At dawn, Zetian storms through the palace to Yizhi's residence, scythe in hand, clinging to the hope that Qin Zheng fabricated the revelation about her stolen eggs. The guards, unsure how to handle her, step aside, and she pounds on Yizhi's bedroom door demanding answers.

When Yizhi opens the door in a thin night robe, Zetian confronts him directly: were Doctor Hua's shots hormones meant to harvest her eggs? Yizhi's stunned silence confirms her worst fears. She presses her scythe to his chest, demanding to know if a woman is pregnant with her and Qin Zheng's child. She also realizes that the night Qin Zheng breached the glass divider in concern wasn't care, but worry that the doctors had damaged his prized vessel.

Yizhi confesses that he, Sima Yi, and Qin Zheng faced an ultimatum from the gods, and he couldn't bear the thought of Zetian being forced to carry a pregnancy. He made the decision for her, choosing a trusted staffer named Auntie Wei, a mother of two, as the surrogate, with her family rewarded with a new apartment. He admits the procedure worked, Zetian's eggs successfully produced a pregnancy.

Zetian's scythe slips from her hand. She momentarily considers killing Yizhi but recoils, haunted by memories of intimacy in the very room. She recognizes that Yizhi's Brotherhood-rooted dark side, which she always knew existed, has now been turned against her. She tells him plainly that he betrayed her trust, lied to invade her body, and violated her, and that they can never recover from this. Yizhi, looking long-resigned, whispers that he knew.