Xiao Hanli figured out the reality of the Song army, but he did not rashly launch an attack, but waited for domestic orders. He understood that Dashi Linya claimed to have inherited the mantle of the Liao State and continued the national lineage of the Great Liao, but everyone understood that their regime could not convince all the Khitans, because although Yelu Dashi was considered a royal family, it was already a side branch and was not recognized by the clan.

The princess of Shu Yu Liyan is the biological daughter of the last emperor Yelu Yanxi, a direct royal family, who established power in Xijing after being separated from the emperor, supervised the country as a princess, and was supported by the Yelu clan and the Xiao clan. In the battle with the Jurchens, he won many battles and held the last piece of land in the Liao State, but Yelu Dashi was still dying in Mobei at that time. Later, with the fall of the Nanjing regime and the capture of the emperor, Xijing became the only remaining regime of the Liao State at that time, and was also regarded as orthodox by the Khitans.

After that, the princess of Shu was the son-in-law of the Song Dynasty Yan Wang for the Song Dynasty to resist the Jin, and the momentum was even more victorious, and with its help to recover the entire Xijing region, the Jurchens did not dare to violate the border again, and the northwest was shocked. What is suffocating is that the prince of the Song Dynasty did not forget his homeland, sent troops to aid the Song Dynasty to defeat the Jin army in the south, and ascended the throne to become the emperor of the Great Song Dynasty, and the princess of Shu returned to the Song Dynasty with a deep love for her husband and wife, but also won huge benefits for the Khitans, so that the clansmen were spared from fire, so the princess of Shu still enjoys high prestige among the Khitans.

Now that the Song army has handed over the letter from the princess of Shu, although Xiao Hanli does not know the specific content, he can also guess that he must have persuaded the emperor to stop the war and join the Song Dynasty to resist Jin, and not to wade into the troubled waters of Gaochang. Thinking that with the status and prestige of the princess of Shu, the emperor would not fail to consider her opinion, then perhaps this conflict could be avoided. And from the bottom of his heart, Xiao Hanli didn't want to have a bad relationship with Song. Therefore, he did not rush to move troops, but he also did not relax his preparations for war.

Wishes are beautiful. The results were disappointing. A few days later, domestic news came back, and the emperor rejected the proposal of the princess of Shu. But said that as long as the Song army gave up the crusade against Gaochang. He could send the Song army out of the country, persuade Gaochang to reopen the trade routes, and set up a special market in Western Liao, allowing Song Dynasty merchants to operate in it, otherwise they would have to meet each other.

Xiao Hanli sighed after looking at it, the Song army spent a lot of money to mobilize 100,000 troops to come all the way, how could they give up the conquest of Gaochang with a promise, and the two armies would inevitably fight. So he sent an envoy to inform the Song army and issued a mobilization order at the same time, after the Song army rejected the emperor's suggestion. Fight now......

The Western Liao army rolled in with an unstoppable momentum, and when there were still twenty miles away from the Song army's camp, a cavalry army suddenly came out, and they roared and stirred up the smoke and dust in the sky, and it was impossible to see how many people there were. But instead of stopping, the comer rushed forward at an accelerated pace, and he hurriedly ordered the vanguard to step forward to block and prevent the enemy from charging into battle.

The two armies approached quickly, and Xiao Hanli saw the other party's banner clearly, it was the Mengwu army that went out with the Song army, the number of people was about 5,000, and the formation that could be seen was slightly back from the front than the two wings. Just when the advance of the Western Liao Army was about to make contact with the enemy. The two wings of the Mughal tribe had already rushed to within a hundred paces of them and began to fire arrows, because the number of people on the two wings was much smaller than that of the forwards, the gap in the queue was relatively large to avoid accidental injury, and the arrows could be fired continuously.

The Western Liao army will not sit back and wait to be beaten. They also fired arrows to return fire, but the cavalry bows they were equipped with had a short range, and they could not shoot in front of the enemy's horses at all. But the people on his side fell one after another under the dense rain of arrows. And the Mughal army was still firing arrows, and immediately retreated to the back row after the front row. The cycle went on and on, and three rounds were shot in a short period of time, and the Western Liao army suffered heavy casualties.

Just in the West, the Liao army was shot by the cavalry on both wings. When the troops were mobilized to fill in, the frontal assault of the Mughal army had also begun, and they also opened with bow and arrow attacks, which were more deep range and lethality due to the frontal impact and the speed of the horses rushing forward. The Western Liao army was attacked by a sudden rain of fierce and swift arrows, the soldiers in the front row were hit by arrows one after another, and the forward formation was in chaos, just as they hurriedly sorted out the formation, and supplemented the soldiers lost in the front row with the reserve soldiers, the Mengwu cavalry had already shot three rounds of arrows, and they were killed in front of them like bows and swords.

At this moment, the vanguard of the Western Liao army suffered heavy losses under the rain of arrows of the Mengwu army, and the formation was in chaos, unable to withstand the impact of the enemy army at all, and collapsed in an instant, and was defeated under the crazy slashing of the Mengwu army. However, the Mengwu army refused to give up, and slightly adjusted the formation during the run, and then killed the Liao army. They repeated their old tactics, still using the cavalry on both wings to attack from a distance with bows and arrows, and then relying on frontal charges to break through the formation.

Under another round of blows from the Mengwu army, the front army of the large array wavered, and Xiao Hanlira hurriedly sent troops forward to fill the gap, which blocked the impact of the enemy army and stabilized the formation. He was simply mad, the enemy army was only 3,000, far less than his own strength, and they rode short horses, which were not comparable to the tall Turkic war horses in their own army, and the Mongols, who were short in terms of individual combat ability, were not at all the opponents of the Turkic soldiers in their own army, but they were beaten by them and had no power to fight back.

Seeing that the Mughal cavalry had failed to do anything, they did not dwell on it, and turned their horses and retreated to re-form the formation. As a veteran of the battlefield, how could Xiao Hanlira give the enemy a chance to fight again, and ordered the front army to pursue and not give them a chance to turn back. Seeing that they were outnumbered, the Muguls also retreated with interest, but as soon as the Liao army approached them, they used the long-range range of their bows and arrows to prevent them from approaching. If the front army was in confusion and slowed down, the Mengwu army immediately formed a formation and turned around and rushed into formation, still using long-range strikes to kill and injure the Liao army, taking advantage of the opportunity that it had to stop and organize the formation, and launch a frontal attack.

Several times, the Liao army not only failed to catch up with the Mengwu army, but was bitten twice by it, and lost many generals. Xiao Hanli was furious, and ordered the front army to spread out in formation, taking advantage of the speed of his horses and the advantage of his soldiers' good at hand-to-hand combat, to let go of their speed and chase fiercely, preparing to use their numerical advantage to break through the barrier of their bows and arrows, and fight them in close combat, not giving them a chance to turn around and fight again. His tactics worked very well, and the Muguls were chased by a lot of fart, and they had to change horses frequently to maintain their speed.

The two armies chased one after the other on the grassland, but unfortunately the Mughuls were few and agile, gathering and scattering, and erratic. The Western Liao army was a large group of men and horses advancing together, and it was difficult to maintain speed, and the former army did not dare to break away from the brigade too far for fear of being plotted by the Mughurs again, so the two armies gradually distanced themselves. Fearing that the Muguls would be exhausted if they continued like this, Xiao Hanli ordered him to abandon the pursuit and regroup, but he also learned his lesson and asked the scouts to expand their search area to avoid further raids.

Sure enough, as Xiao Hanli expected, the Muguls kept appearing and cruising around the marching brigade, constantly looking for opportunities to harass, but they finally failed to succeed under the tight defense of the Western Liao army. But all the way also made him angry, the bow in the hands of the Mengwu people was obviously from the hands of the craftsmen of the Central Plains, and the range was much longer than the riding bow that they were commonly equipped with, so they only operated outside the range of the Liao army's bow and arrow, and with the good bow in their hands, they sniped and pursued and drove out the Liao cavalry, and would never fight them hand-to-hand when they were at a disadvantage in numbers.

The change in the way the Mughal people fought made the Western Liao army very uncomfortable, and most of their soldiers came from the Turks living in Central Asia. After the early expansion of the Arab Empire, the Arabic scimitar and its use were transmitted to Central Asia through wars and trade routes, so at this time the steppe cavalry mostly used the scimitar to charge and kill, they used the impact of horses, plus the mechanical principle of the scimitar, it was easy to cut off the enemy's body and even armor and weapons, and the Turks combined the mechanical principle of the scimitar and the impact of the horse to the extreme, but at this time the enemy's tactics seemed to be specially formulated to restrain the Western Liao army, So that it can't give full play to the advantages of the horse fast knife at all!

Hsiao felt a sense of crisis about the change of the Mughals, and he understood that the emergence of a new tactic often changed the outcome of the battle. Today's battle may have been just an improvisation by the Mugultures after they obtained the Great Song Liang Bow, and there were still omissions in coordination, especially in the process of being pursued. But the effect is obvious to all, once the tactics are mature, the advantage of the Western Liao army will be greatly suppressed, fortunately they are still in the initial stage of exploration, and they can still defeat them with the advantage of troops......

The Western Liao army marched forward bravely under the attack of the Song army, and the closer it got to the camp of the Song army, the more frequent the raids became, including not only the Muguls, but also the cavalry of Wang Guren and other units. However, Xiao Hanli found that most of them attacked mainly with their own ethnic armies, and there was little cooperation between them, and their attacks did not adopt the tactics of the Mughal people, obviously the various tribal armies that went out with the Song army lacked unified command with each other, and there were contradictions between them and no communication, otherwise the coordinated actions of their various departments would inevitably cause great trouble to themselves.

When there were still ten miles away from the Song army's camp, Xiao Hanli ordered the two wings to spread out to the north and south, and he wanted to encircle the Song army and annihilate them all in one fell swoop. After the tribal army of the Song army, which carried out the task of harassment, found that the Liao army spread its wings, they immediately found that they were in danger of being wrapped in, and they did not dare to step forward and quickly retreated. The Liao army, which had lost the obstacle, accelerated its march and rushed straight to the Song army camp, but unfortunately they were still late, the Song army had already retreated first, and the opportunity for a connecting battle was not left to them.

Looking at the Song army camp that was still in ruins, Xiao Hanli smiled bitterly and shook his head, the old problems of the Song army in the past have not changed! Before the war, they came with great momentum, but they often pinned their hopes on negotiations, hoping to avoid fighting, and once they were strategically lost, they would flee immediately, and they would not fight to the end at all, as we see today...... (To be continued......)