Zetian enters a shared dream realm with Qin Zheng for training. She finds herself trapped in a guilt-driven nightmare of her crushed family and Shimin, bound by a golden thread of Qin Zheng's spirit metal. He mocks her self-imposed suffering, declaring that morality is a luxury for the powerless. Zetian frees herself, recognizing the dream link could let him probe her memories. When Qin Zheng inadvertently leaks pox-quarantine memories of his own past, she realizes spillover requires vulnerability and uses sympathetic touch to redirect the conversation toward the gods.

Qin Zheng reveals the Heavenly Court's true nature: a massive artificial structure of two counter-rotating rings generating rotational gravity, observed by an executed scholar whose calculations he memorized. He proposes intercepting it with the Yellow Dragon as a one-shot suicide mission to confront the gods, who must be physical beings. Zetian agrees, motivated by Shimin's captivity. They plan to refine calculations using university resources via Yizhi, communicating only deep underground to evade divine surveillance. Zetian suggests tracking Shimin's spirit signature through the recipient of his donated kidney, intriguing Qin Zheng.

Qin Zheng then teaches her about Chrysalises, showing his mentor's Three-Legged Crow (a queen-class) and his own original Black Bird. He explains Chrysalises can take any form; animal/legendary shapes are merely subconscious frameworks, and a pilot's identity must be strong enough to inhabit the form. Zetian proposes recruiting high-spirit-pressure girls as new commanding pilots to handle the frontiers since the Yellow Dragon is poor against Hunduns and reserved for inter-Chrysalis warfare. Qin Zheng warns she's overreaching and that female pilots are still blamed for Zhou's fall.

Demanding "What are you?", Qin Zheng strips away her dream-body layer by layer until she's only nerve impulses, teaching that selfhood is illusion and spirit metal is an extension of the same principle—balance order and chaos to control it fully. The lesson doubles as an implicit warning against replacing him. They're awakened by Yizhi and Sima Yi bringing urgent news: a video released by the rebel leader formerly known as Chief Strategist—Zhuge Liang.