Li Yiyin, who is also an important town in the northwest and the same local clan that controls power, as the actual ruler of the Dingyan Army, received the news that all the local feudal towns were forcibly retained by the imperial court to report on their work, on the one hand, he was secretly glad that because he was a border feudal town, he did not have to go to Kaifeng to report his work in person like Yong'an, Shuofang, Jianning and other armies, so as to avoid being trapped in the capital. On the other hand, because Yong'an and Shuofang's envoys went to Kaifeng in person, and took the initiative to stay in Kaifeng, they were a little uneasy, for fear that the imperial court would use this as an excuse to find their own troubles - although Yang Chongxun, the envoy of the Jianning Army, did not go to Kaifeng in person, but his brother was the former deputy chief soldier of Taiyuan Town, the current Lingzhou observation and disposal envoy, and Yang Xin, one of the "Qingyuan" brothers. With this relationship, it is impossible for the Great Zhou court to embarrass him.

He didn't have such a connection in the court, and now he was also a border festival and was also treated by the imperial court and did not need to go to Kaifeng to report on his work, in order to repay the emperor's favor and show his loyalty, even if Feng Jiye was forced by the times from a certain Cheng dù - and dragged his family to the capital, and lived there and did not come back. But he only sent a nephew Li Guangxin to go, and if it wasn't for the imperial court's decree to force him to stay, this nephew himself would not have planned to let him stay in Kaifeng for a long time. In this way, he not only appeared to be stingy and obsessed with power, but also showed his distrust of the court from the side.

On the one hand, he was not sure-footed in his heart, and on the other hand, after forcibly staying in Kaifeng, the imperial court increased the monitoring of the inside and outside of the city, inside and outside the palace, and the nephew Li Guangxin was also heavily guarded near the mansion where he lived in the capital. In addition, the distance between the Dingyan Army and the capital is nearly 2,000 miles, and the exchange of news takes too long, even if you can get any information, when you make a decision on your side and then send it to the capital, even the daylily will be cold over there. Now the best solution is to send a powerful and certain status to the capital to replace his own decision-making cronies. On the one hand, he maintained communication and liaison with people from all walks of life in the imperial court, especially the "Qingyuan" brothers of the Beiping Army who controlled the government affairs, so as to increase the goodwill of these important ministers of the imperial court towards the Dingyan Army and resolve their possible dissatisfaction with the Dingyan Army. On the other hand, it is to learn as much as possible about the movements of the imperial court, and once it finds any news that the imperial court may be unfavorable to the Dingyan army, it will notify the Xiazhou side as soon as possible, so that they can have a time to respond. Of course, in order not to arouse speculation and suspicion from the imperial court, the personnel sent to the capital this time were in the name of paying tribute to the imperial court and offering gifts for the official family's crown ceremony next year. As for the envoy of this envoy, Li Yiyin chose his other nephew, Li Guangyan, the defense envoy of Yinzhou, who was the great-grandfather of Li Yuanhao, who established the Western Xia regime in the previous life.

After Li Guangyan received the appointment from his uncle, he knew that he had a heavy responsibility for this trip to Kaifeng, and he did not dare to slack off. While selecting gifts and setting the itinerary according to the arrangement of the clan uncle, he began to carefully choose the members of the mission who would accompany him.

On the third day after Li Yiyin made the decision to send a tribute mission to the capital, two men and two women sat across a square table in a quiet study in the back house of a mansion in Sandaocheng (Xicheng), Tongwancheng (Xicheng), Xiazhou, the headquarters of the Dingyan Army. A candle was lit on the table, and the flickering light of the candle reflected on the faces of the four people, making their already hesitant faces even more cloudy.

The four of them were silent for a long time, and one of them, a man with a whiter complexion and a thinner figure, picked up the porcelain bowl in front of him, drank the bitter tea in it, and then slammed it on the table, and said in a deep voice: "I have decided, this time I must go to Beijing with the Jin Contribution Gift Mission to find out what is going on, to see if the 'Qingyuan' brothers of the Beiping Army who control the government of the Great Zhou Dynasty and the army under them are really as strong and magical as the legend, Let's see if the high-ranking general of the navy who participated in the battle to pacify Jiangnan mentioned in the imperial court newspaper is the person we think he is, or just has the same name and surname. ”

"The imperial court has detained dozens of envoys to the feudal towns before, will Li Guangyan be detained by the imperial court like his brother Li Guangxin this time? If that's the case, won't you have to be trapped in the capital with you, and it will be difficult to return? Another dark-skinned, burly man said worriedly.

"What my old Chen said is reasonable, Xiao Qiu, you have to think clearly. You are not alone now, if you have any accidents in the capital, how can you call Xiaohan and the three children live? A plump woman who was not very tall next to the black-faced man also spoke up.

The white-faced man waved his hand when he heard this, and said: "Brother Chen and sister-in-law don't have to worry about this, first, the imperial court detained the envoys of the festival before they came in order to cut the feudal domain, and Li Guangxin, the representative of the Dingyan Army, was trapped in the capital just because he suffered from the pond fish, and it is neither reasonable nor necessary to detain Li Guangyan, who entered Beijing in the name of entering the capital as a contribution ceremony." Second, even if there is some danger, in order to find out the identity of the 'Qingyuan' brother and that person, and for the future of the four of us, it is worth taking this risk. As for Xiaohan and the children, I have already arranged them, even if I can't come back for three or five years, there will be no problems in their lives. Besides, isn't there still Brother Chen and sister-in-law, leaving Xiaohan and the child in your care for the two of you, what do I have to worry about. ”

The black-faced man first nodded when he heard this, and then said with a worried face: "If that person is not the person we think he is, it will be fine, at most you will spend some time on the road and stay in the capital for a few more days, but it will not be a good thing." But if that person is really the person we think he is, if he resents us for not supporting his ideas before, for not saying goodbye to us, for stealing his girlfriend as a wife, for resenting us for going back on his word, and against him at the beginning to give up the peaceful life in the town to join the army, but now he has run thousands of miles away to join the company of foreigners, with his current status, it is not difficult to rectify you or even take your life, then wouldn't you be very dangerous, after all, we are sorry for him first! ”

After speaking, the black-faced man also subconsciously glanced at a slender woman with white skin as white as snow sitting next to the white-faced man.

Although the slender and fair-skinned woman did not speak, her face showed apologetic feelings. However, the expression was only a fleeting expression, and when the man next to her turned his head to look at her, he was already looking back with a worried expression.

The white-faced man gently patted the woman next to him, signaling her not to worry, and then said disapprerovingly: "As the saying goes, 'everyone has their own ambitions, and they can't be forced', it was he who insisted on joining the army despite the opposition of the four of us, and did the trick of licking blood with a knife." He abandoned the four of us, and if he wants to say sorry, he is sorry for us, not us who is sorry for him. As for us running to the Dingyan Army, it was just a coincidence, and it wasn't that we wanted to walk thousands of miles to this unlucky place where birds don't. ”

The Chen couple sitting opposite him still had to be persuaded again, but the white-faced man waved his hand and said in a resolute tone: "No matter what danger there is, the advantages of entering Beijing this time outweigh the disadvantages for us, I have to go, Brother Chen and sister-in-law, you don't have to persuade you anymore." ”

Seeing that their good brother had already made up their minds, and the Chen couple also understood that it would be useless for them to talk too much, they no longer tried to persuade each other, but began to study with each other how to win the opportunity to enter Beijing and how to deal with the various situations that they might encounter after entering Beijing. And the slender fair-skinned woman was already flying out of the sky at this time, worrying about the safety of her husband for a while, hoping that the person was really the person they were looking for, and not knowing how to face that person if they met again, the expression on her face was very wonderful. Fortunately, the other three were all focused on entering Beijing, and no one noticed the psychological changes of this Xiaohan girl.

On the 28th day of June of the lunar calendar in the fourth year of Jianlong, the Dingyan Army Contribution Mission, which was composed of more than 300 people and dozens of carriages, left Xiazhou under the leadership of Li Guangyan, the defense envoy of Yinzhou, and went to Kaifeng, the capital. Not far behind Li Guangyan, the white-faced man who had participated in the secret conversation in the study before also rode a horse to accompany him.