Guan Yinping looked north, eager to try her hand. "Is this appropriate? If we end up clashing with Wei, we'll be fighting on two fronts."
Wang Yue saw what she was thinking and immediately said with a smile, "We chased Lu Meng all the way to Jingling, so it's only right that Jingling belongs to us! Wen Ping may have the backing of the local clans, but he wouldn't dare do anything to us."
Guan Yinping had wanted to help ease her father's burden anyway. Seeing that Wang Yue supported her, she immediately said, "Then I'll take your advice, sir!"
After the two had discussed it, they left a thousand men to continue guarding Huarong. Five hundred of them were Jiangdong defectors; they were only there as a precaution.
Jingling's garrison numbered just two thousand, but they were elite troops of Eastern Wu, led by Sun Heng.
Sun Heng wasn't as famous as Lu Meng and the others, but he was also resourceful. When his men spotted fires in the direction of the Three Forts, he realized something might have gone terribly wrong.
After all, according to the plan, Lu Meng should have surrounded Jiangling by now. But there had been no news from Jiangling, so Sun Heng suspected something had gone awry. He immediately sent men to investigate and learned that Lu Meng had been defeated.
He hadn't yet decided what to do when he learned that several thousand troops were approaching in the darkness. He abandoned Jingling at once, boarded a ship, and fled south along the Han River.
Of course, Sun Heng hadn't fled blindly. After retreating by ship for a while, he doubled back toward the area near Red Cliffs. Along the way, he gathered more than a thousand scattered soldiers, and only then learned that