Exhausted from the day's filming of a fake crowning and the demeaning sterilization rituals required to kneel before Qin Zheng in his quarantine chamber, Zetian retreats alone to her residence, unable to tolerate further proximity to him. Sleep eludes her as anxieties churn in her mind.

Her deceased Big Sister appears at her bedside, glowing and gentle. Whether vision or dream, Zetian clings to her and begs to be taken away. Big Sister refuses, telling her there is still much she must fix, and questions why Zetian is allowing girls to be conscripted to the battlefield without a choice.

Zetian defends her gender-equal conscription policy, arguing that women must meet the same standards as men to earn equal respect, and that the prior exemption framed women as weak. Big Sister counters that only three percent of people have Chrysalis-capable spirit pressures, leaving most women unhelped, and challenges Zetian on whether strength is truly the only thing that matters.

Big Sister presses further: not every girl shares Zetian's ambitions. She herself would have been content as a mother caring for a family. When Zetian lashes out that Big Sister died from caring too much, Big Sister rejects the blame, insisting she died because a young man was allowed to murder her with impunity, not because devotion to family was wrong.

Overwhelmed, Zetian curls up and shouts that she is no all-powerful savior. Big Sister kisses her head and leaves her with a parting lesson: the path to freeing women is not by demanding they conform to traits men are praised for. When Zetian finally turns back, Big Sister is gone, leaving the warning to linger.