The Tang Empire, which was red lotus in Xuanping for 20 years, generally continued the development strategy of Xuanping for 19 years, with the promotion and application of high-pressure steam engines as the core, and carried out technological upgrading of transportation and industrial production throughout the country.

This was embodied in the construction of railways and the large-scale use of steamships.

This is also an unprecedented social change in the vast Chinese region!

Although the Tang Empire has always been developing industry and commerce, and various industrial products are also continuously produced, appearing in shops and entering people's homes, these daily necessities have not changed the lives of contemporary people much, and they cannot make people intuitively feel the shock of the industrial revolution.

But it was when trains and ships came along that it really made a huge wave across the country.

Because at this time, people find that travel is more convenient and faster than before, whether it is a ship or a train, the speed is faster than before, I don't know how many times.

In particular, in the 21st year of Xuanping, the construction was carried out at the same time in a number of road sections, in order to open the Jiangnan Railway to traffic as soon as possible, and after the railways from Jinling to Zhenjiang, Shanghai to Suzhou, and Dangtu to Jinling were opened to traffic one after another, the railway from Suzhou to Zhenjiang was also completed and opened to traffic.

This also means that after five years of construction, the main project of the Jiangnan Railway can be said to have been basically completed.

Trains can depart from Dangtu, the most important heavy industrial area of the Tang Empire, and pass through Jinling, Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Suzhou and then arrive in Shanghai.

Although the section from Shanghai to Ningbo, Zhejiang, and the section from Tu to Jiujiang Lake have not yet been opened to traffic, this has not affected the railway to bring a huge shock to people!

By train, people can travel from Dangtu to Shanghai in a matter of days, a speed that was almost unimaginable before.

And passenger transport is only the incidental value of this railway artery, more important is the freight capacity, by train transportation is faster, and easy to load and unload, and can directly reach inland cities, the key is that the cost is very low.

Coupled with the numerous steamships on the Yangtze River waterway, the transportation in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River has become extremely convenient.

Also in the 21st year of Xuanping, the Northeast Railway has also begun to build, and now it has crossed the Shanhaiguan, and the Hetao Railway is also under construction, which has crossed Zhangjiakou, and the Northwest Railway has been repaired to Xi'an.

At a time when the railway construction was being carried out in China, the military operations of the military did not stop!

The cavalry of the army has penetrated deep into the shore of Lake Belga, and established a small fortress in the local area, in the northeast area, the army has already crossed the Heilongjiang River, over the outer Great Xing'an Mountains, and now the military base of the Tang Army in the northeast region has been extended to the coast of the North Sea, and has established a military base on Sakhalin Island.

And if you continue to the north, it will be even more barren, with only a small number of indigenous people, so in fact, the army has gradually stopped military operations in the northern region, because all the larger indigenous tribes in the north have basically been killed by the Tang Army, and the rest is a vast no-man's land.

Because the follow-up policy of the Tang Army in the northern region has become to set up military bases in some key areas, and at the same time cooperate with the civil affairs department to carry out small-scale immigration.

As for large-scale immigration, don't count on it, now the Department of Immigration and Reclamation recruits immigrants to the Heilongjiang River Reclamation Coast, but not many people can recruit them, and as for the places further north, even if the policy is good, not too many people are willing to go.

After all, the freezing Siberian region is really not a place for people!

In order to better rule the above-mentioned areas, in the twenty-first year of Xuanping, Li Xuan officially ordered the allocation of administrative areas to the vast northeast region and the northern grassland region.

The original western Liaoning and eastern Liaoning provinces each extended to the north and expanded to the middle and upper reaches of the Heilongjiang River.

The provincial capital of the Northeast Province was moved to the city of Nuergan, which was renamed 'Hekou', and the new Northeast Province was administered to the area on the east bank of the Ussuri River, Sakhalin Island, north of the Heilongjiang River, extending to the Arctic Ocean and west to Lake Belga.

This new northeastern province will also be the largest province in the Tang Empire, and it will also be the least populated province.

So far, the migrants living in Northeast Province are mainly living in the middle and lower reaches of Heilongjiang, with a total population of about 100,000, and even if you add other scattered migrant settlements, the total population is only 150,000.

This population is not even as large as the population of an ordinary large county in China!

But there is no way, the new Northeast Province only has this environment, as for what will develop in the future, that is a matter for the future.

In the northern grassland region, Li Xuan also made a formal decree and made new adjustments to the expenditure of administrative regions.

With Hetao, Fengzhou, and Daning as the core, a new Hefeng Province was established, and the name of the province was taken from Hetao and Fengzhou, and the province was governed by the westernmost section of the existing planned Hetao Railway, and the jurisdiction was adjacent to the original provincial boundaries of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other provinces in the south, Liaoxi in the east, Belga Lake in the northeast in the north, and Tatar-controlled areas in the west.

The territory of the newly established province of Ha Feng was actually the area under the control of the original Tatars.

After such an adjustment, there is only one Hefeng Province in the newly added provinces of the empire, and the Northeast Province and the three provinces of Liaoxi and Liaodong are only the jurisdictions have been adjusted, plus the original areas are either actually controlled and immigrated by the Tang Empire, or they are local barren personnel, and the Tang Empire has sent a small number of military personnel to the station, so on the whole, the impact is not great.

At most, since then, there have been two provinces in the empire that are particularly large in size but very small in population.

Behind this kind of administrativeness, it also means that the military operations of the Tang Empire in the northeast and northern regions have basically been completed, and the next step should be to advance westward.

The Tatars in the west have also been paying attention to the movements of the Tang Empire, and the Tatars are a little confused about some of the domestic situations in the Tang Empire, because according to the news they have received from many sources, those Southern Tang barbarians have no intention of expanding their armies and fighting wars in the past two years, but are bent on building railways and factories.

To tell the truth, these Tatars, including Altan Khan, have never seen any factories and railways with their own eyes, but have listened to the reports of their subordinates, saying that the huge buildings of the factories, spewing huge smoke, and the iron carts that do not need to be drawn by horses are constantly running in the wilderness, all of this, just by using words and some illustrations, it is impossible for them to smoothly imagine what it is.

But although I don't know what these things are, the role is also known to the Tatars, because the scale of the construction of the Datang Railway is so huge, and the convenience of railway transportation can be known by any ordinary person, so although Altan Khan still doesn't know what the train is, he can know that the train can transport a large number of materials.

And knowing this is enough to give Altan Khan a greater sense of crisis!

In addition, after learning that the Tang Army had gradually recovered the vast northern grasslands and the northeast region, Altan Khan knew that the time left for those Southern Tang barbarians was running out, and they Tatars had to hurry up!

Therefore, in the twenty-first year of Xuanping, Altan Khan personally led more than 200,000 troops, including more than 100,000 Tatar cavalry and nearly tens of thousands of Tibetan infantry, artillery, baggage and other servants, once again entered the Kazakh Khanate.

And this time, with Altan Khan personally supervising the battle, the Tatar army went smoothly and defeated the Kazakh Khanate, which had already been beaten by the Tatars and could not take care of itself.

If, following the example of previous years, after destroying the main force of the Kazakh Khanate, and conquering their capital, they would have returned with the plundered cattle, sheep, horses, slaves, gold, silver, and treasures.

But this time, Altan Khan did not lead a large army, but directly established a ruling body in the area.

Then, after a few months of rest, he went directly to the Yarkand Khanate!

The Yarkand Khanate was no better than the Kazakh Khanate, and was destroyed by Altan Khan himself with a large army.

And because the Yarkand Khanate resisted very tenaciously at the last moment, it would rather die than surrender, and made Altan Khan angry, and directly came to a slaughter order.

So when the Tatars completely took control of the area, the local natives died almost as well.

In the twenty-first year of Xuanping, after taking these two places in a row, Altan Khan finally felt that he could take a breath!

And then did not forget the attitude that a vassal state should have, after destroying these two khanates, in the name of tribute, he donated a large number of gold, silver, jewelry, cattle, sheep and horses to the Tang Empire, and of course, there were indispensable foreign princesses and the like.

The last time Li Xuan expressed his satisfaction with the alien princess offered by Altan Khan, and when he wrote back to Altan Khan, he called it 'commendable filial piety'.

So in the next two years, as soon as Altan Khan found an opportunity, he offered all kinds of beauties to Li Xuanjin, and even his daughters and granddaughters were sent three before and after.

If it weren't for the fact that the other daughters and granddaughters didn't look good or were not suitable for age, it was estimated that he would be able to send all his daughters and granddaughters to Li Xuan in one go.

The daughters and granddaughters of this in-law can be given away, not to mention other people, including the young and beautiful women of the nobles within the Tatars, or the captive princesses of different races, as long as they are of excellent appearance, Altan Khan can give them away.

Altan Khan did this because he wanted to buy more time!