"Splash! Splash!~"
"We've reached the Liao River!"
The frozen Liao River stretched from south to north for thousands of li, and it had also become the natural boundary between the Liaodong Garrison and the Tatar. West of the Liao River lay boundless meadows, the horse-grazing lands of the Mongol Uriankhai Three Guards, and also the grasslands where Hu cavalry galloped in sudden raids. East of the Liao River, the Border Wall, fortresses, and beacon towers were everywhere, extending all the way from the rich and stable south of Liaodong to the north of Liaodong, where killing was frequent. And Tieling Guard and Kaiyuan Guard, backed by mountains and facing water, were located right at the center of northern Liaodong, precisely the empire's northern fulcrum for managing Liaodong.
The reason Tieling and Kaiyuan held such important strategic positions was not merely because of terrain that was easy to defend and hard to attack, nor because of land suitable for farming, but even more because they divided the Uriankhai Mongols from the Jianzhou Jurchen Tribes, preventing the two from linking up. And once the empire lost this place, allowing the Mongols and Jurchens to merge and head south together along the Liao River, then the next territory that could be held would not be Shenyang on the Hun River, nor Liaoyang on the Taizi River, but Guangning in Liaoxi.
"Our Tieling Guard is one of the top big guard stations in northern Liaodong! You're asking how many people? How would I know that? What, calculate it by the number of camp soldiers? Mm, one able-bodied man from each household, roughly one camp soldier selected for every ten able-bodied men. We've got more than three hundred camp soldiers total. How many is that again?."
"More than three thousand households, probably over ten thousand