Since the defeat of Tongguan, Li Zicheng did not dare to easily bring any more thoughts about Tongguanyi, and instead began to mobilize troops and horses to start marching towards the western part of Shaanxi, intending to control the whole of Shaanxi in his hands before Xiao Tianjian freed up his hands to deal with him, so as to prepare for the future.

However, after so many years of natural and man-made disasters, Shaanxi has long been dilapidated to the extreme, after decades of chaotic war, the population in Shaanxi has plummeted to an incredible extent, and many places have been ten rooms and nine empty, and even within a range of dozens of miles, there are almost no people.

Originally, the population of Shaanxi was more than 10 million, but by the time of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, the population of Shaanxi was roughly estimated to be only a few million people left.

Since Li Zicheng conquered Xi'an, the official government and army of the Ming Dynasty in Shaanxi have been completely scattered, and they have completely lost their unified leadership, and even Gao Jie has surrendered to the Dazhong Army, so Li Zicheng waved his division to the west, which can basically be said to be like a bamboo, and he easily took Gongchang Mansion, Pingliang Mansion, Minzhou Wei, Lintao Mansion and other places.

However, the success of the westward offensive does not mean that Li Zicheng's life is better, although the territory is good, but Shaanxi is too poor at this time, Li Zicheng almost killed the rich families in Shaanxi along the way, and robbed those who could rob them, but the silver was robbed by more than one million, but the grain was not grabbed.

Moreover, Li Zicheng has already felt the threat of Xiao Tianjian's Dazhong Dynasty to him, and knows that as long as Xiao Tianjian's Northern Expedition is successful this time, he will swing his troops into Shaanxi and make a move against his Dashun, so the sense of crisis has always oppressed him and the generals under his command, so that after the defeat in Tongguan, they once again gave up their previous strategy of wanting to emulate Xiao Tianjian to take the elite route, and once again began to expand their troops.

With Li Zicheng's westward development, Li Zicheng's Dashun army also snowballed a large number of people in Shaanxi, and in just a few months, it once again swelled to nearly 400,000 soldiers and horses like a balloon.

But on the surface, it seems that the 400,000 army has a lot of troops, but in fact, the Dashun army has recovered to the level of the kind of exile army of the year, among the 400,000 army, the old, the weak, the sick and the disabled account for nearly half, half of the people do not even have a decent weapon, can only carry some sticks, hoes, sickles and other things, as weapons, more than ninety percent of the soldiers have no armor, although there are many cavalry, claiming to have 30,000 cavalry, but among the 30,000 cavalry, most of them are some thin horses, and even mules and donkeys are indiscriminately filled.

As for firearms, not to mention, although it claims to have a lot of cannons, but they are all messy old cannons discarded by some officials and soldiers, not to mention, gunpowder is in short supply, and most of them are some bowls and the like, and the guns are needless to say, although Li Zicheng knows the power of the guns, after controlling Hanzhong, he also recruited some craftsmen to build bird guns for him, trying to use such means to obtain the means to confront the Dazhong army.

But to build this thing, it is not so simple, even when Xiao Tianjian started in Yangcheng County, in order to build the bird gun, even relying on the rich iron production of Yangcheng, it took a long time to gradually train a group of craftsmen who can make the fire gun, not to mention that the iron production in Hanzhong is not rich, and the blacksmiths who can build the bird gun are even more limited, so Li Zicheng has only equipped thousands of bird guns with chaotic shapes by seizing and making them from the hands of the officials and soldiers in the past few years. And one of them is still the eliminated bird gun given to him by Xiao Tianjian back then, the caliber is not uniform, not to mention, Li Zicheng has not mastered the secret of paper shell bullets, it is still used in bulk black powder, and it is not granular, and the quality is not comparable to that of the Dazhong Army at all.

If he uses such soldiers and horses to deal with the Ming army that has no power to fight back, he can still be invincible, before Xiao Tianjian temporarily did not free up his hands to clean him up, Li Zicheng's soldiers and horses can still run rampant in Shaanxi for a period of time, but it is limited to the south of Yan'an Mansion and Qingyang Mansion and the west of Shaanxi, even in northern Shaanxi, Li Zicheng does not dare to easily find trouble with the Dazhong Army.

But although their development in Shaanxi is quite smooth, but Li Zicheng also found that with the increase of his troops, he returned to the previous strange circle, there are more and more soldiers and horses, but it is more and more difficult to get food, and it is impossible to feed him three or four hundred thousand soldiers and horses at once in this poor place of Shaanxi, so he can only send people to rob farther away, but the more he robs Shaanxi, the poorer he becomes, and his growth is not only to rescue them from the dire situation for the people of Shaanxi, but also to rescue them from the dire situation. On the contrary, it made more Shaanxi people displaced, and in order to survive, they had to follow the Dashun army to eat.

The lack of food supply has become the biggest problem facing Li Zicheng, so Li Zicheng had to once again set his sights on the rich Huguang area and Sichuan area, but Sichuan is mountainous, because Xiao Tianjian started earlier than him, at the end of last year, he sent Li Xuanzhu's department to attack Sichuan, and quickly conquered Chongqing and Chengdu, and then quickly controlled the northern Sichuan belt in the hands of the Dazhong Army.

Li Zicheng sent a small number of men and horses in May to try to enter Sichuan from Lizhou to make a profit, but when he saw that the Dazhong army had been in full battle, he did not dare to continue to go deeper, and retreated to the Hanzhong area, but Li Zicheng was really forced to have no way, or could not withstand the temptation of the rich Huguang to him, when Xiao Tianjian led the army to the north, once again wanted to use the attention of the Dazhong army to focus on the north, Huguang and the lack of troops, sent a high power army to attack Yunyang, but Li Zicheng's abacus still fell into the vacancy, Although Xiao Tianjian went on a northern expedition, he did not despise the defense of Huguang at all, and the military department had already arranged for Zhao Erdonkey to sit in Yunyang before setting off.

As a result, Gao Yigong not only did not conquer Yunyang, but was also defeated by Zhao Erdonkey and fled, and retreated to Hanzhong, but he didn't think that when Gao Yigong sneaked up on Yunyang, he was caught in the opportunity by Li Xuanzhu in Baoning Mansion, and sent 3,000 elite soldiers, and suddenly attacked Hanzhong, which Li Zicheng relied on to start again, but was already prepared by Li Xuanzhu to yin, almost blocked Gao Yigong in the mountains around Baoning Mansion, the result is that Gao Yigong not only did not find the field in the end, but was once again defeated by the Dazhong Army in Baoning Mansion, and almost fled back to Hanzhong alone.

It can be said that Li Zicheng tried to sneak attack the Dazhong Army twice, but in the end he failed, not only did he get a little cheap, but he also stole chickens and rice, and even his old nest Hanzhong was also given a black tiger by Li Xuanzhu, and it made a mess.

So on the surface, after Li Zicheng reinvigorated Hanzhong in the past two years, he occupied a large area of Shaanxi, and his army grew to nearly 400,000 people, but in essence, his strength did not increase too much, on the contrary, those generals under his command snatched food and property in order to compete for merit, and there were many contradictions between each other.

Originally, Li Zicheng also expected Xiao Tianjian to lead the army to the Northern Expedition, even if he could capture Beijing, but at least it would consume a lot of money, and when he heard that Jiannu also took the opportunity to go south, trying to enter the customs and seize the land of Yanyun, this news almost made him overjoyed, with his understanding of Xiao Tianjian, Xiao Tianjian would definitely not easily give up the land of Yanyun to Jiannu, so at this time, Xiao Tianjian led the army north, and he would definitely start a big battle with the Jiannu army.

And although Li Zicheng has never fought with Jiannu, but from so many years of the Ming Dynasty has devoted all his national strength to the repeated battles with Jiannu, he thinks that Xiao Tianjian wants to defeat Jiannu, although it is not impossible, but even if he can win, it can only be the result of losing both sides in the end.

So he immediately ordered, in June after the defeat of Yunyang, began to shrink the forces from the west of Shaanxi, and once again began to converge towards the area of Xi'an, and hoarded grain, sharpening the knife Huo Huo only waited for Xiao Tianjian to fight with Jiannu in the north and defeated both, he took advantage of the situation to raise a large army and once again divided into two ways to Tongguan and Yunyang, taking advantage of the situation to attack Henan and Huguang in one fell swoop, completely reversing the current predicament of his Dashun.

But at the end of July, a news came to Xi'an Mansion from the north, which made Li Zicheng suddenly stunned as if he had been struck by lightning.

Even the generals under his command were shocked when they heard the news, it turned out that they learned that Xiao Tianjian first annihilated nearly 40,000 Jiannu in Tongzhou, and then gathered heavy troops to go to Shanhaiguan, and a decisive battle with the Jiannu army outside Shanhaiguan, and once again defeated the Jiannu army.

This news not only shocked Li Zicheng, but also completely cut off his idea of wanting to compete with Xiao Tianjian again to dominate the world, Jiannu is powerful, the world can be said to be well known, and Xiao Tianjian is said to have gathered only 100,000 troops in the Northern Expedition, not only in just two months, opened up the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, has been killing Shanhaiguan, and with weak troops, the fierce Jiannu army, lost their armor, then Xiao Tianjian's Dazhong Army is not something he can fight again.

Think about the battle of Tongguan and the battle of Yunyang that he took the initiative in the past six months, both times his Dashun army had an absolute advantage in strength, but it was beaten by the Dazhong army, and now with his strength, if he still wants to be the enemy of the Dazhong army that is about to free his hand, I am afraid the end will be very miserable.

So after learning the news of the great victory of the Dazhong Army at Shanhaiguan, Li Zicheng immediately recruited Song Xiance and other advisers to his "palace" and asked Yu Song Xiance and other advisers what to do next.