On the fourteenth day of the third month, just one day after the battle of the Hutuo River and Xushui ended, Chief Zhang Xing of the Exorcising the Dragon Gang gathered his forces briefly, then personally marched on Youzhou.
His force was not large: Zhang Xing himself, eight battalions under Wang Shuyong, Xu Shiren, Jia Yue, Yuan Baocun, Wang Xiongdan, Lord Zhang Shen, Dou Xiaoniang, and Su Jingfang, the White-Stepping Cavalry comprising 287 mounted Reserve Generals under Qin Bao, and a full team of fifty staff officers and thirty clerks led by Ma Wei.
Naturally, Great Chief and Grandmaster Niu He accompanied them, as did the newly surrendered Hou Junshu.
Zhang Xing also summoned Feng Chang and Xu Jingzu from Yecheng, two senior clerks belonging respectively to the Clerical Affairs Department and the Military Affairs Department, ordering them to bring their personnel from Yecheng immediately and join the army.
Another concentration of troops also prepared to cross the Xu River, headed by Li Ding and led by chiefs including Zhang Shiniang, Liu Heihuang, Zhai Qian, Feng Duan, Fang Yanshi, Su Mu, Han Erlang, Chang Fu, and Fan Lihua.
Their task was to help Zhang Xing capture Liangxiang, Zhuo County, and Gu'an along the route from Hejian to the walls of Youzhou, then turn west and join the two battalions Li Ding had left there, forming a powerful force directed at the western front. Besides securing Baling, which they had originally intended to pocket, they were to seek opportunities to strike at Dai Commandery, Shanggu, and Mount Heng, the three commanderies in the northwestern corner of the Hebei plain.
Meanwhile, Chief Zhang wrote orders by hand assigning Xiong Bonan and Xu Shiying to remain in Mo County, establish a main camp, enforce military law, tally military merits, hunt down remaining enemy