While waiting at the Han frontier for her qì to recover, Zetian works to spread the practice of dream-realm sharing to other female pilots, beginning with Qieluo and a Duke-class Balanced Match pilot named Dou Yifang. She intends for the technique to cascade through pilot ranks, reviving experiential knowledge transfer. She also privately wonders whether two same-gender pilots could share a Chrysalis, but shelves the idea due to the lethal risk of testing it.

Zetian devotes herself to literacy and political study under Wan'er, learning of the suppression of women after Zhou's fall, including the violent purges of unbound, educated women. She watches livefeed coverage of the revolution sweeping Huaxia, recognizing that the loyalty of the military, conditioned to defend the elite, is the most fragile factor. She concludes she must prove her own piloting strength independently to deter coups against her and Qin Zheng.

When Hundun sirens sound, Di Renjie joins her in the Nine-Tailed Fox as her co-pilot for the first time. Facing a swarm pouring from the Southern Ocean alone, Zetian is overwhelmed by guilt over killing Hunduns. She panics, ignores Strategist Huo's orders, and flees underwater to think. There, she discovers the Hunduns stop attacking and seem to feel her remorseful emotions, hinting at possible communication.

The understanding shatters when the Whale Bird, a Wood-type Duke-class Chrysalis, arrives to assist her. The Hunduns swarm it, and Zetian, fearing its pilots' deaths would doom female piloting forever, transforms the Fox into a compact Ascended Form, fashions twin lances (later joined into a scythe), and rescues the Whale Bird. On the beach, she covers her erratic behavior by claiming Qin Zheng taught her lost techniques, then slaughters the Hunduns spectacularly to outshine the Whale Bird and cement her image as the Peasant Empress wielding a scythe.