Become allies because of the common enemy, and turn against each other because of the disappearance of the common enemy, this sentence is very suitable for Gao Yu and Tong Guan, originally Tong Guan mastered the forbidden army outside Beijing, Gao Yu mastered the forbidden army in Beijing, there is no contradiction between the two, but with the continuous war in various places, a large number of foreign transfers of the Beijing forbidden army, Gao Yu's power is constantly decreasing, and Tong Guan's power is constantly increasing, and the two inevitably have contradictions.

In particular, Gao Yu successfully won over Liu Yanqing and put his hand into the Western Army, which was originally a corner of digging the Seed Master Road, but with the debasement of the Seed Master Road, Tong Guan began to control the Western Army, Tong Guan naturally thought that Gao Yu was demolishing his own platform, but they had to deal with the Seed Master Dao and Fan Zhixu together, so the superficial relationship between the two was relatively harmonious, and the contradiction did not break out.

But with the deposition of the Fan Party and the return of the master to his hometown for the elderly, the contradiction between the two became acute again, but the fuse of the contradiction was the uneven distribution of the merit after the suppression of Fang La's rebellion.

But after Fang La was executed in the capital in August last year, Tong Guan was rewarded for his merits, Tong Guan took all the great merits on himself, and gave the former enemy command to his confidant Xin Xingzong, completely ignoring Liu Yanqing's merits, and not mentioning the merits of Tan Zhi of the prison army, which angered Tan Zhi and Gao Yu at the same time, and the two jointly impeached Tong Guan for indiscriminately killing civilians and taking credit, resulting in Tong Guan's original position as the Grand Master was frustrated, and the title of Duke of Chu was not obtained, and only Kaifu Yi and the three divisions were sealed.

New hatred and old hatred are superimposed, and Gao Yu and Tong Guan have since become rivals.

Today, Gao Yu came to Liang Shicheng, of course, he also came for a purpose, Liang Shicheng asked Gao Yu to sit down, and said with a smile: "Is Taiwei so anxious?" ”

Gao Yu came to Liang Shicheng in the morning, he learned of Tong Guan's deployment plan, ready to divide the army into the east and west route armies, Liu Yanqing commanded the West Route Army, Xin Xingzong commanded the East Route Army, but Tong Guan himself sat in the West Route Army, he was very worried that this would empty Liu Yanqing's command, so he begged Liang Shicheng to intercede with the Son of Heaven and arrange Liu Yanqing to go to the East Road.

"It's not that I'm in a hurry, I should have a political discussion in the afternoon, I want to know the result."

Liang Shicheng sighed and said: "This afternoon, Zhang Bangchang also proposed to divide the three route armies, and set up a middle route army, which was personally commanded by Tong Guan, which meant the same, to separate Tong Guan and Liu Yanqing, but Tong Guan thought that dividing too many troops was not conducive to concentrating troops to annihilate the main force of the Liao army, and the Son of Heaven agreed with his plan, and the Son of Heaven specially pointed out that the West Route Army was the mainstay, and the senior ones served as the highest, Liu Yanqing was the champion general of the third grade, and Xin Xingzong was only the loyal general of the fourth grade, and Liu Yanqing was of course on the West Road.

If you want to transfer Liu Yanqing to the East Road, you must first let Xin Xingzong be promoted to the second rank, or Liu Yanqing to the fourth rank, does Gao Taiwei think this is possible? ”

Gao Yu showed a look of disappointment on his face, which showed that Liang Shicheng didn't mention this matter to the Son of Heaven at all, "Has it been decided?" He asked, holding on to the last glimmer of hope.

Liang Shicheng nodded, "I'm sorry!" ”

Gao Yu slowly stood up, "I know, thank you Taifu!" ”

He immediately turned to leave, and at this time, Liang Shicheng said again: "Please rest assured, Tong Guan does not dare to take revenge on the Son of Heaven's Northern Expedition." ”

Gao Yu sneered, didn't say anything, and left Liang Shicheng's official room quickly, Liang Shicheng sighed, Gao Yu's request he couldn't do it at all, if you want to blame Gao Yu, he must fight for the position of the main force, and of course he has to command the main force on the West Road, will Tong Guan go to the East Road to sit on the cold bench? What a joke.

At this time, Liang Shicheng's heart suddenly became upset, the contradiction between Tong Guan and Liu Yanqing is likely to affect the Northern Expedition, will this Northern Expedition really fail?

........

Time flew by in waiting, and soon it was May of the fourth year of Xuanhe, and the Northern Expedition of the Song Dynasty had been on the march for more than a month, and it was estimated from the schedule that the army should have arrived at the Song-Liao border a long time ago.

In the afternoon, the little tea boy trotted all the way to deliver the newspaper that Li Yanqing wanted to the official room, "County gentleman, this is the latest newspaper I have gotten." ”

"Give it to me!"

Li Yanqing took the newspaper and immediately spread it on the table, and the front page of the "Chao Bao" was a series of canonization and death news, and the prince Zhao Shan was made the Duke of Changguo; The crown prince Cai You was appointed as the deputy envoy of Xuanfu in Hebei and Hedong, Tan Zhi was named the commander of the Changde Army, and Zhao Zhongyu, the king of Pu, died.

Li Yanqing searched around in the newspaper again, and finally found a news about the Northern Expedition on the back, Tong Guanren asked the Liao State to surrender to the Great Song Dynasty with the Son of Heaven's edict, and the Song Dynasty would give the Liao nobles asylum, but the surrender was solemnly rejected by the Liao Emperor Yelu Chun, and the Liao State sent Yelu Dashi and Xiao Gan to temporarily recruit 40,000 weak troops to prepare to meet the 250,000 troops of the Great Song Dynasty. ’

Li Yanqing searched for a long time in the newspaper, but he never found any more news about the Northern Expedition, so he threw the newspaper aside, and spread out the "tabloid" again, preparing to look for news of the Northern Expedition in the tabloid.

Last month, the "tabloid" conducted a series of analyses of the Northern Expedition, which basically coincided with the facts, such as the lineup of the main generals of the Northern Expedition, with Zhao Kai, the king of Yun, as the commander, Tong Guan as the envoy of the Xuanfu system, Liu Yanqing and Xin Xingzong as the commander of both the east and west, commanding the Northern Expedition of 150,000 troops, and dispatching 100,000 forbidden troops and Xiang troops from Hebei to respond, and their speculation proved to be completely correct afterwards.

For another example, the tabloids found that the Western Army that had returned from suppressing the Fang La rebellion was exactly 150,000, which was the same as the number of the Northern Expeditionary Army, so they deduced that the Northern Expedition was dominated by the Western Army.

The tabloid also analyzed that there are two Western Army, one is the Heshuo Army stationed in the area of Hexi and Shaanxi Road, and the other is the Hedong Army under the command of the Seed Division, the current commander of the Hedong Army will be Yao Pingzhong, and the deputy general is the Seed Division, since Yao Pingzhong and the Seed Division did not appear in the Northern Expedition lineup, it means that the Hedong Army did not fight, but the Heshuo Army served as the main force.

Li Yanqing agreed with the tabloid's analysis, he remembered that the seed master Dao told himself that there was only one elite of the Heshuo army, that is, the 50,000 troops under Liu Fa, and with Liu Fa's unfortunate death, the remaining 20,000 elites under him were sent to Western Xia by Tong Guan.

The current Heshuo army is a new army recruited after the Battle of Western Xia, and it is okay to fight with the rabble under Fang La, but when you really encounter the fierce and warlike Liao army, it is really difficult to say the victory.

Li Yanqing found what he was looking for in the Northern Expedition column on the second page of the "Tabloid Newspaper": "According to the high-ranking generals of the Northern Expeditionary Army, there has been no change in Hebei's combat readiness and the results of the inspection of the military prison at the beginning of last year......

This news surprised Li Yanqing, could it be that for more than a year, there has been no improvement in Hebei's combat readiness?

Li Yanqing remembered that at that time, the imperial court sent Bai Shizhong to Hebei to investigate and deal with Liang Fangping, but Liang Fangping defected to the Jin State, and Bai Shizhong was impeached and dismissed by Wang Huang.

At this time, Yang Ju and Zhou Ping also heard the news and walked into the room, and Yang Ju asked anxiously: "How is the situation of the Northern Expedition?" ”

Li Yanqing sighed, "The Liao State refused to surrender, and used Yelu Dashi and Xiao Gan as generals to temporarily recruit 40,000 troops to meet the Song army. ”

Zhou Ping frowned, "It's only 40,000 people, or it's a temporary recruitment, but the Song army has an army of 250,000 people, isn't this hitting a stone with an egg?" ”

Li Yanqing shook his head, "The court newspaper also said so, but Yelu Dashi and Xiao Gan are both famous generals of the Liao State, especially Yelu Dashi is the only Jinshi among the Khitans, both civil and military, I am afraid that the mourning soldiers will win!" ”

"But even so, the difference in strength between the two countries is too great, and there are still golden soldiers behind the Liao State, and the Liao State is under the enemy's back, even if it is reincarnated in vain, I am afraid that it will not be able to return to the sky."

Li Yanqing shook his head, "You don't know the Jurchens!" The Jurchens are treacherous and untrustworthy, when the Song and Liao armies are fighting, they will never attack the Liao State, they want to use the Liao army as a whetstone, try the sharpness of the Song army's knife, I am afraid that the final result will make everyone's eyes fall to the ground. ”

Yang Ju and Zhou Ping glanced at each other and said in unison: "The county gentleman is a little too pessimistic!" ”

Li Yanqing smiled faintly, "Then we'll wait and see!" ”