However, with Li Baochen realizing that Liu had taken precautions, he stopped his attack. After Li Baochen died in 781, Li Baochen's son Li Weiyue requested imperial sanction to succeed him, but Emperor Daizong's son and successor Emperor Dezong refused, and subsequently, Li Weiyue, along with his allies Tian Yue (Tian Chengsi's nephew, who had succeeded Tian Chengsi in 779), Li Na, and Liang Chongyi, prepared to wage war against the imperial government, and the imperial government responded in kind. Emperor Dezong commissioned Zhu to attack Li Weiyue from the north, and Zhu did so; his victories eventually caused Li Weiyue's subordinate Wang Wujun to assassinate Li Weiyue and surrender. After the victory at Chengde, however, Emperor Dezong made a series of moves that simultaneously alienated Zhu and Wang. He refused to give Chengde's Shen Prefecture (深州, in modern Hengshui, Hebei) to Lulong, as Zhu had requested. Rather, he divided the seven prefectures of Chengde into three smaller circuits, making Zhang Xiaozhong, the first major Chengde officer to submit to Zhu and join Zhu's operations against Li Weiyue, the military governor of a newly created Yidingcang Circuit (易定滄, headquartered in modern Baoding, soon renamed to Yiwu (), consisting of three prefectures, while giving two prefectures each to Wang and Kang Rizhi (康日知, another Chengde general who had submitted to imperial authority during the campaign), with the lesser titles of military prefect (團練使, "Tuanlianshi"). Emperor Dezong, on paper, gave Lulong two additional prefectures — De (德州, in modern Dezhou, Shandong) and Di (棣州, in modern Binzhou, Shandong) — both still then held by Li Na. Zhu was angered by Emperor Dezong's refusal to give him any part of Chengde territory (in particular, Shen Prefecture) and requiring him to capture two additional prefectures on his own, while Wang was angered that contrary to Emperor Dezong's implicit promises to give whomever killed Li Weiyue Li Weiyue's offices, he not only received a lesser title, but was in a position where he could easily be destroyed.