The acquisition of the Shandan Military Horse Farm made the mobility of Li Guangyan's army greatly improved. After the loss of Hexi,* important horse breeding land was lost, and Youzhou and other places were under the control of the feudal town, and the traditional tactics of relying on war horses to move quickly were greatly threatened. A large part of Li's income from the sea trade was sent to the northern steppes, where he went to the Uighurs and Khitans to exchange horses.

Now that Xiahou Cheng has obtained the Shandan Military Horse Farm and obtained so many war horses, Li Guangyan is naturally very happy, and the imperial court has given Xiahou Cheng a measured reward, and Li Guangyan himself can't help it. After hearing that Xiahou Cheng invited his generals to drink wine before the war, Li Guangyan waved his pen and ordered Cui Chengdu to transport thousands of jars of good wine from Liangzhou, and all the awards were given to Xiahou Cheng.

Along with the reward of the imperial court came the appointment of the imperial court. On the 24th day of the first lunar month, Li Guangyan convened a meeting of his generals in Shandan, at which the order of the imperial court appointing Li Guangyan as the envoy of Liangzhou Assassin Shi and Hexi Jiedu was read out.

Hexi is an east-west transportation artery, a prosperous place for business travel, one of the ten towns of Tianbao, and now Hexi has not yet been defeated, and the imperial court has given such a fat shortage to Li Guangyan, which shows the trust in Li Guangyan, so the generals under his command said in unison:

"Congratulations, handsome."

Li Guangyan naturally knew that his eldest brother had become the commander of the Right Dragon Martial Army, and he knew that the reason why the eldest brother was like this was that his body was one aspect, and eliminating the suspicion of the imperial court was also another. Otherwise, the two brothers will sit on the border at the same time, and hold heavy troops, that is, if the Son can trust them today, the Son of Heaven will move them in the future. This is a common practice, Li Guangyan naturally handled it calmly, and did not think that there was anything wrong with this, if the court did not do this, he would think that the court had lost trust in him, and he would have to cut himself when the battle was over.

Looking at the highly interested generals, Li Guangyan said in a deep voice:

"It's too early for you to congratulate, don't forget, the jurisdiction of the Hexi Jiedu envoy, Ben Shuai has only recovered more than one-third. Ben Shuai doesn't want to be a festival envoy with only half of his territory. The land west of the river has not been restored in one day, and this general will not call himself the envoy of the Hexi Festival for a day, do you understand? ”

The generals roared:

"The last will understand."

Li Guangyan said majestically:

"There is one more thing to tell you, Your Majesty thinks that the progress of our army is slow, and requires our army to seize Ganzhou, Xutugua Prefecture and Shazhou before the arrival of Tubo reinforcements, so this commander decided to hold the Battle of Zhangye in the future."

Then Li Guangyan read out the order of the imperial court appointing Li Jingjian as the envoy of the Hexi Yingtian, and the generals had no objection, after all, it was too difficult to consolidate the place while fighting, and it would be better to have someone to help them. You know, these fifteen days of rest are not given in vain. During these fifteen days, all the troops were rested, except for the grain camp. In order to solve the problem of excessively long grain and grass transportation lines, Li Guangyan used these 15 days to hoard a large amount of grain and grass at the foot of the Shandanyan Branch, and used the former beacon to build a grain hoarding city.

Of course, not everyone is at ease, so Tian Rong muttered:

"Didn't you get a jam on our neck?"

Li Guangyan also has such worries in his heart, but as a coach, he can't show it, he just said:

"Don't speculate on yourself, don't forget that evil comes from your mouth. The expedition to the west is a major event of the imperial court, how can a greedy person who does not know the importance of it be appointed to an important position in Hexi? ”

The meeting also studied the issue of marching, and the tone set at the meeting was still to speed up the march on the basis of steady progress. At the end of the meeting, Li Guangyan announced:

"The general who is stationed far away will rest in the tent for a day, and after paying tribute to General Shi Jingfeng tomorrow, he will return to the camp and prepare to continue the westward expedition."

and Li Guangyan have now treated Shi Jingfeng as a dead man. Not only Li Guangyan, but also the entire Western Expeditionary Army, even Sha Chali said that even their Shatuo people could not guarantee that they would come out alive when they entered the desert, not to mention that Shi Jing respected them?

The generals sighed in their hearts and dispersed.

On the morning of the second day, Li Guangyan led more than 100 generals under his command to pay tribute to the "heroic souls" of Shi Jingfeng and more than 2,000 soldiers under his command. After the memorial, Li Guangyan announced that the Battle of Zhangye had begun.

Zhangye is located in the middle of the Hexi Corridor, Zhangye belonged to Yongzhou in ancient times, and was inhabited by the Qiang people during the Xia and Shang periods. During the Zhou period, the Rong and Di tribes lived here, and the Wusun and Yue clans multiplied here during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. During the Warring States period, cities were built and the Great Wall was built. Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty became the territory of the right king of the Xiongnu, and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty placed Zhangye County in the sixth year of Yuanding (121 years ago), taking the meaning of "Zhangguo Arm to pass through the Western Regions". The Northern Dynasty and the Western Wei Dynasty were changed to Ganzhou. Sui restored the county system. At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, a state was established.

The Battle of Zhangye, with Xiahou Chengbu as the partial division, along the Qilian Mountains through Anping, Heping Fortress. At the same time, beware of the Tubo army at the southern foot of Qilian Mountain crossing Qilian Mountain and heading north. And Li Guangyan personally went to the main army, marched west along the Heihe River, and went straight to Ganzhou.

Three days later, when the smoke of the Battle of Zhangye had already begun on the Shanzhang border, Li Jingjian, the ambassador of Yingtian Zhu, who was in charge of Hexi's civil affairs, arrived in Shandan County and paid a visit to Li Guangyan, the envoy of Hexi Jiedu. After that, Li Jingjian was ordered to return to Liangzhou, stationed in Changsong County, and began his tenure.

Li Jingjian told Li Guangyan that when he passed through Lanzhou, he met Hao Xuan, the king of Baoding County, who had returned to Lanzhou to meet His Royal Highness the Prince, and Hao Jue told him that the 400-mile road from Lanzhou to Shanzhou was densely fortified, and that the Right Route Army had joined forces with the Left Route Army led by Li Wentong under the city of Shanzhou, and that they would soon attack Shanzhou. Hao Yu said to Li Jingjian before parting:

"Tell Chen Guogong that when I recover Shanzhou and Kuozhou, I will lead troops to help him."

Of course, Li Guangyan scoffed at Hao Jue's statement, but if he wanted to fight back against others, he had to show actual results, so Li Guangyan ordered the whole army to storm the fortresses in Zhangye along the Heihe River on the same day. At the same time, he also sacrificed his own ace Guards Iron Cavalry.