The Western Expeditionary Army stopped for ten days, and after receiving supplies, the soldiers were divided into two routes, one was led by two brigades of dragon cavalry and two cavalry brigades, two cavalry brigades, desert army, artillery and the baggage team attached to the army to attack Beiting. On the other hand, Zhao Li, the supervising army, led two infantry brigades, two artillery commands, and most of the subordinate troops and baggage detachments to stay in Yanbo City to block the Western Liao army that came to help. It is obvious that there is a huge difference in the strength of the two route armies. And everyone can see that the Gaochang army is weak, and the Western Liao army is the main opponent of the Western Expeditionary Army, but such a deployment of troops is really confusing.

However, this arrangement of troops was decided after discussion between Zhao Li and Gao Chong, because the emperor had said in advance that it was not appropriate to have an armed conflict with Western Liao in the battle with Gaochang, and that the problem should be resolved by peaceful means as much as possible, but Western Liao could resolutely counterattack if there was a provocation by force, but the intensity should be appropriate, leaving room for buffer. Zhao Ta's consideration was based on the current situation, Western Liao was on the edge of Central Asia and was a bridgehead into West Asia, which was now ruled by the Seljuk dynasty......

The Seljuks, one of the four major tribes of the Turkic Oghuz tribal alliance, originally lived in the Kyrgyz steppes of Turkistan and were named after their chieftain Seljuk. Around the middle of the 10th century, Seljuk and his nomadic tribes moved west to the Chhandh region of the lower Syr Darya River, where they were incorporated into the Samanid frontier army, and settled near the city of Bukhara and converted to Islam. Later, taking advantage of the Ghaznavid Dynasty's foreign wars and internal strife, it expanded its power and gradually rose.

During the reign of Emperor Jingyou of Song Renzong, Tugrul, the grandson of the Seljuks, led his troops west across the Wuhu River and captured the Ghaznavid territories Mulu and Neishapur. Later, in the decisive battle of Dandankan, the Seljuk army defeated the Ghaznavid army and connected several cities. Occupy the entire territory of Khorasan. Tuglul made the capital of Neshapur and established an administrative body. Self-styled "Baker". After the establishment of power, his troops continued to advance westward. Annexed Midia, invaded Rai and Hamadan, and moved the capital here after the capture of Isfahan. Twenty years later, he conquered Azerbaijan, where the feudal lords took land from the Seljuks. The following year, at the call of the Abbasid caliph Al Jaim, Tugrul led his troops into Baghdad and deposed the emir of the Bouweishi dynasty, who was regarded by the caliph as a savior and protector.

Later, the caliph was forced to give Tughrul the title of "Sudan". He was named "King of the East and the West" and became regent of the Caliph. From then on, all power in the Abbasid dynasty was under the control of the Sudanese, and the caliph was only a symbolic religious leader. In Sudan Eleb? During the reign of Elslan and his son Malikshah, the empire was at its peak and was marked by martial prowess and culture. After decades of capturing Ani, the capital of the Byzantine province of Armenia, he captured Aleppo, expanded his power to Jerusalem and Damascus, and recovered the holy places of Mecca and Medina from the Fatimids.

This was followed by the Battle of Manzikat north of Lake Van . The Seljuk Empire defeated the Byzantine army and captured the Byzantine Emperor Romenius? Diognis and occupied eastern Asia Minor. From then on, a large number of Seljuks moved to Asia Minor. Islam spread in Asia Minor. At the end of the last century, Malikshah moved the capital to Baghdad, and at this time the territory of the Seljuks stretched from Central Asia in the east and bordered Liao. It extends to Syria and Asia Minor in the west and the Arabian Sea in the south. As far north as the Russian border in Kiev, a powerful military feudal empire was formed. In the Julitary Day prayer. Placing the name of Sudhan alongside the caliph as the new master of Western Asia.

Maliksha and Nizam at the beginning of the century? After the death of Mulek, the royal princes competed for the throne, the royal family fought among themselves, the military feudal lords in various places divided the dominance, and the Ismaili Assasin clan occupied many fortresses in Persia and Syria, attacked the dynastic army, and carried out assassination activities, so that the Seljuk Empire began to disintegrate, and the Romsultan Kingdom became independent in Asia Minor. The empire later split into a number of small Szodans centered around the cities of Baghdad, Damascus, Konya, Mosul, Diyarbakir, etc., and the dynasties fought among themselves, weakening their ability to defend themselves against foreign enemies.

Although the Seljuk dynasty had declined, the emaciated camels were bigger than the horses, and they were still the overlords of Western Asia. It is said that no matter who is weak or strong, it has little to do with the Great Song Dynasty, which is thousands of miles away, but these Turks are still masters of 'business'. Whether it was with Persia or with Byzantium, it had a very real purpose: to monopolize the Silk Road. They took advantage of the advantages and powerful conditions of occupying the passage of Central and Western Asia to plunder the silk, porcelain and jewelry trafficked to Central Asia by oriental merchants, and used them to trade with Rome and Byzantium in order to obtain huge profits......

The Seljuks' capitalless trading caused huge losses to the merchants of the Great Song Dynasty, and angered the Emperor Zhao Ta of the Great Song Dynasty. The Great Song Dynasty is now engaged in an export-oriented economy, which stimulates the domestic economy through exports and increases fiscal revenues in order to alleviate the domestic economic crisis. Cutting off people's financial routes is equivalent to killing their parents, and their doing so is equivalent to cutting off the financial routes on the land road of the Great Song Dynasty, how can Zhao Ta swallow this breath.

In the past few years, Zhao Tan was busy rectifying internal affairs, crusading against the Jin State, and integrating the forces of all parties around him, and he couldn't spare his hands to deal with them for a while. The past few years have been different, Goryeo surrendered, the Jin State couldn't toss any flowers, and the trade in Southeast Asia was also booming, and various countries sent envoys to the dynasty every year, so there was no more to do in the east, and they could turn their energy to the northwest, and if they wanted to punish the Seljuk Dynasty, they couldn't bypass a strong enemy, that is, the Western Liao, which was not very friendly with them and even had a vendetta.

In recent years, the pace of the Great Song Dynasty's external expansion has been a bit fast, which has aroused the vigilance of neighboring countries, including Western Liao, of course. Once the Great Song Dynasty controlled Gaochang, then the Western Liao would inevitably be neighbors with a powerful country, which was certainly not what they wanted to see, nor was it in line with their interests, so they tried their best to prevent the entry of the Great Song Dynasty, and did not hesitate to oppose Gaochang and make them throw themselves into their arms again.

And Xiliao is not the rogue who was panicked like a lost dog at the beginning, only a few hundred people and horses, and was chased by the Jurchens to the point where they could not stand, and now they are already a regional power with a vast territory. Their emperor, Yelu Dashi, was undoubtedly a qualified ruler, not only with a strong character, but also with a flexible hand and a forgiving heart. He ruled so efficiently that he could be a model among rulers, and he knew how to be enterprising, as well as how to recuperate.

Under the management of Yelu Dashi for more than ten years, the western Liao industry is prosperous, the livestock are fat, and the army is also growing stronger and stronger at this time, and the vigor is doubled, and it is already invincible in Central Asia. The merchant travelers who came and went, and the common people who farmed, all praised its prestige at this time. Although the Great Song Dynasty has also become the largest power in East Asia at this moment, and its military and economic strength far exceeds that of Western Liao, it is obviously not the best choice to confront such a rising empire as it is a good choice, which will not only consume a lot of national strength, but also have a strong enemy on the road to the west.

Therefore, at the beginning of Zhao Ta's decision to go west, he did not treat Western Liao as an enemy, but hoped that they could become his allies in his westward expansion. The reason is not only that Song Liao had a hundred years of friendship and married a Khitan princess, but also that the Khitan was deeply influenced by Han culture and the rules and regulations of the Central Plains regime. After the establishment of the Western Liao Dynasty, although it was located in the Western Regions, Yelu Dashi still imitated the old system of the Liao State, adopted the Han system of honorific titles, changed the era, and took Chinese as the official language, and did not abandon the tradition.

On the other hand, the Song and Liao had common potential enemies, and Yelu Dashi, like Zhao Ta, was an ambitious monarch who thought that even if he could not return to the East, he would spread the prestige of the Khitans here and establish a new great dynasty of the Khitans. Summoned by this great ideal, Dashi decided to move westward to open up new territory for the Khitans, and he targeted the declining Western Qarakhanid, a vassal state under the Seljuk dynasty, which made it inevitable that they would fight the Seljuk Empire.

And the facts also prove the correctness of Zhao Ta's judgment. In the fourth year of the Western Liao Kangguo, the Liao army entered the Fergan Valley, traveled all the way west, and encountered the army led by the Great Khan of the Western Qarakhanid State near Kuyu, under the fighting between the two sides, the Western Liao army launched a fierce attack, and the main component of the army of the Western Qarakhanid State were unwilling to die for the Mahmu, and dispersed, and finally the army of the Western Liao Army was completely defeated.

Under the Western Liao army, the Western Qarakhanid was quickly defeated, and Ma Hemu led the remnants to flee back to the city of Samarkand. In a state of panic, he sent a letter to his master, the Sultan of Seljuk, Sanjar, asking for his master to save his fate. In the letter, Mahmu exaggerated the threat of the boulder, saying that the kingdom had encountered an unimaginable disaster. Ask Sanjar to fulfill his duty as the sword of Allah and gather the warriors of Allah under the banner of the crescent moon to wage a new war to defend his faith.

However, at that time, the Sultan of Seljuk Sanjar was busy dealing with Khorezm, and had no time to take care of Mahmu, who was also a vassal of the Seljuks, but at this time under the rule of Ajith was setting off a wave of rebellion against the Seljuks, which made Sanjar anxious, and the Khwarazm army once attacked the city of Bukhara and executed the governor of Seljuk stationed there.

However, Yelu Dashi did not take advantage of the victory to continue westward, and in his mind the time for a decisive battle with the Seljuk dynasty had not yet come. After the Battle of Kuyu, the Western Liao army came to a halt to consolidate their newly occupied lands in the Syr Darya Valley. However, Oishi knew that a decisive battle with him would eventually come. He watched coldly, waiting for that day to come, and this year finally made him wait, Sanjar finally had his hands free, and he was going to fight the ruler of the Karakhitan, Yelu Dashi. And unfortunately, the army of the Great Song Dynasty also arrived...... (To be continued......)