After Xu Shao'an led the vanguard to set off from Gu'an City, he walked cautiously along the way, especially after the weather turned cloudy and rained on the second day of departure. Not only did he scatter a lot of scouts and scouts in front of the brigade, but the speed of the troops was also very tightly controlled. The vanguard troops set out early in the morning, and walked at most twenty miles, usually re-encamping at noon, and never delayed the encampment until the afternoon or evening for the sake of coveting the distance, so as to prevent the Liao army from taking advantage of the exhaustion of the Zhou soldiers or the darkness of the day to come and attack. In addition, after consulting with the committee, he increased the number of fixed daily calls from once in the morning and once in the evening to once every hour during the day and once every two hours at night, so that he could get timely information from the committee on the movements of the Liao army.

I don't know if Xu Shao'an's prudence played a role, or the Liao army did not take his vanguard army into account at all, from Gu'an City to Baoxingzhuang more than 50 miles, the vanguard troops walked for two and a half days, and it was said that it was an ambush of the Liao army, and even the Khitan probes and horses were only observing the Zhou army from a distance, and once the Zhou army's scouts approached, they quickly fled and did not contact it at all. As a result, Xu Shao'an and the 15,000 Zhou troops under his command arrived near Baoxingzhuang with no danger and at the same time, full of doubts, and camped with great vigilance five miles away from the Liao army camp, waiting for the arrival of the main force of the Zhou army.

However, Xu Shao'an's expectation that the Liao army might take advantage of the opportunity to set up camp on his side did not happen, and the Liao army ignored the Zhou army camped under his nose as if he didn't see it at all, and let the Zhou army set up the camp and firmly anchor it.

The Liao army turned a blind eye to the vanguard of the Zhou army, not because they did not take the other party's 15,000 men in their eyes, nor out of caution, fearing that they would be unable to eat the vanguard of the Zhou army for a while and would be counter-assaulted by the main force of the Zhou army. The reason why the Liao army was indifferent to Xu Shao'an's small army, or it can be said that the Liao army was indifferent to the Zhou army's march all the way north, was entirely due to the fact that its internal opinions had not been unified. From Xiao Siwen to his generals, there has been endless debate on whether to fight, defend, or withdraw, and no one can convince anyone. As a result, the Liao army, which originally had a considerable advantage and was fully capable of continuously harassing the northward advance of the Zhou army and carrying out a substantial blow to the vanguard of the Zhou army, did nothing but stay in place and wait motionless for its generals to finish the fight.

However, the argument is an argument, and now that the vanguard of the Zhou army has set up the camp under their noses, the Liao army should react anyway. In addition, on the afternoon of the arrival of the vanguard of the Zhou army, a holy decree requiring officials and generals at all levels in Nanjing Province to fight the Zhou army with all their might and the harsh wording was also sent to Xiao Siwen's men, so that Xiao Siwen, who had always been timid and afraid of war, and was unwilling to engage in large-scale direct confrontation with the Zhou army, had to put aside his timidity, and stubbornly accept the advice of those subordinates who had always wanted to fight to the death with the Zhou army, and go to fight the Zhou army with real swords and guns.

The reason why Yelu Jing, who has always only known about hunting, drinking, and sleeping, changed his previous attitude of not caring very much about the battle of Youyun and sent a strict order to Xiao Siwen to fight against the Zhou army with all his might, is not that this guy has changed his personality and suddenly become a Dao Mingjun, but because he has been affected by "external forces". Although Yelu Jing is a faint monarch and tyrant, in order to be able to hunt and fight to the fullest, he can stay in Bei'an Prefecture for nearly half a month, and even once said that "the sixteen states of Youyun are the places of the Han people, even if they are returned to the Han people", but his mediocrity does not mean that his ministers will follow him mediocrity, and it does not mean that his ministers will watch the Liao State lose its most important and most important source of money and grain, and it will decline. Therefore, after many days in Bei'an Prefecture, the king of the Northern Courtyard of the Liao Imperial Court and the head of Shanxi, saved Yelujing's life in the "Huoshendian" rebellion and enabled him to ascend to the throne. Ignoring Yelujing's decree that "no disturbance shall be made until the hunt is over", he went straight to the other party's bedchamber and explained the serious consequences of the loss of Nanjing Dao (Youyun Sixteen Prefectures) to the "sleeping king" emperor who had just returned from the hunting ground and was looking at his "results" on this hunting with joy. …,

Although Yelu Jing was very unhappy with Yeluwu's trespassing, on the one hand, Yeluwuzhen was his life-saving benefactor, and his status today was given to him by the other party. On the other hand, the other party has been loyal to Daliao and himself for many years, and he still needs his help in court politics. Therefore, Yelujing, who has always been violent, did not reprimand him like he did with other ministers, let alone ask his guards to push him out and cut him down, but patiently listened to what important things the other party had to tell him, so that he could put aside the courtesy of the monarch and the minister that he had always paid attention to. However, as Yelu Wu put out the reasons why he could not lose Nanjing Road (Youyun Sixteen Prefectures) one by one, especially the sentence "Once I lose Nanjing Road (Youyun Sixteen Prefectures), my Daliao will lose more than ninety percent of the money, grain, taxes and more than half of the population, from the imperial relatives to the common people, will go back to the previous life that is not only difficult but also insecure", Yelu Jing's heart that was a little irritable because he was disturbed by Yelu Wu's hunting elegance finally calmed down, and began to give serious consideration to the exhortation of Jerod.

The result of Yelujing's careful consideration was that at the suggestion of Yelujing, two holy decrees were issued in succession. One is to order the 100,000 Liao troops who have stayed in Bei'an Prefecture for nearly half a month to immediately regroup and set off south with them on the auspicious day of March 29 of the lunar calendar in the ninth year of the Ying calendar (the sixth year of Xiande) to support the Youyun Liao army that is confronting the Zhou army. The other is the holy decree that Xiao Siwen and all the officials and generals of Nanjing Province must go all out to resist the Zhou army's northern attack and not get closer to Youzhou City.

Yelu Jing's attitude and the grim form in which the Zhou army had already advanced in front of him made Xiao Siwen and his subordinates have to take active action and gather together to think of a way. As the so-called "there are many people", after some heated discussions, the Khitan generals finally decided on the preliminary operation and immediately began to implement it.

Just when the generals of the Youyun Liao Army asked for a plan, Xu Shaoan was also listening attentively to the local hunters who were finally found by several guards in his big tent to introduce the terrain near Baoxingzhuang - the army of Baoxingzhuang gathered, and the local people had already fled in order to avoid trouble.

According to the hunters, this Baoxingzhuang is located between Liangxiang and Gu'an City, 45 miles away from Liangxiang in the north and 55 miles away from Gu'an in the south, and an official road passes through the west side of Zhuangzi. Baoxingzhuang is not small in terms of scale, and there are more than 400 households in the whole village. In order to prevent bandits from attacking, Zhuangzi built a village wall around it and dug a moat. Since the village is located next to the main traffic route from south to north, passing merchants often stay here to stay in the hotel, so before the start of the battle of the clouds, it was still relatively prosperous - this is also the reason for the construction of the village wall and moat. In addition, although Baoxingzhuang itself is located on a plain, only two or three miles to the west from the official road, there is the remnant vein of the West Mountain, from which the terrain becomes undulating, with continuous small peaks and hilly woodlands stretching to the West Mountain in the distance. To the east of Zhuangzi, only three or four miles away, there is a small river that meanders through it, and there is the upper reaches of the Baigou River, which is the boundary river between the Song and Liao in the previous dynasty. Because it is upstream, the small river outside the village is no more than twenty or thirty zhang wide. However, although the river is not wide, the water is not shallow, and there are no bridges within twenty or thirty miles of the upper and lower levels. Although the hunters have not really swam or fished in the river because they live in the mountains all year round, according to the people of Zhuangzili, this small river is already very deep one zhang away from the shore, even if there are no ten zhang or eight zhang, but five or six zhang.

Xu Shao'an listened to the Orion's introduction, and marked the information they said on the map used by the Zhou army, which in his eyes could not be called a map at all. Although the map is very rudimentary, it does not affect Xu Shaoan's judgment of the situation. In his opinion, it was very unwise for the Liao army to choose such a place for a decisive battle with the Zhou army. If what the hunters said is true, then the width of the battlefield near Baoxingzhuang that can support more than 100,000 people on both sides of Zhou and Liao is only seven or eight miles. Such a width can only barely be enough for the main force of the Zhou army to set up a large camp. And once the Zhou army camp is set up, whether it is the hill on the west side or the small river on the east side, it will become a natural obstacle for the Liao cavalry to outflank the Zhou army from both flanks. In that case, the Liao army would have to attack the Zhou army camp by means of a frontal assault, which was what the infantry-based Zhou army, equipped with a large number of firearms, was good at. At that time, in the face of the Liao cavalry, which did not have enough space to spread out the formation, the Zhou army, which was hiding behind the tall and strong camp, could give full play to its advantages and calmly repel the attack of the Liao army.

In the face of such unfavorable battlefield terrain for themselves, the Liao army has been indifferent, neither changing the location of camping, nor interfering with or sneaking up on the northward advance and camping of the Zhou army, which is really incomprehensible to Xu Shaoan. If the Liao army has any conspiracy and tricks, it should have been taken out a long time ago, at this time the vanguard of the Zhou army is already in place, and the follow-up main force is not far from here. In a sense, before the main force of the Zhou army converged with the vanguard force, it was an opportunity for the Liao army to attack and harass, and if this opportunity was missed, the Liao army could only engage in positional warfare with the Zhou army, which they were not good at.

Just as Xu Shao'an was thinking hard about when and where the Liao army might plot against the Zhou army, an urgent telegram from the committee reached him. The content of the telegram was very simple: According to the enemy report that had just been received, more than 10,000 men of the Liao Army in Youyun left the Liao army camp this afternoon, crossed the upper reaches of the Baigou River through a pontoon bridge, and galloped eastward for unknown purposes.