Sun Quan

An early victory would have made all the difference, but it wasn't meant to be.

He remained a kind of refugee warlord still who... unlike Cao Cao and Sun Quan, lacked a solid territorial base.

But the battle did yield one great story concerning Liu Bei's sworn brother Zhang Fei.

As Cao Cao's army bore down on Liu Bei's retreating soldiers, Zhang Fei and 20 horsemen, as the legend goes, held off the advancing cavalry.

He spent the rest of his years on the battlefield and was a serious warrior.

Zhang Fei left the scene early in 221, killed, it said, by his own subordinates.

Seeing how things were with Cao Cao, intent on conquering both Liu Bei and Sun Quan, it led these two leaders to consider their options.

And this is where Zhuge Liang entered the picture.

And with an eye towards the future and a sense of fulfilling his destiny, Cao Cao's next big move was to travel to the south of China, where two other powerful warlords had set themselves up in their respective parts of China.

One was Sun Quan of the Wu Kingdom of eastern China, southern Jiangsu, all of the Jiangnan region, southern Anhui, Zhejiang.

They had their capital at modern-day Suzhou and later at Nanjing, then called Jianye.

The other power center to the west used the name of the ancient Shu Kingdom of the Zhou dynasty.

Liu Biao had kept on cordial terms with them and was the one person at that time who remained neutral and got along with everyone.

And a lot of people during these final decades of the Han were desperately trying to kill each other.

The main figures from the Sun clan were Sun Jian and his two sons, Sun Ce and Sun Quan.

Sun Jian was a military commander who achieved renown for his campaigns against the Yellow Turbans and Dong Zhuo.