 The nationalist forces in Sui (睢) County and Qi (杞) County in eastern Henan, under the command of the corps commander Qu Shounian (区寿年), were besieged by the enemy and the situation was far more desperate than Yanzhou, so the nationalist Reorganized 25th Division was redeployed to Shangqiu by rail to reinforce the battlefield in eastern Henan, and thus inadvertently avoided the ambush set up for them.The nationalist redeployment had left a strategically important town, Yanzhou, dangerously undermanned