By spring 552, Wang and Chen had arrived at Jiankang. They repelled Hou's counterattack against them, and then defeated his troops. Hou abandoned Jiankang and fled east. Wang entered Jiankang, but while most of Hou's generals surrendered, those north of the Yangtze River instead surrendered to Northern Qi. By Xiao Yi's orders, the general Zhu Maichen () found Xiao Dong and threw him and his brothers Xiao Qiao () and Xiao Jiu () into the Yangtze River to drown. Meanwhile, Hou, in flight, was killed by his own attendant Yang Kun (name not in Unicode). Around the same time, Xiao Ji, not realizing that Xiao Yi had already defeated Hou, claimed imperial title himself.