The battle was on between Guan Yu, Yue Fei, and Baron against Ho Yang and Gou Shi. Both sides sent small waves of their own ships against each other to see how best to maneuver their ships to have the most impact on the battlefield as a whole. Ho Yang was fighting right on the front lines during all these entanglements and her progress was very apparent, so, to counter this, Guan Yu was sent to stall Ho Yang.
The two of them were fairly strong fighters, therefore, it would not be easy for either to take each other down. This battle was mainly between guns and cannons, but being both traditionalists, the two of them fought on different ships by shooting arrows and leading the soldiers under their command to move forward.
Guan Yu was the clear winner in the archery aspect and he was able to deal quite a bit of damage to the enemy soldiers. This is impressive considering there were bombshells and all that exploding around them. Ho Yang could not hope to best Guan Yu in this aspect so she decided to lead a few ships to get closer to the sloop of warships that Guan Yu was leading. Once they met, the two sides found themselves evenly matched.
Baron and Yue Fei knew that no matter how skilled Guan Yu was, there was no way one man could win a war against thousands of enemies. This was why they had banked on separate other plans that they had planned out for Ho Yang and Gou Shi. The first day of battle ended with nothing else of import and the two sides had both suffered about 20,000 losses and 100-150 ships.
On the second day of battle, Guan Yu was sent once again to stall Ho Yang, and once again they found themselves evenly matched. This meant that both sides had to make additional moves if they wished to make any leeway towards defeating each other. Aside from just conventional attrition style warfare, of course. Once Baron was sure that Ho Yang was being dealt with by Guan Yu, he immediately sent Yue Fei to lead another attachment to strike right at where they believed Gou Shi's ship was.
Though Yue Fei was not as great a fighter as Guan Yu, he was still more than enough to handle most non-strategists. However, this time he and his crew were equipped with the ancient flamethrower. It may not be as powerful as the other weapons that they had, but the mass confusion that it caused was more than enough to justify using it.
In response to this provocation by Baron, Gou Shi sent in 5 of his inner circle members and was able to drive away Yue Fei but not without some cost. The damage that was done to their ships was repairable, but it would take some time. Their ships were indeed better at defense than Baron's but that didn't mean that they were able to completely block out the flame damage that the flamethrowers had caused. By the end of the day, the tally for both sides came down to 1,600 ships for Baron and 650 ships still in working order with another 100 ships under repair for Gou Shi.
On a naval battle of this scale with tens of thousands of soldiers, ships were everything. That was why both Gou Shi and Baron had sent a few soldiers into each other's camps in order for them to torch down as many ships as they could and get out safely. Well, this was a common tactic so both sides were able to capture each other's spies before they could do any extensive damage to the ships. However, Baron sent in another group with different intentions.
Since Gou Shi's army was all sleeping aboard the ships that they were fighting they would be sent in to get rid of the cannons and guns. The risk associated with this task was no walk in the park, plus it was almost certainly guarded by a few men. Still though, the need for this mission was of the utmost importance. Guan Yu and Yue Fei were all going to be participating in this night strike and they would both be leading about 10 men each. A few more teams would be going to infiltrate along with the two groups led by Guan Yu and Yue Fei.
Now, there would be no way that this sort of crazy plan would work without any sort of distraction so Baron would be leading a force of about 600 ships to allow these teams the time and opportunity to be effective in their work. This combined night strike between the three of them would have to be coordinated very well if they were to deal sufficient damage to the enemy.
The finalized plan will be Baron initiating a night raid on Gou Shi's remaining ships and drawing attention away from Guan Yu and Yue Fei long enough for them to sneak into the enemy ships on small ships that were dwarfed by the Ironclads that they were going to be infiltrating. A few men would remain on these small ships so that once the deed has been done they could quickly make their way into the next ship and so on and so forth.
It was likely that it was going to be the two strategists' group that would be the most successful in this operation. There were a few other groups that were led by strategists that had sworn loyalty to Zi Bo and Zi Ji Ge that would be sprinkled in as well. This might not have been a bad plan, but there were many assumptions with this and all three of them knew it. They could only hope that they could get away with this what they had planned to get out of it.
They set the plan into motion that very night on the second day. Baron managed to draw the attention splendidly, however, after that point, the plan went almost instantly into disarray and the plan had to be scrapped.