At the end of October, Guan Yu ordered Meng Da to command the Nanxiang forces and strike first to seize Li County in northwestern Nanyang. Guan Yu himself led the main force northward against the Yushui River, once again taking Chaoyang and Xinye, which he had occupied the previous year.
Beginning with the landings at Chaoyang and Xinye, Guan Yu divided the Jing Province army into left, center, and right columns.
Guan Yu personally commanded the left column along the western bank of the Yushui River to attack Rang County and Nieyang; Su Fei and Zhou Cang led warships up the Yushui River as the central column's vanguard; Guan Ping and Pang De took the eastern bank with the right column to attack Yuyang and Jiyang; Meng Da's Nanxiang detachment seized Li County, then moved south along the Tuan River to attack Champion County, ultimately joining Guan Yu to besiege Wan City.
Though Guan Yu's several forces appeared scattered, they were in fact a unified whole. The left and right columns advanced and retreated together with the central naval force; when they encountered a large Wei Army force, they could rely on the warships in the river to fight.
After Su Fei reinforced the Northern Jing battlefield, the navy shifted directly from primarily transporting supplies to a state of war. The large warships were all fitted with fixed siege towers, equipped with powerful crossbows and devices for hurling Fire Meteors. These tools of slaughter had an extremely long range and could inflict heavy casualties on enemy troops within a certain distance of the shore.
Using the deadly weapons of warships for land warfare was an original tactic Guan Yu had developed through experience. The chief reason lay in the distribution of Nanyang Commandery's cities. Nanyang's terrain was flat and crisscrossed