In the east, Sun Ce is ambushed while hunting by the retainers of Xu Gong, a man he had killed, and is struck in the face by an arrow. Chen Zhen, the envoy Yuan Shao sent, arrives while he is nursing the wound. The physician tells him not to move for a hundred days and not to give way to anger. But after killing the Taoist Yu Ji, he is tormented by visions of him again and again, until at last his wound bursts open.
Before he dies, Sun Ce hands his seal and cord to his younger brother Sun Quan and says. Leading the host of the east to settle things between two armies, you are not my equal. Raising worthy men, using the able and letting each give his all to hold the east, I am not yours. Sun Ce was twenty-six. Sun Quan decides to follow Cao Cao rather than join Yuan Shao, sends Chen Zhen back, and breaks with Yuan Shao in writing.
Chen Zhen returns and reports that Sun Ce is dead, Sun Quan has taken his place, and Cao Cao has made him a general and taken him as an ally. Yuan Shao is furious. He raises more than seven hundred thousand men from Ji, Qing, You and Bing and sets out once more to attack Xuchang.