At the same time, in Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, because of a mistake, Li Zicheng hurriedly ascended the throne here and called the emperor, established the Dashun State, and even did not clean up the relics left after the great war in Xi'an, so he took the Xi'an Political Secretary Yamen as his palace in Xi'an Mansion and became the "emperor", so there was no atmosphere in Xi'an Mansion where the Son of Heaven ascended the throne at all, and there was a smell of corpses everywhere in the city, and even some places had corpses that had not been cleaned out of the city.

It turned out that in history, Li Zicheng made the capital of Xi'an Mansion and renamed Xi'an Mansion Daxing City, but at this time, he renamed it Zhongjing of Dashun State, and there was no atmosphere of emperor ascending the throne.

Although Li Zicheng has occupied the Hanzhong area for two years, and his strength has developed rapidly in the past two years, but in the end, because of the limitations of his thinking, many foundations have not been laid, whether it is the territory or the financial situation, it cannot be compared with the Xingtian Army, and in order to expand the territory as soon as possible, he had to expand the army again and again, and most of the available young and strong people were included in the army, so that the recovery of local agriculture is also very slow, and he can only rely on some old and weak women and children to work in the fields, and he himself is unable to provide any support to these people. So much so that now he is very unable to feed so many soldiers and horses.

Although he took Xi'an Mansion, not to mention the situation in Shaanxi, everyone also understands that after more than ten years of war, the people's livelihood has long been withered, and the population has decreased dramatically.

Li Zicheng hurriedly called the emperor in Xi'an Mansion, on the surface it was the persuasion of his subordinates, in fact, to put it bluntly, it was because he was gambling with Xiao Tianjian in his heart, eight years ago when Xiao Tianjian raised troops in Fengxiang Mansion, he Li Zicheng was already a well-known general of the eight teams under Gao Yingxiang, and it can even be said that he has become the leader of the rebel army alone, and he is a well-known figure in the rebel army from all walks of life. But now Xiao Tianjian has developed into a behemoth, but he can only toss back and forth between the poor and remote land of Shaanxi, and has always been pressed by Xiao Tianjian, relying on Xiao Tianjian's snort to live.

Li Zicheng's ambition is very big, but now he thinks that his luck is not good, when he heard that Xiao Tianjian was going to ascend the throne in Nanjing City and establish a great middle dynasty, he was very angry, in order to fight for a breath, so he pretended to be under the so-called persuasion of some people with ulterior motives under his subordinates, and panicked after conquering Xi'an Mansion, he also made a farce of ascending the throne and becoming emperor to the extreme.

But although he ascended the throne and became emperor in Xi'an Mansion, he himself knew very well that he, the so-called Emperor Dashun, had a lot of water, and he was not Xiao Tianjian's opponent at all in terms of strength, and at present, there was almost no room for his expansion in China except for Shaanxi.

So after he ascended the throne and became the emperor, he discussed with his generals and decided to continue to develop his forces to the west, at least to control most of Shaanxi.

But what made him very unhappy was that soon after he ascended the throne, he got the news that Xiao Tianjian, who temporarily set the capital in Nanjing, announced to the world, declaring that he did not recognize him as the Emperor of Dashun, and ordered him to stop all military operations and wait to be reorganized by the army of Dazhong and North Korea.

Xiao Tianjian's edict is really completely angry Li Zicheng, for this edict, in fact, it can be regarded as a declaration of war by Xiao Tianjian completely against him, in Li Zicheng's view, his name as the emperor of Dashun is not right, and his identity as the emperor of Dazhong is also unjustifiable, why can he tell the world that he does not recognize his identity as the emperor of Dashun? And you are ashamed to say that you want him to accept the reorganization?

So after Li Zicheng learned the news, he immediately became angry, took the case, pointed in the direction of Nanjing in the east and scolded Xiao Tianjian for not being a thing, forgetting that in the early years, when Xiao Tianjian was under his Li Zicheng and "bowed his head and ears" to listen to his dispatch, now that he is sitting big, he began to give orders to him, and he Li Zicheng couldn't swallow this breath no matter what.

So Li Zicheng retaliated with a tooth for a tooth, and also issued an edict with a pretentious matter, saying that Xiao Tianjian was the pseudo-emperor, and he Li Zicheng was the real dragon emperor, the evidence was that he dug up the stone tablet in Hanzhong that read "Eighteen Sons of the Main Artifact", and Xiao Tianjian was not, he would never obey Xiao Tianjian's orders, and declared that Great China would be the enemy of his Great Shun Kingdom in the future, and he would definitely be inseparable from Xiao Tianjian.

Then Li Zicheng immediately issued an order to declare that he would crusade against Xiao Tianjian's Great China, and ordered his generals Liu Zongmin and Li Shuangxi to lead 20,000 Dashun troops to march in the direction of Tongguan, making a posture of going out of Tongguan and Xiao Tianjian to fight to the death.

In this regard, Liu Bao, the commander of the Second Town Army of Great China in northern Shaanxi, mobilized three infantry battalions, one artillery battalion and three reserve battalions in the northwest of Henan, assembled in Shaanzhou, and immediately sent troops to Tongguan, and in March of the first year of the Tianyuan year of Great China, the Dashun soldiers and horses ahead of Li Zicheng captured Tongguan, an important pass in Henan, Shaanxi.

It is said that it is to capture Tongguan, in fact, it is just to take over the defense, in recent years, the Ming official army stationed in Tongguan, the strength is declining, although the Shaanxi guards have always been prepared for the Xingtian army to break through the Tongguan into Shaanxi, but this year, because of Li Zicheng's revival in Hanzhong, forced Wang Qiaonian to repeatedly mobilize the officers and troops from all over Shaanxi to deal with Li Zicheng, although Tongguan is important, but when Li Zicheng attacked Xi'an, it has also lost its due position, the garrison was transferred out of Tongguan in large numbers, when Liu Bao sent troops to attack Tongguan, There are only 2,000 old and weak remnants left in Tongguan, and the guard general is just a little-known Shaanxi general Li Mingfeng.

This general Li Mingfeng knows very well what kind of situation he is facing in Tongguan, the governor of Shaanxi trilateral Wang Qiaonian is dead, he is in the east is the Xingtian army that makes the official army frightened, and behind him is the thief Li Zicheng who is rampant in Shaanxi, and now the imperial court has lost its ability to control Shaanxi, and these old and weak soldiers want food or no food, no matter who they are against, there is only one way to die, so he can only choose to surrender Li Zicheng or Xiao Tianjian's side, this question is an arithmetic problem, After comparing the strength of both of them, it was easy to make the right choice, so when Li Mingfeng learned that Li Zicheng had sent troops to march in the direction of Tongguan, he immediately sent someone to contact the general of Dazhong Shaanzhou to express his willingness to lead the army to surrender to Dazhong and Korea.

As a result, these large and medium-sized soldiers and horses can be said to have taken over Tongguan, the gate to the east of the pass, without much effort, and under the command of Liu Bao's general Fan Sheng, they began to quickly deploy defenses.

For this kind of thing, Xiao Tianjian is not interested in asking too much, he just needs to understand the situation, the war zones have been divided, each town has its own command system to transfer, Tongguan belongs to the second town Liu Bao is responsible, what to do Liu Bao will deal with, although at the moment his main focus is on the Northern Expedition, and he does not want to tear his face with Li Zicheng at this time, and be restrained by Li Zicheng's troops, but Li Zicheng's claim to the emperor He must show his attitude, since Li Zicheng is unwilling to listen to him, he still wants to fight with him, Then he won't be afraid of him, and in his opinion, he doesn't need to spend too much energy to deal with Li Zicheng, and having soldiers and generals from various towns is enough to control Li Zicheng's soldiers and horses.

So Xiao Tianjian did not pay much attention to this matter, but basically focused his energy on the Northern Expedition, after this large-scale Northern Expedition was decided, there was a fierce debate between the DPRK and China because of whether Xiao Tianjian should drive the expedition in person.

Most people in the Chinese military of the DPRK think that Xiao Tianjian is now the lord of the dynasty, his identity is not the usual, his identity is no longer easy to personally lead the troops north, it is better to choose a general as the commander to lead the army in the Northern Expedition, this view is deeply popular, when Xiao Tianjian mentioned that he wanted to drive the expedition in person, the civil and military officials played one after another, persuading Xiao Tianjian to stay in Nanjing City.

But this kind of persuasion did not work for Xiao Tianjian, in Xiao Tianjian's view, he had been waiting for this moment for so many years, and now the army was about to go north, and it was absolutely unacceptable for him to stay in the rear of Nanjing City, so he even rejected the suggestions of the ministers, and immediately issued an edict to make it clear that he must go north in person, and no one should raise objections to this matter.

In fact, the ministers of Dazhong had long been accustomed to Xiao Tianjian's strong style, and when they saw that persuasion was ineffective, they had to stop and drum, and they all began to focus on the Northern Expedition.

This Northern Expedition will be a battle that will determine the fate of China and North Korea, so all of China attaches great importance to this battle, and the main enemy they have to deal with in this battle is no longer the Ming official army.

Therefore, whether it is the intelligence department, or the financial and logistics departments, and even the various military systems, they have begun to make preparations for this Northern Expedition.

Everyone knows that this Northern Expedition will be a super-large-scale war, the military strength is not a big problem, the biggest problem is the logistics supply, after the founding of the country, although the current strength is already very strong, but after all, many places are still operating for a short time, the financial and material foundation is still relatively weak, such a big war needs an astronomical amount of materials, it is impossible to invest millions of taels of silver, not to mention that this also involves the production capacity of the industrial system of China, North Korea, Moreover, the time for them to prepare was also very hasty, and it was very difficult to complete such a large-scale transfer of materials and troops.

All the ministries threw themselves into the work of continuous rotation for this purpose, and many things were put on hold for the time being, and almost all their energy was devoted to the preparation of the pre-war period.

Fortunately, not long after the founding of Dazhong, the various ministries have not yet formed a bureaucratic style, and the phenomenon of passing the buck between each other is not obvious, and everyone knows that Xiao Tianjian is very enthusiastic about this matter, and no one wants to anger Xiao Tianjian because of the ridicule at this time, so the various ministries can only work together to make the administrative machine that Dazhong has just established full power.

As a result, materials from Huguang, Nanzhili, Henan, and Shanxi began to be deployed by the General Logistics Department, and a large number of people were mobilized, and these materials began to be sent in large quantities to the northern front line by land and water, and large quantities of grain, ammunition, armor, and guns were loaded on ships or trucks and transported to the places where they were needed.

The boats and various cargo ships on the Yangtze River and the canal are also busy again, taking the canal as the main transportation channel, and a large number of them sail into the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, slowly heading north without seeing the beginning and the tail.

A large number of soldiers and horses from Great China have also been drawn out from all over the country, and they have assembled in the position designated by the Ministry of War, and this time Xiao Tianjian ordered that in addition to Li Xuanzhu's Third Town Army, all the rest of the town army should be transferred elite soldiers and generals to participate in this Northern Expedition, which involved the transfer of soldiers and generals in many places.

Under the dispatch of the military department, Yan Chongxi's first town was ordered to draw out 20,000 foot cavalry, and assembled towards the area of Yanmen Pass, they undertook the attack on the northwest of the Ming Jing Division as the left army and the resistance to the right side of the Jiannu army, with Yan Chongxi personally in command, supplemented by Wang Chengping and Li Lingfeng, and Lu Xiangsheng accompanied as a supervising army, forming a combat group.

Liu Bao's second town gathered 15,000 cavalry and horses, assembled in Shunde Mansion, with Diao Zheng in command, Liu Bao stayed in Henan, forming the Middle Route Army to attack in the direction of the Beijing Division, their main enemy was Fu Zonglong's Ming official army group that was currently deployed in the area of Guangping Mansion, as well as the remnants of the official army forces in various parts of Jingfu.

As for Xiao Tianjian himself, as the emperor of the Great Middle Dynasty, he personally commanded part of Shi Ran's Fourth Town, most of the guards of Luo Li and Liu Yaoben, and a limited number of 40,000 soldiers and horses of Yulinwei to form the Right Route Army of the Northern Expedition of Great China, assembled in Huai'an Mansion, and marched north along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, attacking in the direction of Beizhi and Shandong.

The real main force of the three-way army is actually the right route army led by Xiao Tianjian himself, while the left and middle route armies belong to the auxiliary forces, and the time of the northern expedition of the army is set on the morning of March 17 in the first year of Tianyuan.

On the morning of 10 March, Xiao Tianjian himself left the city of Nanjing, and under the escort of the feather forest of Tietou, he first took the Yangtze River by boat, then turned into the canal in Yangzhou Mansion, and headed for Huai'an Mansion.