor of Sichuan and Tibet; Born in the Guards system and trusted by the emperor, Guide Zhonglang ascended to the sky one step at a time, and was awarded the Son of Heaven to fight on the Day, repatriated and trained the surrendered troops of the Southern Zhou Dynasty, and served as the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, and began to carry out the preparatory work for the war of changing the land and returning to the river in the area of Yunnan and Guizhou.

With the passing of the harsh winter, the official road 'traffic' gradually leveled out, a large number of troops were repaired, and they successively went north to reinforce and replenish under the battle flags of the Gansu-Shaanxi Prefecture and the 'Mongolian' Ancient Governor's Mansion, and the strength of the two theaters of the Han Empire was greatly expanded, and the Gan-Shaanxi Prefecture was transformed from a small corps of two armies into a heavy army group with a total strength of seven field armies, with a total strength of 150,000; and the headquarters of the 'Mongolian' ancient capital was increased from three armies to six armies, plus Chahar, Ordos, etc. The total strength of the servant army of the Mongolian tribes was as high as nearly 200,000.

The initiative in the Han-Mongolian war changed hands in an instant.

Not long ago, in 1689, the Linhan Empire needed to carry out a unified war, and the strategic policy was formulated: defend in the north and attack in the south. As the name suggests, that is, the main attacking forces and heavy army groups of the empire gathered in the southern battlefields of Henan, Anhui, northern Jiangsu, northern Hubei and other southern fronts, and poured the country south, striving to break all the warlord forces and other local separatist regimes in one fell swoop and complete the great cause of national reunification in a short period of time.

Therefore, on the frontier of thousands of miles in the north, the General Staff of the Lin Han Empire set up two lines of defense from Gansu to Nuergan, and set up two corps on the first line, of which 40,000 people under Zhao Liangdong in the northwest were stationed in Ganshan, and pillboxes, fortifications, post stations and beacon towers were built. The three armies of Zhao Guangyuan are the First Cavalry Army, Wang Jinbao's Tenth Cavalry Army, and Wang Jizhen's Cavalry Provisional Fourteenth Army, this group is the most powerful mobile corps of the Han Empire's cavalry, with more than 35,000 'elite' iron cavalry, almost all of which are stationed outside the Great Wall. The purpose of covering the build-up of rear defense forces.

In addition, the second line of defense is the local garrisons of Shanxi, Zhili, Hebei and Henan, this line of defense is based on the system of guards directly under the direct jurisdiction of His Majesty the Emperor as the main force, according to the most conservative, most unfavorable, and most disastrous judgment, if the first line of defense is in a bitter battle and cannot stop the iron hooves of the east and west 'Meng' Gu, then the emperor's personal soldiers with the best equipment and the most generous salary will have to take on the task of resolutely defending and waiting for the decisive battle after the gathering of the army of King Qin.

Of course, there is no need to set up a third line of defense here, if even the emperor's personal guards are defeated, the fate of North China will naturally be in no suspense, and the Lin Han Empire will have no meaning of existence.

In fact, neither Gerdan nor Buryagma had the strength to do this.

In the face of the defense system of the Han Empire's political army, the eastern and western 'Meng' Gu behaved very differently.