Chapter 291: Northwest is in chaos
Among the 108 Liangshan heroes, there are many masters who can dominate the world and are invincible, but not all the masters are in Liangshan.

The Liao Kingdom had masters, the Jin Kingdom had masters, Fang La had masters, the Zhao Song Kingdom also had masters, and the masters under Tian Hu were also very impressive.

As one of the four major bandits, Tian Hu occupied five states and fifty-six counties in the original novel. To rule such a large territory, it would be impossible without brave and capable generals.

Under Tian Hu's command, there are all kinds of capable people, among whom the military generals are top-notch masters.

There is no doubt that "Dragon Slayer" Sun An is ranked first.

Why do you say that?

Just one record is very convincing, that is, this guy can fight with Lu Junyi for fifty rounds without losing. And everyone is very clear about Yu Qilin's martial arts value. Sun An can fight with Lu Junyi for so long without a clear winner, which shows how powerful Sun An is.

In the original novel, he later surrendered to Song Jiang and followed Song Jiang all the way to the Huaixi expedition. On his transcript: Lu Cheng was chopped off by him with one sword; He Ji was killed by him after more than thirty rounds; he killed Zhuo Mao in only four or five rounds; and later he cooperated with Lu Junyi to attack Du Fu together and cut off Du Fu's right arm.

From his battle record, we can see that his greatest strength lies in the fact that he never kills unknown men, and those who fight with him are all generals. Therefore, his achievements are very convincing, and it can be said that it is appropriate for him to be ranked as the most powerful general under Tian Hu.

Bian Xiang is also a master, but compared to Sun An, he is still a little bit inferior.

But now, these two generals under Tian Hu's command plus Qiao Daoqing were poached by Cao Jie, and coupled with the heavy losses in the battle at Fenyang City, Tian Hu's forces are no longer a force to be reckoned with.

But even a rotten boat still has three pounds of nails. Tian Hu's forces were entrenched in the southern part of Shanxi, blocking the court's way to Taiyuan, and were exactly the shield of Liangshan.

The city of Taiyuan had been bombarded for half a month, but there was no sign of it being breached.

The commander in the city was named Zhe Keda, and his deputy was also named Zhe Keqiu.

They were brothers, sons of the great general Zhe Kexing. Zhe Kexing served as an official in the northwesternmost border state of the Song Dynasty for 30 years. He was good at comforting his soldiers and had the most military exploits. He fought against the Western Xia many times, and the Western Xia people called him "Zhe's father".

In the History of Song Dynasty, the Zhe family inherited the post of governor of prefectures and states for more than 200 years, and was almost the king of northwest Shanxi forever. Generation after generation of Zhe family men participated in almost all military operations to fight against Khitan, eliminate Northern Han, and resist Western Xia.

In battle after battle, they mostly served as vanguards and commanders.

Especially after the rise of Western Xia, the Zhe family was plunged into a long and bitter war with Western Xia. Many soldiers fought bravely and shed their blood on the battlefield, which also created generations of famous generals from the Zhe family.

Zhe Kexing was a general of the previous generation of the Zhe family. In this generation, Zhe Keda's abilities were slightly lacking, but Zhe Keqiu, who was just in his thirties, had already shown the potential to be a famous general.

The two brothers held the fortified city of Taiyuan, taking advantage of the geographical location and the people, making sure nothing could stop them.

Since the siege of Taiyuan City, the old Prime Minister Zhong Shidao, the governor of Yan'an Prefecture in the northwest, is over seventy years old. Despite his advanced age, he is still active on the battlefield between Song and Xia.

At the end of last year, Tong Guan lost 100,000 troops, and the Zhong family army led by Old Zhong and Little Zhong had to fight back again, thus stabilizing the Hengshan front and preventing it from collapsing.

In the first year of Xuanhe, rebellions broke out in various parts of the Song Dynasty and are now intensifying.

Today, the imperial court had to dispatch elite troops from the northwest to suppress the bandits.

When the imperial edict reached Zhong Shidao's hands, the white-haired old general sighed and pleaded:

"Angel, the Western Army cannot move! Xixia still has the strength to fight. If a large number of Western Army troops are withdrawn, once Xixia captures the various strongholds in Hengshan, the offensive and defensive situation will be easy!"

Hengshan is an important barrier for Western Xia and a place that both Song and Xia must fight for.

From a strategic perspective, the Hengshan area is very important to both Song and Xia.

Xixia occupied Hengshan since Deming. Before that, Xixia only occupied Yin, Xia, Sui, You and other states. Because it did not occupy Hengshan, it lived far away in the northern desert, with the desert as the boundary with the Northern Song Dynasty. When confronting the Song Dynasty, it was often in a disadvantageous position. After taking Hengshan, it was like a tiger with wings, defending by taking advantage of the terrain, gathering troops and food, thus turning disadvantages into advantages and turning passivity into initiative.

For the Song Dynasty, the loss of Hengshan allowed the Xixia people to "look down on us from a high position", exposing some of the Song Dynasty's counties along the border to the eyes of the Xixia people. In order to defend these places, the Song Dynasty had to mobilize a large amount of manpower and material resources to strengthen its frontier positions.

At the same time, the Song army took the initiative to attack, but because they lost Hengshan, they entered a desolate desert area with no water, grass or human habitation as soon as they left the Song territory. Once the supply of military pay and food was cut off, they had to retreat without a fight.

Therefore, capturing Hengshan is the first step in pacifying Western Xia.

Under the rule of Song Zhezong Zhao Xu, the Hengshan area was finally recovered, and Western Xia was once pushed to the brink of national destruction.

But Zhao Xu died too early. After Huizong came to power, the strategic advantage over Western Xia was always based on the capital accumulated during the reign of Zhezong.

Now the Western Army is being transferred to suppress the rebels. Once Hengshan is lost, all the strategic planning since the reign of Emperor Zhezong... and even the hundreds of years of Song Dynasty's planning will come to nothing.

"Old Master Zhong!" The angel was helpless and said with a depressed look: "If the imperial court is gone, what's the point of having Hengshan?"

Zhong Shidao opened his mouth, but ultimately said nothing.

He spent his entire life resisting the Western Xia, performing the work of a military general while being a scholar, but this does not mean that his political wisdom was low.

How could he not understand the court's intentions?

It’s just that, “I would rather give it to an external enemy than to a domestic slave.”

Looking northwest from the city wall of Yan'an Prefecture, you can see rows of ochre-colored dry ditches. There are countless such dry ditches in the wilderness.

Zhong Shidao looked at the Western Army going away, his lonely figure looked so desolate.

The beauty is old and the general is old, both of them are unbearable in the world of mortals.

In the end, 30% of the Western Army in Yongxingjun Route and Qinfeng Route were transferred away and led by Liu Yanqing, the governor of Baoxin Army and deputy commander of the cavalry, to march towards Taiyuan Prefecture.

In this Western Army, there was a general named Han Shizhong.

The Western Army is well-known for its ability to fight hard and its willingness to sacrifice.

The four routes of Shaanxi were first managed by Fan Yong, the father of the Great Fan, and have been known as a strong army for nearly a hundred years. Except for the four regular troops, the rest of the Western Army, including the foreign soldiers, strong men, and archery clubs, have been entangled with the Western Xia and Qingtang Qiang for a hundred years. It is an army that dared to go deep into the vast sea and Gobi for more than a thousand miles to fight in the field and expand the territory for the Song Dynasty.

In various parts of Shaanxi, several generations of a family have served in the Western Army. Men do not live past the age of 30, and there are many scenes of a group of widows living together.

However, no matter how good this army is at fighting, it is still a mountain army. When fighting on the great plains, it is simply a case of using short-range attacks to attack the strong.

Moreover, the Western Army resisted the Western Xia in order to protect their homes. They risked their lives because their parents and wives were behind them and they could not retreat.

But once you leave the Northwestern Military Province, military discipline becomes rotten to the core.

The army crossed the Yellow River and arrived in Shanxi, like a swarm of locusts passing through a border.

The Liangshan Army, the Zhe Family Army, the Western Army, and the Tian Hu rebels, the entire Shanxi province was in chaos.

The Western Xia army took the opportunity to move south, and the northwest became a complete mess!

(End of this chapter)