Empress Zetian stands in the palace courtyard, now flanked by government offices and decorated with the rotting severed heads of the production crew Qin Zheng executed for failing to identify the leaker of the fake-crowning footage. Despite the leak's lingering damage, no further breaches will be tolerated, and Zetian must rely on grand public displays to maintain authority until her fake pregnancy can be announced.

Before her stand seven girls in pilot coats, the first females conscripted in Chang'an after Qin Zheng extended the conscription criteria beyond boys. Mandatory spirit-pressure testing, supervised by off-duty pilots, has ended the era of bribery and dodging. Zetian intends to mold these recruits into Iron Widows and her most loyal supporters.

She delivers a speech denouncing the old order's exclusion of women, and the girls call out their spirit pressure values one by one with raised-fist salutes. The final girl, Liang Yuhuan, stuns the cameras by reporting 3,463, qualifying her as an Iron Countess. Zetian welcomes her into the Iron Nobles, troubled by guilt at the girl's admiring gaze, knowing power is harder to wield than it appears.

Zetian privately acknowledges these are children unprepared for battlefield carnage, but consoles herself that at least they will pilot their own Chrysalises rather than serve men. As she poses invincibly for the cameras, she glimpses a ghostly figure—Big Sister—shaking her head in disapproval before vanishing.