However, the three yamen were nominal posts, relegated to the second line and not in power. The Privy Council was different, it still had the Prime Minister and was a department with real power.

During this expedition, Di Qing served as the deputy envoy of the Privy Council and the commander-in-chief of the navy.

Therefore, in theory, all the naval forces of the Song Dynasty are now under his control. His rank is the superior of Hu Yanshouyong's superior's superior. Even if he says that he cannot fight a naval battle, he does not have to worry about someone seizing power.

Hu Yanshou scratched his head and said, "To be honest with you, Commander Di, we don't know how to fight a naval battle either."

"ah?"

Di Qing was dumbfounded and stared at him.

Hu Yanshouyong saw Di Qing looking at him in surprise, and he quickly said, "It's not just our Pinghai Navy; other navies don't know how to fight at all."

"Why?"

Di Qing wondered, what use are you if you can't fight?

“Because I haven’t fought before.”

Hu Yanshou spread his hands and said, "The sea is full of warships and merchant ships belonging to the Song Dynasty. Even if there are pirates, their small and broken ships can be crushed by ramming them without any artillery. How can we fight?"

"Forehead"

Di Qing agreed with this. The Song Dynasty Navy had never had any rivals since its establishment.

Because the opponent has no navy at all.

Then wouldn't their role be completely useless?

So rather than saying that they don’t know how to fight, it’s better to say that although they have training, they don’t have any practical combat experience.

This is also one of the disadvantages.

"That's fine. This is also a landing operation anyway. Our mission is to get close to the Liao border, occupy Yuguan Pass, and cut off the Liao main force's reinforcements."

Di Qing, on the contrary, comforted Hu Yanshou with a few words.

This is also true.

The Song Dynasty was not able to predict the future. They just saw from a strategic perspective that if Liaoxia attacked their allies, forcing the Song Dynasty to take the initiative and reveal their weaknesses was the best option. This did not mean that they knew the location of Liaoxia's main force.

What's more, both the Liao Kingdom and the Western Xia hid their positions very well and did not reveal their cards. They adopted various methods to conceal their main forces, so that even the scouts and traitors of the Song army could not figure out the situation.

This is how information warfare works. Both sides are full of lies and truth. For both sides, all kinds of messy information will be placed in the Constitutional Court, making it difficult to make quick judgments.

The two generals who had no knowledge of naval warfare led their fleets northwards. When they passed through the Bohai Bay, they met up with the Dinghai Navy. The two fleets had a total of only about 10,000 people, but they had more than 50 or 60 ships of various sizes, and were very powerful.

A few days later, Fan Zhongyan, who was far away in Zhuozhou, led an army of more than 100,000 to the north and started a war against the Liao Kingdom on the grounds that Goryeo and the Song Dynasty had signed a mutual assistance treaty and the Liao Kingdom had attacked the Song Dynasty's ally.

The Liao Kingdom indeed strengthened its defenses, with Xijin Prefecture as the core, and set up defense lines in the surrounding areas such as Liangxiang, Wanping, Yuhe, Gaolianghe, etc.

The two sides quickly entered a confrontation phase.

Amidst this tense situation, the Song army opened fire first.

However, it was not Fan Zhongyan on the front line who started the battle.

After all, Fan Zhongyan had just started the attack and was surrounded by Liao artillery. If he forced an attack, he would be seeking his own death.

So after entering the territory of Liao, Fan Zhongyan adopted the old method and stationed several large camps on the outskirts of the Liao army near Liangxiang, Wanping, Yuhe and other places.

The camp was beyond the range of the Liao army. They built high walls, installed artillery, and continuously transported food and grass, as if they were determined to fight a protracted war with the Liao.

Almost at the time when Liao and Song entered into a tense confrontation, the Hebei Dinghai Navy and the Shandong Pinghai Navy had already slowly appeared in Pingzhou, Nanjing Prefecture of Liao.

Pingzhou is the area from Kaiping to Qinhuangdao in later generations. The Yuguan Pass at that time, which was also the famous Shanhaiguan in later generations, was located here.

In the early morning of October 9th, it was early winter and the weather in the north was getting colder.

In Guangning County, Pingzhou, the cold winter wind caused the sea to surge. There was a medium-sized port on the shore with some ships docked at the port.

The Liao Dynasty did have some naval forces, but they were not numerous and operated only in the coastal waters, never going out to sea. A naval force called the Linhai Navy was stationed in Yingzhou and Guangning.

In addition, there are several troops stationed there, including Liaoxing Army, Xingshen Army, Haiyang Army, etc., mainly used to guard the important pass of Yumen Pass.

Although the Liao Kingdom obtained the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun without any effort, the importance of Yuguan was extremely high. The Yanshan Mountains north of Yanyun blocked the offensive between the Baishan and Heishui areas in the northeast and was an important strategic mountain range in the Yanyun area.

If the Liao wanted to transport troops south, there were only two most convenient routes. One was Guihua Prefecture, which is Zhangjiakou in later generations. The second was Yuguan Pass.

In order to conceal his tracks, Yelu Zongzhen had the main army following him when he went to Dongjing Road. Otherwise, if the Song Dynasty's espionage team discovered that the Liao Dynasty's Pi Shi army did not follow him, they would definitely suspect that there was a trick.

So at this time, Yelu Zongzhen himself was in Tokyo, the Pi Shi Army was also in Tokyo, and the main force of the Liao Kingdom was attacking Goryeo.

Now, if we want to secretly reach Nanjing, we must pass through Yuguan.

Above the county seat of Guangning County, soldiers from the neighboring navy were looking boredly towards the northeast direction of Yushui (Shihe River).

Although they were nominally a navy, they disappeared when the Liao Kingdom organized a fleet and took all of its only few thousand navy to Japan to get rid of the Song Dynasty's sulfur trade. The neighboring navy has been in name only.

These neighboring navies also recruited some Han soldiers who were familiar with water. On weekdays, they would do some work such as garrisoning in coastal cities or sailing around the coast.

Now that Liao and Song were about to go to war again, they saw that in the northeast direction, groups of Pi Shi troops were crossing the Yushui River and heading towards Xijin.

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