Liu Ziyu did not guess wrong, Yang Zhi still returned to Qinzhou with a secret, after the capture of Youzhou, the holy water general Shan Tingqi discovered trona, which is the best raw material for making soap and soap, Yang Zhi did not say anything, but arranged for Wu Song and Cai Fu to buy the land and began to transport the trona back to Qinzhou.

Trona is an evaporative salt mineral, in the desert of southern Youzhou, Wu Song and several people say that there is no grass there, trona is not fibrous or columnar, gray, yellow-white, colorless, although a little glass-like luster, but in the eyes of the locals, it is an abandoned salt desert. Even Qu Duan and Liu Ziyu didn't know the value, so when Cai Fu went through the procedures, there was no hindrance.

When Yang Zhi and Ye Mengde met, Ye Mengde vaguely said the doubts in his heart, the war has reached this point, Zhao Kai, the king of Yun, must want to achieve his prestige, if Zhao Kai is the prince or has already been called the emperor, he naturally hopes that the generals under his command will be brilliant, but now, Zhao Kai's identity is still a little embarrassing, and he needs to put the credit for destroying Western Xia on his head.

Yang Zhi smiled and said: "We have a long-term vision, Western Xia is just a recent dish, and the Jin Kingdom is our biggest enemy, but don't forget, the Jin Kingdom is different from the Western Xia, and there are allies in the Great Song Dynasty." ”

Ye Mengde knew that Yang Zhi was talking about King Kang, who was currently in Bianliang, and said with a smile: "What are your plans?"

Ye Mengde prides himself on being a person of great intelligence, but in the face of Yang Zhi, the junior disciple of Cai Jing, Ye Mengde knows that he is still a lot worse, especially with that kind of strategic vision, I am afraid that Yang Zhi's master Wang Laozhi is not as good as his apprentice. Yang Zhi pondered and said: "With the strength of the Northern Army, we can't defeat the Jin State, especially once the Song and Jin reach an agreement, we will be more passive and can only wait, so we have to defeat the Western Xia militarily, and the current capture of half of the Western Xia is not about the region and population, but the far-reaching significance of this matter, and the blow to the confidence of the Western Xia is also immeasurable." ”

Ye Mengde agrees with this, Xixia's current attitude says it all, in the past, no matter whether he won or lost, Xixia's unruliness would be put on his lips, but this time from all aspects of feedback, Xixia is very honest. Ye Mengde asked, "But Xixia is in a hurry, and we are about to deal with the Jin Kingdom." ”

Yang Zhi said with certainty: "We want to drag down the Jin State economically, recover Hehuang politically, and then sit back and watch the battle between the Jin State and Bianliang." I don't believe that Jin Ren will be so honest, and I don't believe that King Kang's approach will last long. ”

Ye Mengde pondered and said: "You want to recruit all the ministries of Hehuang to the banner of the Great Song Dynasty, not only will you need money, but Hezhou and Lanzhou will also face the pressure of Western Xia." ”

Since the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, Lanzhou and its surrounding areas have always been the pastureland of Tubo, Qiang, and Western Xia; in the fourth year of Shenzong Yuanfeng, the Northern Song Dynasty took advantage of the civil strife in Western Xia to mobilize 200,000 troops from Xihe, Linyan, Huanqing, Jingyuan, etc., to attack Xia, Tong Guan's master Li Xian served as a strategic envoy to Xihe, and led the troops of Xi and Qin Prefectures as a way, from Xizhou to the north, crossed the Mabitshan Mountain and approached the Qingshui River in the hinterland of Western Xia, occupied the Xixia Niche Valley Village, Xienvoy Xincheng, Rusha Valley, Lanzhou and other places, and advanced the Song army's defense line to the bank of the Yellow River.

Lanzhou not only controls the upper reaches of the Yellow River, but also is the crossroads of the Tangut people connecting the Hehuang valley, at the beginning of the sixth year of Yuanfeng, the Tangut people sent more than 100,000 people to besiege Lanzhou, and was defeated by Li Xian, and Lanzhou was only in the hands of the Great Song Dynasty from then on. It's just that the civil affairs of Lanzhou have not progressed smoothly, and the surrounding nomadic tribes have more than 30,000 people in the Great Song Dynasty all year round, but there are less than 1,000 people in Lanzhou City, and they have always been garrisoned as the population.

At the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, Sun Mu, a descendant of the Tubo royal family, conquered Hezhou; in the sixth year of Xining, Wang Shao led the Song army to recover Hezhou and placed Caohan County, which belonged to Xihe Road. The economy of Hezhou is also underdeveloped, the big city in the Hehuang area is still the important town of Qingtang City on the Tangbo Ancient Road, and now Shanzhou, but after the Song army occupied Shanzhou, the tribes of Tubo repeated several times, and most of the population fled, and the prosperity of Shanzhou was not as good as one-tenth of the original.

Yang Zhi spit out a sentence: "Ma Zheng, we buy war horses from Hehuang, on the one hand, to increase our strength, and on the other hand, to make Hehuang rely on us more economically." ”

Ye Mengde is a talent, but not a businessman in the real sense, he didn't think about this aspect before, and he smiled after thinking for a while, the tea shops set up in Shaanxi all said that all the tea sold from all over the country was purchased at the price stipulated by the government, and it was under the direct leadership of the Tea and Horse Division.

Now the Dingbei army is booming, with the victory of the Western Xia, the source of horses is abundant, the price of horses has fallen all the way, and the price of tea has not fallen, such a business was originally powerful for the Great Song Dynasty. Yang Zhi took Lu Yi's suggestion again, not wasting time on trivial matters, and directly reverted to the practice of the Chongning period. The price of horses is divided into nine grades, of which the third class of good horses, the sixth class of horses, the middle of good horses are 250 catties of tea, the middle ones are 220 catties, and the inferior ones are 200 catties; the sixth class of horses are 176 catties, 169 catties, 164 catties, 154 catties, 149 catties, and 132 catties of tea respectively.

As for silk, cloth, ceramics, salt, and other handicrafts and native products, Yang Zhi did not have any hard and fast rules, and all of them were carried out in accordance with the catalogue drawn up by Fan Shiyan; Fan Shiyan's catalogue was carefully selected, and in exchange for cattle, sheep, animal skins, medicinal herbs, and other agricultural and sideline specialties from the plateau, they were then shipped to various parts of the Great Song Dynasty through merchants such as the Taiping Firm. But those things were far less valuable than horses, and the focus of the business between the two sides was still on the horses.

Yang Zhi saw that Ye Mengde understood, and said lightly: "Lord Ye, I have already written to Taiyuan, suggesting that horse husbandry prisons be established in Fuzhou, Suizhou, Qinzhou, Weizhou, Jingzhou, Qingzhou, Fengxiangfu, Fengzhou, Ningzhou, Lanzhou and other places, I believe that as long as 100,000 cavalry are equipped, the northwest is almost in the pocket of the Dingbei Army; The Tubo tribes in Hehuang are not all heart-to-heart, some are heart-to-heart to the Great Song Dynasty, and a little heart to Western Xia, but that is all a choice for survival, in the eyes of those tribes, survival is the first, it doesn't matter the principle, who gives more benefits to whom, who listens to whom, who listens to whom. ”

Yang Zhi didn't have a little burden on those tribes, as long as he cut off these wings, once there was a disaster year or any other change in Western Xia later, the Dingbei Army could take action and tighten the rope around the neck of Western Xia a little more.