Liu Wei () and Yang's brother-in-law Zhu Yanshou, were defeated when they tried to attack Sun there. However, in summer 891, floods greatly damaged Sun's camp, and Sun withdrew back to Yang Prefecture. However, he sent his officers Kang Wang () and An Jingsi () to seize He (和州, in modern Chaohu, Anhui) and Chu (滁洲, in modern Chuzhou, Anhui) Prefectures, respectively. However, Li Shenfu soon counterattacked and recaptured those prefectures. Meanwhile, as Sun had previously feared, Zhu Quanzhong and Yang Xingmi entered into a pact against him, but by this point, encouraged by his own battlefield successes, he decided to pool his forces together and destroy Yang first before heading back north to face Zhu, so he burned Yang Prefecture, forced the adults to cross the Yangtze River south, and slaughtered the old and the young, while taking all of his troops and again headed toward Xuan Prefecture. Yang Xingmi, whose officers Zhang Xun () and Li Decheng then entered and took Yang Prefecture, tried to intercept him at Guangde (廣德, in modern Xuancheng), but Sun surrounded Yang's camp and put it under siege; only through the efforts of Yang's officer Li Jian () was Yang able to fight out of the siege. Meanwhile, another warlord, Qian Liu, then in control of the Hang Prefecture (杭州, in modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang) region, seized Su Prefecture and sent food aid to Yang. Yang, nevertheless, in fear of Sun's much larger army, considered abandoning Xuan in spring 892. At Liu Wei's and Li Shenfu's urging that doing so would mean disaster and that he should wear Sun's forces out by defending Xuan, he remained at Xuan and defended it. Further, at the suggestion of Dai Yougui (), Yang sent the refugees from Yang Prefecture back to Yang Prefecture, hoping that if they settled back in, the news would destroy the morale among Sun's soldiers by making them miss Yang Prefecture. Sun put Xuan Prefecture under siege, but with all of his forces at Xuan, Yang's officers retook Chang and Run Prefectures. Yang then repeatedly defeated Sun in battles, while Zhang Xun cut off Sun's food supply routes. Sun was forced to send out some of his forces, under Liu Jianfeng and Ma Yin, to pillage the surrounding areas for food. In summer 892, after Sun contracted malaria and Yang received news of this, Yang decided to make one decisive surprise attack against