After the humiliation of Jingkang, Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty Zhao Gou and his remnant troops crossed south and were trapped in the Yangtze and Huaihe Rivers, but were repeatedly crushed by the Jin army - the Yangzhou rout, the Miao and Liu rebellions, and the grain shortage mutiny. In the past, the Song Dynasty actually fell into the deadlock of "defending the Huaihe River will starve to death, retreating from the Yangtze River will cause the country to perish." When the Manchu Dynasty was still debating between "defending the Jianghuai River" and "humiliating peace negotiations", the emperor who was once ridiculed as "a mud horse crossing the river" got a glimpse of the situation from the mouth of the southern businessman Chen Jing: abandon the sole defense of the Huaihe River and take three steps of "defending the Huaihe River, advancing southward and northern expedition".
He strongly opposed Qin Hui's proposal for peace, sent Wu Lin to lead the Western Army to open up the Sichuan-Yunnan channel, and made an alliance with Dali to gain the benefit of the bronze horse; he sent Chen Jing to sail to the Indochina Peninsula, introduce double-cropping rice in the city to relieve the food shortage, and collect Zhenla war elephants to make up for the shortcomings of the army. In a few years, the Southern Song Dynasty transformed from "consumption in the south of the Yangtze River" to a strong state that "cast money from the mines of Yunnan, raised troops with grain from the south, and supplemented the cavalry with foreign tribes". It also built a three-level "Jianghuai-Jiangnan-Yunnan-Burma" crisis, completely getting rid of the crisis of "collapse as soon as it is broken".
In the 18th year of Shaoxing, Emperor Gaozong launched a three-pronged Northern Expedition with an army of 500,000 land and sea troops: Yue Fei led the elephant soldiers and cavalry to break through Kaifeng, Han Shizhong led the navy to cut off the Jin army's food route, and Wu Lin attacked Shanxi from Yunnan, finally destroying the Jin Kingdom, restoring the sixteen states of Yanyun, and ending the shame of Jingkang. When Emperor Xiaozong was enthroned in Zen in his later years, Lin'an had become a cosmopolitan city, and people in the Central Plains resumed farming double-crop rice. The old prophecy that "there is no hope of the Northern Expedition after Yue Fei" was finally completely broken by his strategy of "moving south to build the foundation". This work takes Gaozong as the protagonist, integrates historical materials from "History of the Song Dynasty" and strategic deductions, reshapes the epic life of a "from a fugitive emperor to the master of the Song Dynasty's reconstruction", and restores a "Southern Advance to Zhongxing" that has been ignored by history.
