Where is the westernmost part of the Qin Empire’s territory now?

It is recorded in Da Qin's "Langya Stone Carvings": Within Liuhe, the emperor's land. It wades through the quicksand in the west and ends in the north in the south. There is the East China Sea to the east and Daxia to the north. Wherever people go, there is no one who is not loyal to him. This stone carving roughly summarizes the territory of the Qin Dynasty. The eastern frontier of the Qin Empire reached the sea, the southern frontier reached today's Guangdong and Guangxi, the western frontier reached today's Ningxia, and the northern frontier reached today's Outer Mongolia.

The Qin Empire established vast territories, which were expanded on a large scale based on the Zhou Dynasty. It can be said that except for the east, the Qin Dynasty expanded its borders in the other three directions. The Qin State was originally a country that emerged from the western border, so the expansion of the western territory of the Qin State has been carried out in all dynasties. The Qin people fought against the Xirong in the Guanzhong land at the beginning of the founding of the country, because the Xirong occupied the Guanzhong land and drove the Rong people to the Longxi grassland. Recovering the Guanzhong land meant that the Qin people truly established the country.

During the Qin Mugong era, the Qin people marched eastward and were stubbornly blocked by the Jin State, a large country in the Central Plains. The Qin army was completely wiped out in the Battle of Confusion. In the end, the Qin people only obtained the Hexi land of the Jin State and the Qin people's eastern border. Only reached the west bank of the Yellow River. After the eastward advance was blocked, Qin Mu Gong raised his troops to march westward. It is said in history that "Mugong Xi dominated Rongdi and destroyed twelve countries. He expanded the territory for thousands of miles, the emperor came to his uncle, and the princes congratulated each other." At this time, the Qin people's westward march reached as far as today's Tianshui City, Gansu Province, is the original fiefdom of the Qin people, Qinyi.

The Longxi Valley is located in the eastern part of today's Gansu Province. It is a valley in the upper reaches of the Wei River and was the dividing line between farming and pastoral civilization at that time. After acquiring the Longxi River Valley, the Qin people did not move further west into today's Qinghai, Xinjiang and other places, but went all out to the east, because the most fertile area at that time was the North China Plain in the east, not the desert in the west. During the period of King Hui of Qin, general Sima Cuo led an army to attack southwest and captured the land of Bashu; in the later period of King Zhaoxiang of Qin, the Qin State mobilized the whole country to build Dujiangyan, which created Chengdu's reputation as a land of abundance. Chongqing was the southwesternmost borderland before the unification of Qin.

After the unification of the Qin Dynasty, General Meng Tian led his army to attack the Xiongnu in the north, but the Xiongnu were more than 700 miles away. The soldiers did not dare to bend their bows to complain, and the people did not dare to go south to herd horses. After repelling the Xiongnu, the Qin Dynasty obtained the land of the Yellow River Hetao and established 44 counties, which belonged to Jiuyuan County and Beidi County. Meng Tian recruited people to develop the Hetao area and achieved good results. He was praised by later generations as the first person to develop Ningxia. To the west of Gansu and Ningxia are thousands of miles of Gobi and vast deserts, which are also the quicksands mentioned in stone carvings. The Qin State had a lot to do after unifying China, so it did not cross the quicksands and then move westward.