Sources differ on how the battles played out. The 12th century Korean source "Samguk Sagi" states that Guanqiu Jian's army invaded in the eighth lunar month of the year, but was twice defeated before winning the crucial battle that sent the king back to the capital. The first battle, according to "Samguk Sagi", pitted King Dongcheon's 20,000 foot and horse soldiers against Guanqiu Jian's 10,000-man-strong army on the Hunjiang River, which Goguryeo won and beheaded 3,000 Wei soldiers. The second engagement was described to have happened in a "Dale of Liangmo" (梁貊之谷), where Goguryeo again bested and captured and killed 3,000 more soldiers. The two victories seemed to have got into the king's head as he remarked to his generals: "The Wei army, so enormous, cannot match a small force of ours, Guanqiu Jian is a great general of Wei, and today his life is in my hands!" He then led 5,000 ironclad horsemen to lead the charge against Guanqiu Jian, who put his troops in square formation and fought desperately. In the end, 18,000 Goguryeo men were killed in this last battle, and the defeated king fled to the Plain of Yalu (鴨綠原) with a little more than a thousand horsemen.