Drifting through the eerily quiet corridor of the Heavenly Court with Shimin's body, Zetian tends to her own burns using Helan's healing foam, grateful she had the foresight to bring it. Following the duplicate spirit signature, she reaches a cell containing scattered vermilion fragments—the broken pieces of Shimin's Vermilion Bird Chrysalis—and slices through self-healing high-tech glass to push Shimin's body inside.

Hoping to revive him, Zetian presses a vermilion chunk against Shimin's spinal brace, but nothing happens; his spirit signature remains dispersed like smoke. She frantically tries to reassemble the fragments, starting from the beak, but the pieces drift apart faster than she can join them. Overcome, she hurls one chunk against another in despair, only for both to sail uselessly away.

Suspended in the wreckage, Zetian gazes at Orichaea—the renamed planet—peaceful from above, and realizes the Melians can ignore Huaxia's suffering because distance dehumanizes those below. A familiar, sustaining rage rises in her: the same fury that drove her past Yang Guang, An Lushan, and the Palace of Sages. She affirms an unextinguishable human spark that yearns for freedom.

Accepting that Shimin is gone and that Melian trickery made her kill him by her own hand, Zetian closes his eyes, kisses his forehead, apologizes, thanks him, and tells him she loves him. She lets his body drift among the Chrysalis fragments. Extending her spirit sense, she locates Qin Zheng and Yizhi, now stationary among many other signatures at some destination, and breaks out of the cell to rejoin them.