In parts of the West, the flame represents purification. But after purification, what is left is not a beautiful thing, but a scene like hell.

The trees were burned to black charcoal, and the air was filled with a smell that was hard to breathe. Many of the things left on the ground during the escape were burned away.

The valley was reduced to char overnight.

The Tangut people were sad, and the land of singing and music was taken away by the Song people, and even the valley that could give them resources was burned.

The herdsmen sang mournful ballads to complain about the atrocities of the Song army.

Soon, Western Xia sent an embassy to Bianliang to condemn the actions of the Song army.

This kind of thing happens, and no one wants it to happen. Wars are wars, but there must always be a bottom line. Just like the confrontation between the great powers in later generations, nuclear weapons are the final bottom line, and no one wants to touch this thing.

Last time, Duke Wen of Jin burned the entire valley and burned the Cold Food Festival, but this time Tang Ning and Zhi Keshi were criticized by the ministers of the imperial court.

Originally, there were a lot of people who were unhappy with Tang Ning, and after Tang Ning's words were said before, although there was no movement in the back, it didn't mean that this matter was over.

And thanks to the flooding of the Yellow River, the Song people also attach great importance to environmental protection issues. Therefore, Zhao Xu's court meetings in the past few days were basically listening to the ministers scolding Tang Ning for being barbaric, saying that Tang Ning was not worthy of being the commander of the Zhenjiang Army and the Ma Bu Army.

Ten percent of them were really saddened by the burning of the valley, and the other forty percent were trying to get revenge on Downing. The other 40 percent are all thinking about the position of the commander.

As for the remaining ten percent, most of them have something to do with Tang Ning to some extent, so they just shut their mouths and didn't say a word.

Although Zhao Xu was young, he was suppressed by the Empress Dowager Gao in his early years, studied hard, and watched coldly for several years, so he already knew the mentality of these people well.

Understand and understand, the anger of the Manchu civil and military must always be calmed down. So Zhao Xu could only issue an edict, fined Tang Ning for three years, fined a lot of money, and cut the first-level official.

This painless punishment was accepted by both the civil and military forces of the Manchu Dynasty. From this incident, it can be seen that Zhao Xu wants to protect Tang Ning.

Punishing Tang Ning is already giving everyone face, and it would be a bit too much to kick his nose in the face again.

However, this move also deepened the dissatisfaction of the civil and military forces with Tang Ning - why can you get such favor from the official family when you don't have any hair?

Downing naturally didn't know all this, he was having a headache cleaning up the battlefield.

The people caught in the fire have all been burned to charcoal, and it is impossible to tell whether it is the Song army or the Xia army. And the wooden dog tags, which have no resistance in the face of flames, do not even know who is dead, and can only be determined by counting the number of missing people in each battalion.

The arrows can't be recovered, but you can still pick up some weapons and armor. Blend these and you can create some arrows.

Zhe Keshi originally made a great contribution this time, but the sin of setting fire to the mountain is not small.

Zhang Kai scolded him again, and the merits were offset, so he continued to work for Zhang Kai.

The battle of Tiandu Mountain and Zhao Xu's negative attitude made the Western Xia people extremely angry.

At the beginning of June, the Privy Council received a report from Huanqing Road about the mobilization of the Tangut people. After an all-night discussion, Tsang ordered the front line to be on guard.

In mid-June, Zhao Xu changed the name of the year to Yuanfu. At this point, Zhao Xu's tough attitude towards the use of troops in Western Xia could not be changed, and the ministers of the anti-war faction in the DPRK and China also obediently closed their mouths and made suggestions for the capture of Western Xia.

Soon after, Xixia asked the Huilu envoys to convey their wishes for peace, but Zhao Xu did not have high hopes for whether diplomatic means could work, considering that he did not know the true intentions of the party members.

After Zhang Qi learned about this, he sat in the study and didn't sleep all night. In the end, he judged that if Western Xia wanted to use troops, the target would be nowhere else but Pingxia City.

Pingxia City is the largest city in Jingyuan Road, once Pingxia City is broken, the resistance of the rest of the fortresses will collapse one after another.

Guo Cheng is a deputy general under Zhang Kai, and Zhang Kai's praise for him is no less than that of Fold Keshi. Moreover, Guo Cheng has a characteristic, he is extremely stable in his use of troops and is good at defensive warfare.

Therefore, Zhang Qi transferred Guo Cheng, who was good at defense, and Zhi Keshi, who was full of strategies, to Pingxia City to prevent a large-scale attack by Western Xia.

At the same time, according to his judgment, the strategic goal of the Xia army is most likely to destroy the Song army's walled fort in the area of Pingxia City and seize Tiandu Mountain.

So he ordered Tang Ning's subordinates to continue to garrison the Tiandu in Shanyin, the capital of Tiandu.

As soon as the order came out, the entire Jingyuan Road had a feeling that the mountain rain was about to come and the wind was full of buildings.

Tang Ning took advantage of the peace to send a letter to his family, telling his family that everything was fine and that he didn't have to worry about it.

In the early winter, the scouts of Pingxia City caught a party deserter, according to this person, a Western Xia army of up to 1.5 million set up camp north of Tiandu Mountain, only 50 miles from the Song army fortress in Wuyan Gorge.

Zhang Qi didn't believe this, and most of the deserters he caught were running to scare people. One and a half million? Aren't the Xixia people worried that they will be picked up by Hedong Road?

However, Zhang Kai still submitted the report in its original form, Jingyuan Road has not been able to get reinforcements for a long time, and Zhang Kai wants to use this matter to put some pressure on the Privy Council.

Sure enough, this report went up, Huanqing Road sent 3,000 cavalry, 7,000 infantry, led by Chong Pu, and rushed over in the starry night, and Qin Fenglu was also supported by Liu Fa with an equal number of troops.

In mid-December, at the end of the year, the scouts reported that the 1.5 million army of Western Xia had advanced along the border of the Jingyuan Road for more than ten days, and the destination was still unclear.

While the Privy Council was debating the possibility of the Tanguts suddenly switching targets, the Tangut army launched an unprecedentedly fierce offensive against the city of Pingxia.

The Sixth Route Commander Wei Ming Abu was responsible for besieging Pingxia City, and the Xishou Supervisor Army's sister Le Duqi led the interception force to deal with the possible arrival of Song reinforcements.

After the defeat in Tiandu Mountain, the two brothers and sisters returned to the Western Xia court, and they were scolded and wanted to find a crack in the ground to get into.

Of the 80,000 soldiers, more than 30,000 died in the fire, and Tiandu Mountain was lost.

However, Xiaoliang has also grown in the past few years, she only punished the two of them, but did not cut off the official positions of the two. In this battle of Pingxia City, the two of them were still reused, which made the two grateful.

Wei Ming Ah Bury even said that if he couldn't take Pingxia City, he would cut himself on the spot.

These two people always suffer in the hands of Tang Ning and Zhe Keshi, but when the Fan general Li Ayabu had not yet surrendered to the Song court, his Qiang people united tribe was beaten by these two people.

According to him, the two are extremely brave and shrewd.

Zhang Qi agreed with this, and things that underestimated the enemy would never happen to him.

Under the command of these two men, the Western Xia army simultaneously surrounded six newly built Song fortresses, four near Pingxia City and the remaining two in Wuyan Gorge, and maintained a fierce offensive against Pingxia City.

Since a new batch of supplies arrived before this, gunpowder, incendiary bombs, arrows and other items were not lacking in Pingxia City at all.

At the end of the first day, the Tanguts returned in vain, but the casualties were not heavy. They had mastered how to deal with gunpowder, lying on the ground and hurking behind their shields, so that they would not be blown up or shocked to death as long as they were not very close.

The Song army was not blindly defensive, and six years ago, the elastic defense strategy proposed by Zhang Ji was adopted by the Privy Council.

When the Tanguts began to attack the city of Pingxia, the left and right flanks of the defenders on the Shaanxi front immediately reacted.

Hedong Road sent 30,000 soldiers deep into Western Xia to counterattack, and Wang Shu, deputy envoy of Xihe Road, led more than 20,000 people to attack the Zhuoluo Supervisor and the Right Wing Supervisor of Western Xia, killing a total of 3,700 Western Xia soldiers and capturing more than 39,000 cattle and sheep.

At the same time, Wang Shu also burned down the Tangut farmhouses and granaries within a radius of 800 li, which dealt a great blow to the supply of the Tangut people.

On the second day of the siege of Pingxia City, the Xia army used building vehicles to cover the Xia soldiers who dug tunnels into the city.

The Song army defended hard until late at night, and more than 20,000 front-line Song troops killed nearly 1,000 people in one day.

On the third watch, Zhi Keshi personally took twenty people, and under the cover of night, slipped out of the small door, carrying gunpowder, trying to blow up Xia Jun's building car.

But this move was not successful, and Zhi Keshi and the others were discovered by a Western Xia patrol on duty at night. The Tanguts quickly sent cavalry in pursuit, and in order to intercept the Tangut cavalry, Zhe Keshi threw the gunpowder bag behind him when he fled, but luckily blew up a tunnel.

The Tanguts were furious and launched the whole army for a night battle, but they had to retreat under the crossbow arrows of the Song army.

At the same time, Tang Ning, who was in Tiandu Mountain......

"It's boring." Shen Qian, Fang Yong, and even Cheng Yang and other senior generals stared at Tang Ning with burning eyes: "If the thieves don't come to attack Tiandu Mountain, why don't we send troops to attack them!" ”

“……”

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