Zetian arrives at a Great Wall transit hub with Wan'er and her bodyguard Qieluo, traveling to relocate the Nine-Tailed Fox to the Han frontier. She is unsettled to be received by Auntie Dou, the senior maidservant who once oversaw her spirit pressure test before delivering her to Yang Guang. Feng Xiaobao, freshly castrated and drugged, is offloaded on a stretcher to serve as her co-pilot for the transport, while Di Renjie is flown ahead to Han for actual combat.

Zetian sends Qieluo and Wan'er ahead in the elevator so she can confront Auntie Dou alone. She names her sister, Wu Ruyi, as one of the girls Yang Guang killed, and accuses Auntie Dou of complicity through silence. When Auntie Dou cowers, Zetian flashes back to her own mother's terror under her father and softens. She forgives Auntie Dou but commands her to report any future abuse, warning that the world has changed. Zetian privately reckons with the maidservants she herself killed when destroying the Kaihuang watchtower and Palace of Sages, resolving not to break down lest those deaths be meaningless.

At dawn, Zetian dons the Fox's spirit armor while Feng Xiaobao is forced into Yang Guang's old suit in the yīn seat. Because his spirit pressure is so low, they share no metaphysical realm; his mind only hums faintly behind hers. She treks the Fox south along the Great Wall for over fourteen hours, observing the shift from gray to pink dirt due to Fire-red spirit metal in the south, until she reaches the Southern Ocean.

Sima Yi's briefing echoes in her mind: Hunduns cluster near the shore because they cannot survive deep water, making the Han frontier denser with watchtowers and Chrysalises. Zetian feels the weight of needing to defend this frontier to legitimize her rule as empress. She arrives at her assigned watchtower exhausted and falls asleep in the pilot seat before being roused by Qieluo.

Veiled and helped to the loft, Zetian meets Strategist Huo briefly. The loft has been scrubbed clean of Yang Guang's predecessor, prompting bitter reflection on the cycle of boy pilots draining concubines, dying, then being erased by those same concubines. She reaffirms her conviction that the only way to break this cycle is to grow strong enough to kill the gods, then collapses into sleep.