retained his title "King of Wu". Early stages In early 222, Liu Bei personally led the Shu army to attack Sun Quan and retake his lost territories in southern Jing Province. Sun Quan appointed Lu Xun as Grand Chief Controller () and put him in command of 50,000 troops to resist the enemy, with Zhu Ran, Pan Zhang, Song Qian, Han Dang, Xu Sheng, Xianyu Dan (), Sun Huan and others serving as his subordinates. The Shu army passed through Wu Gorge (), Jianping () and Lianping () until they arrived on the outskirts of Yiling (夷陵; present-day Yichang, Hubei), where they laid siege and built several camps. Liu Bei bribed the local tribes in Yiling with gold and silk to support him. He appointed Feng Xi（馮習） as his Chief Controller, Zhang Nan () as the vanguard, and Fu Kuang (), Zhao Rong (), Liao Chun () and Fu Rong as the controllers of the various divisions. He also sent Wu Ban to lead a few thousand men to construct camps on flat ground and provoke the Wu forces into attacking them. When the Wu generals wanted to respond to the enemy's taunts, Lu Xun said, "This must be a trick. We should observe first." Earlier on, when the Shu army first arrived at Yiling, the Wu generals wanted to attack the enemy, but Lu Xun objected and said, "Liu Bei is leading an army east to attack us and his army's morale is very high. Besides, his forces are based in high and mountainous terrain, so it's difficult for us to attack them. Even if we manage to win, we cannot completely defeat them. If we suffer any setback, our morale will be greatly affected and this isn't a small issue. Now, we should raise our troops' morale and make plans while waiting for changes in the situation. If we're on plains and flat ground, we should be worrying about sustaining heavy losses in skirmishes and charges. However, since the enemy is on mountainous terrain, they can't carry out an all-out assault because they're sandwiched between wood and rocks. We should take advantage of this weakness of theirs." The Wu generals did not understand Lu Xun's reasoning and thought that he feared the enemy so they were very disgruntled with him. When Liu Bei realised that his plan to lure Wu forces into attacking him had failed, he led