Xijin Mansion is the most important state capital of the entire Nanjing Province of the Liao Dynasty, this place is the transportation hub of Nanjing Road, there are shipping and land transportation in all directions, and more importantly, this place is the center of the whole Yanyun.

There is Xiangshan in the north to rely on, there is the Jade River in the south as a barrier, the terrain is dangerous, not to mention, it is the essence of Nanjing Road in the Liao Dynasty, whether agriculture or industry and commerce are extremely developed, not only for Nanjing Road, even relative to the entire Liao Dynasty is the most prosperous place.

There are not only Han people living here, but also a lot of Khitan people, of course, including Khitan nobles, Nanjing is not in vain, it is one of the companion capitals of the Liao Dynasty, with an irreplaceable important position.

This place is also the center of the entire Yanyun Han people, for the Han people of the Liao Dynasty, they are whose people are in the hands of the Xijin Mansion, and they are attached to the Liao people in the Liao, and they are returned to the Song court in the Song Dynasty.

The reason is as simple as that, whose fist listens to whom, Taizong's Northern Expedition made them see hope, but the final result was two defeats, and the Han people would accept the traditional ideas of Confucianism from an early age, and regard the Great Song Dynasty of the Han people as an orthodox dynasty.

During Taizong's Northern Expedition, many local Han people helped the Song army in the Northern Expedition, but the Song army was not angry, it can also be said that Taizong was not angry, and in the end he lost so completely that the Han people who had helped the Great Song Dynasty were wiped out.

No country can tolerate the behavior of foreign countries, and once this opening is opened, I don't know what will happen in the future, so those Han people who helped the Great Song Dynasty were inhumanly tortured and killed, and the headless corpses were piled up, and their heads were piled up in a city.

Since then, the Han people in the land of Yanyun have given up their desire to help the Great Song Dynasty, no matter how strong the power of the Great Song is, unless they can take down the Xijin Mansion and even the entire territory of Yanyun, they will never go to death in vain, after all, their ancestors have lived in this land for generations, and they will live in the future.

Zhao Zhen especially understood the thoughts of the people here, so that he did not let the army and soldiers get close to the nearby villages and counties, as long as it was a closed village, the Great Song Dynasty team would quietly withdraw after searching and not finding the Liao, not disturbing a family, even if they saw someone coming out, they would slightly shake their heads and refuse to help.

Once someone in this village helps the army of the Great Song Dynasty, no matter how many people there are, it will cause the whole village to be unlucky, and the whole village may be slaughtered by the Liao people in retaliation, which is also the news that Zhao Zhen heard from the towns belonging to the Great Song Dynasty.

The army of the Great Song Dynasty had already approached Xijin Mansion, and Zhao Zhen adopted a steady and steady tactic, sweeping away the villages, towns, counties, and cities near Xijin Mansion one by one, and would not let them go until they were confirmed to be safe.

The war has reached this level and is already white-hot, and it is impossible for the army of the Liao Dynasty not to know about Zhao Zhen's personal conquest, and it is impossible for them to have no action, but there must be a reason for the delay.

Zhao Zhen believes that the flashpoint of the conflict is in Xijin Province, which is just a stone's throw away.

Zhao Zhen began to analyze from the perspective of the Liao people, once he encountered a problem, Zhao Zhen likes to empathize, it is actually difficult to make an objective evaluation and description of the enemy, after all, everyone will subconsciously think that their own side has an advantage, and this kind of thinking is extremely stupid......

There were already many people among the generals of the Song army who felt that the Liao Dynasty was stupid, and in their opinion, the Great Song should launch a fatal blow to the Great Song when it crossed the Song-Liao border, and Zhao Zhen scoffed when he heard this idea.

If the Liao people had that ability, why did they take action when the Liao army was mired in the quagmire of the Western Expedition? These are all things that the Liao people only know later, and even if they do, they are powerless, after all, it takes a lot of time to rectify armaments and transfer troops to the south.

Many of these generals in the army are from higher military general schools such as the Military Academy of Military Affairs, Zhao Zhen feels that many of them are hindsight, do not consider the problem in combination with reality, and always think wishfully that they should be how they should be, so it is strange not to lose the battle!

Holding a small flag in his hand and constantly comparing on the sand table of Xijin Mansion, in the end, Zhao Zhen really couldn't find where the Liao people would hide to give himself a fatal blow, it stands to reason that such a long time is completely enough for the Liao people to launch an army, the combat habit of the Liao cavalry is to prepare their own military supplies, and they will eat the enemy, so the strategy of throwing off logistics is the most advantageous for defensive warfare.

Once the war started, the cavalry of the Liao Dynasty should be able to appear in the land of Yanyun at the fastest speed, and start a decisive battle with the Great Song army, but now the Song army has seven prefectures and eleven counties of Yanyun, and the Liao Dynasty has lost Yizhou, Zhuozhou and Danzhou, the land of three weeks, and Jizhou, which is far to the east, is also considered to be lonely overseas, and it must be in the bag of the Great Song Dynasty.

Although Nanjing Road is a part of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, it is indeed the most important part, and the only one that can be compared with the Nanjing Xijin Mansion is only the Xijing Datong Mansion, which is another important area of the Liao Dynasty in the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun.

The policy of the Great Song Dynasty army first in the south and then in the west was the same as that of Taizong back then, even if it was a large-scale in-depth battle, it was impossible to send troops from all nearby places, which would be very scattered for the Great Song Dynasty, and the price of dispersion was to break each one.

This time, Zhao Zhen not only had to carry out a rapid large-depth operation, but also fought steadily, and he did not want to repeat the mistakes of the Gaoliang River in those years. In that battle, although the Song army fought continuously with a tired division, it was indeed overwhelming at the beginning of the war.

On the other hand, when the Song army marched, the army and the people surrendered, and the people of Youzhou even greeted the king with cow wine, which shows that the rule of the Liao Dynasty in the Yanyun area has basically collapsed.

If there was a time when the Great Song Dynasty came closest to recovering the sixteen states of Yanyun, it must be the Gaoliang River.

Unfortunately, the Gaoliang River ended in a fiasco.

The battle of Gaoliang River had an extremely profound impact on both Song and Liao, and from the perspective of the Great Song Dynasty, they never dared to make such a large-depth military breakthrough again, in other words, grandfather Zhao Er's courage was frightened.

For the Liao side, the psychological advantage over the Song army was completely established, and the soldiers and civilians in the Yanyun area no longer dared to place expectations on the Song army.

This subtle change was also reflected in the later Yongxi Northern Expedition, for the Great Song Dynasty and Zhao Er, they only dared to adopt a step-by-step, steady and steady way in terms of strategy, and at the same time, the Great Song Dynasty and the opposition also pinned their hopes on the response of the people of Yanyun.

But they didn't expect that after the fiasco of the Gaoliang River, it was impossible for the people of Yanyun to eat pot pulp to welcome the king as they did at the beginning, so in the process of Yongxi's Northern Expedition, there was no longer the scene of the Liao State officials and soldiers surrendering when they heard the wind, on the contrary, every city had to go through a bloody battle.

Even if there is a surrender, it is still forced after a vicious battle, which also makes it more difficult for Zhao Zhen to drive in person, and Taizong, a very powerful grandfather of the "second", left him with considerable problems.