Fearing that his uncle's ambitious character would harm their family's prestige, Toqto’a and his father, allied with the Khagan, organized a plot to dismiss Bayan.
[3] The three works produced were: At the time some Chinese scholars argued that as the Khitans were former nomadic barbarians, their Liao dynasty did not deserve a compiled standard official history.
The compilation of the Liao Shi was finished in one year[3] by highly skilled imperial historians, but without elaborate proofreading and textual criticism.
[5] In 1353, he began a siege of Gaoyou, the last holdout on Grand Canal which had been seized by a salt smuggler, and was on the brink of succeeding when he was abruptly dismissed by the emperor due to machinations in court.
[5] In 1344, however, a grand plan to divert the Yongding River to facilitate water transport to the capital of Dadu (modern Beijing) generated heavy opposition, and Toqto’a resigned, joining his father in Gansu.
During the 1330s, plague and famine devastated the Huai River area, while unrest appeared in the South Chinese, Manchurian, and the Tibetan borderlands.
With the support of Emperor Toghan-Temür, Toqto’a advocated rerouting the Yellow River back to its southern channel as a way to repair the Grand Canal.
Even so, piracy and the occupation of the Grand Canal at Gaoyou by the salt smuggler Zhang Shicheng still blocked grain shipments from the south and caused hunger in the capital.
However, Toqto'a's former protégé and now court rival Hama of the Qanqli and the heir apparent, Ayushiridara, backed by the Emperor's Korean consort Lady Ki, falsely accused him of corruption and induced the Khagan to strip him of his dignities in 1354.
Although Toqto’a had a vast number of loyal troops under him, on January 7, he accepted the Khagan's (Emperor's) decree and gave instructions to his soldiers that they must respect their new commander who had come to replace him.