He was trusted by his father, the emperor Kangxi, to lead the imperial forces against the dynasty's greatest threat of the time, the Dzungar Khanate.

In 1718, after Dzungar forces defeated a Qing army along the Salween River in Tibet, the Kangxi Emperor appointed Yinti as "Great General Who Pacifies the Frontier" (撫遠大將軍) to lead an army of 300,000 into Tibet to attack the Dzungars and their leader, Tsewang Rabtan.

On 24 September 1720, Yinti's army captured Lhasa and returned the Dalai Lama to the Potala Palace.

On 21 December 1722, just as Yinti was planning for a conquest of the Dzungar Khanate, according to official accounts, he received news of the Kangxi Emperor's death and was immediately summoned back to the capital, Beijing, to attend his father's funeral.

It is now known, through Yongzheng's correspondence, that he was called back either by his own father (presumably to arrange for Yinti's succession to the throne), or his brother Yongzheng (under the name of Kangxi and with a forged edict that only mentioned the inheritance matter and not Kangxi's death) who wanted to deceive him into renouncing his military powers.

[4] By the time Yongzheng died in 1735, it was reported by the Korean emissaries that he was kept at the back garden of the Old Summer Palace (where his brother usually lived).

He angrily retorted that Maersai [zh], the man who was sent to persuade him, should be killed before he accepted to serve Yongzheng in any capability (Maersai played an important role in suppressing Yinti during Yongzheng's succession or usurption of the throne and after the case of Cai Huaixi, who sent a letter to Yinti to invite him to reclaim the throne).