At the beginning, in order to conquer the Southern Tang Dynasty (Jiangnan) to be famous, the Later Zhou court, under the pretext that the Southern Tang (Jiangnan) was suspected of participating in the assassination of the Song Duke Kunjun, also needed to issue an order to let Li Yu enter Beijing to see the driver, so that when the other party refused to obey the order, the other party could be charged with disobeying the order. Now, for the conquest of Houshu, this qiē pre-planned plan is no longer needed. Under the pressure of Hou Zhou, the uneasy Hou Shu monarch played a stinky move similar to the original Southern Tang (Jiangnan) monarch, and even went to form an alliance with the Khitan, a force that had been half-dead by a series of blows by the Beiping Army in the past few years, hoping to use the other party to contain the power of Hou Zhou, so as to achieve the goal of keeping his own one-third of an acre.

However, although Li Yujunchen was also looking for life-saving straw at the beginning, at least they still knew how to act carefully, and they also investigated it somewhat when selecting the envoys for the alliance, and the people sent out were all people who were loyal to the Southern Tang (Jiangnan) court and Li Yu. Although his actions were also detected by the relevant branches of "Dark Feather", at least they did not allow the Later Zhou court to obtain solid and irrefutable evidence - this is also an important reason why the latter had to use a protest order to disobey as a reason to send troops.

Comparatively speaking, the Later Shu Mengchang monarch was much worse in this regard. If they knew that the Khitans had received a heavy gift from Li Yu and verbally promised to help him if necessary, but in the end they sat back and watched the destruction of the Southern Tang Dynasty (Jiangnan) without any reaction, they still sent people to negotiate an alliance with the former and talk about attacking Zhou, it can also be interpreted as "rushing to the hospital in a hurry", and it can be explained that Meng Chang and his subordinates were incapable of dealing with the crisis. Then, when choosing the envoy to go to the Khitan to negotiate the alliance, so many civil and military generals did not choose, but chose Zhao Yantao, who had long been committed to the Great Zhou and ran to tell the truth as soon as he arrived in Kaifeng, as the deputy envoy, it cannot be said that Meng Chang and his group of important ministers have neither the knowledge of people nor the skills of the emperor, and they are not worthy of being a prince at all. It was precisely because of this series of bad chess and failures of the Later Shu monarchs and ministers that they failed to ask for help, but instead sent the basis and ironclad evidence of their plots to the Later Zhou court, so that the other party could justifiably send troops to fight, and even the drama of "not obeying the edict" was saved.

On the first day of the second month of the fifth lunar calendar of Jianlong, the Later Zhou court ordered to send troops to fight in the name of colluding with foreign countries, plotting misdeeds, and committing rebellion.

On the second day of the second month of the second lunar calendar of the fifth year of Jianlong, when the will of the Later Zhou court to defeat Hou Shu was still on the way to Xiaoyu Quartet, the army of the Northern and Eastern Roads of Hou Zhou, which had been secretly assembled in Fengzhou and Guizhou Prefectures, had already heard the wind and moved quickly, and quickly went forward to kill Xingzhou and Kuizhou in front of them.

The Northern Route Army of Dai Shu was led by Tang Chao, the founding uncle, the commander of the palace and the commander of the palace in front of the palace, the right Jin Wuwei, and the chief military officer of Taiyuan Town, and the deputy commander of the founding uncle, the commander of the Sima army in front of the palace, and the general of the right military guard, and went south from Fengzhou -- the duties of the chief military officer of Tang Chao Taiyuan Town were temporarily represented by Xu Shaoan, who rushed from Kaifeng. The army has under the jurisdiction of the main force of the Second Composite Infantry Division of the "Flying Dragon Army" (the fourth, fifth, and sixth infantry regiments, one battalion of the division's cavalry regiment, all mortars and 75-millimeter field artillery battalions under the jurisdiction of the division's artillery regiment, and logistics support units), the "Langya Battalion," and 10 regiments of the "Security Army," totaling nearly 40,000 troops. In addition, in order to make up for the lack of direct-aim firepower of the Northern Route Army, which had to leave 105-mm howitzers and 130-mm siege guns in Fengzhou, was forced to leave its 105-mm howitzers and 130-mm siege guns in Fengzhou because of the difficulty of the road, the committee specially approved the commissioning of the 105-mm recoilless guns, which were still in the process of research and development and had not yet been formally finalized and put into small batch production. Twenty-four cannons and one thousand two hundred shells were urgently made and reinforced to them. To this end, the "Xianglong Production Base," the "Taiyuan Production Base," and the "Kaifeng Production Base" under the Ministry of Science and Technology worked overtime to finally complete the production of recoilless guns and shells before the departure of the army without affecting the production of other weapons and equipment, and sent them to the secret camp of the Northern Route Army in Fengzhou in a timely manner.

The Eastern Route Army was led by Cheng Fei, the founding prince, the deputy commander of the Dianqian Division, the general of the Right Jinwuwei, and the chief military officer of Xuanda Town, and Xin Feiyu, the founding son of the country, the deputy commander of the Dianqian Division, and the general of the Right Wuwei, as the deputy commander. The army has under the jurisdiction of the "Flying Dragon Army" First Composite Infantry Division, the Third Infantry Regiment of the First Composite Infantry Division, the main force of the Fifth Composite Infantry Division (the 13th and 14th Infantry Regiments, the division's artillery regiment, the division's cavalry regiment, and logistics support units), the main force of the First River Defense Fleet (more than 80 warships of various types, including five steam-powered warships), and four regiments of the Security Army, totaling nearly 40,000 troops.

In addition to the above-mentioned combat troops, the Later Zhou court also equipped the two armies with a large number of servants and transport ships to ensure the supply of grain, grass, ordnance and other logistical materials for the two armies. In addition, as part of the preparatory work, a large number of agents of the Intelligence Department, as well as businessmen and travelers who had received secret orders from the imperial court, used various methods to go deep into various parts of Houshu to inquire about the news, survey the terrain, collect the number of cities and garrisons, and provided a large amount of detailed and accurate information for the army's conquest, and drew a large number of detailed and accurate maps, so that the commanders of the two armies could carry out military operations in accordance with the map and with a definite goal -- among them, Zhao Yantao, who took the initiative to serve the Later Zhou court, also contributed a lot.

On the third day of the second month of the second lunar calendar of the fifth year of Jianlong, Tang Chao and Mutel's North Route Army entered the territory of Houshu, and within three days, Lianke Qianqudu, Wanren, Yanzi and other villages, the army forward approached the city of Xingzhou. On the same day, the news of the surging arrival of the Zhou army reached Chengdu.

Knowing that the Zhou army suddenly launched an attack on himself, Meng Chang, the lord of Shu, was bittersweet. Fortunately, in the crusade of the Zhou army, collusion with the Khitan, plotting misdeeds, and committing rebellion are one of the evidences of the crime. This shows that Sun Yu and others have completed the covenant with the Khitan to resist the Zhou, and their side has finally found an ally who can fight against the Zhou State; The worry is that although he has formed an alliance with the Khitan, he does not know the specific alliance, and the Zhou army's inscription does not explain it, so he does not know when the Khitans will send troops to harass the rear of the Zhou State to reduce the pressure on his side. What's more, even if the Khitan immediately dispatched troops, in the face of the Beiping army guarding the four towns in the north, it is unknown how much time it will take to reach Beiping City and even threaten the safety of Kaifeng. As the saying goes, "far water can't quench the thirst of the near", before the enemy had to withdraw his troops and return north in order to cope with the attack of the Khitan army, he still had to rely on Shu's own strength to resist the attack of the Zhou army.

So, on the day of getting the news of the Zhou army's march, Meng Chang, the lord of Shu, issued an order to take his most favored Wang Zhaoyuan as the commander of the camp in the north, and the left and right Wei Shengma infantry troops commanded Zhao Zhengtao to be the capital supervisor, Shannan Jiedu made Han Baozheng as the envoy, Yangzhou Jiedu made Li Jin as the deputy envoy, and the army of 80,000 troops in the north rejected the Zhou army.

Although Wang Zhaoyuan, as the commander of the camp, has never fought a big battle, he has always been good at reading military books and war books, and has always boasted that he has millions of soldiers in his chest, and often compares himself to the contemporary Zhuge Wuhou. Therefore, when the lord of Shu privately said, "Today's Zhou army is going south, which is called by Aiqing's plan to form an alliance with the Khitan and resist the Zhou army, and I hope that Aiqing will fight to kill the enemy and make great contributions to me", not only did he not feel ashamed and panicked, but he slapped his chest on the mountain, so that his lord did not have to worry, he would break the Zhou army if he went. And when Prime Minister Li Hao and other ministers went out of the city to feed him, Wang Zhaoyuan first commanded the army to move with Tie Ruyi in his hand, and he was ashamed to compare himself to Zhuge Kongming. When the wine was hot, he rolled up his arms, rolled up his sleeves, and arrogantly said to Li Hao and others: "I am going to Xingzhou to repel the Zhou army that has invaded, and it is just easy to lead these tens of thousands of elite sons under his command to continue to go north and seize the Central Plains." ”

After the eighth day of the second lunar month of the fifth lunar calendar of Jianlong, the Shu reinforcements went north from Chengdu. On the same day, the Great Zhou Dynasty conquered Xingzhou with the Northern Shu Route Army, annihilated more than 7,000 Shu troops, and captured more than 400,000 stones of military grain hidden in Xingzhou.