After Ye Wenjie finishes telling Wang Miao the story of her first contact with Trisolaris, Wang asks how the ETO grew so powerful. Ye delays that explanation and instead turns to Wang’s nanomaterial research. She explains that Trisolaris fears mass-produced ultrastrong nanomaterials because they could make a space elevator possible, which would let humanity build large defensive structures in near-Earth space. Ye also says the countdown and related interference are meant less to stop applied work directly than to confuse scientists, especially in basic research.

Wang then asks what happens when the countdown ends and how Ye’s daughter died. Ye admits she does not know what lies at the end of the countdown and avoids answering directly about her daughter, retreating to the idea that the ETO’s efforts are small and almost meaningless compared with Trisolaran power. Before the conversation can continue, soldiers suddenly storm the abandoned cafeteria. Wang realizes the operation is being carried out by the army, not ordinary police, and Shi Qiang enters behind them to take control of the room.

The soldiers surround the ETO members, and Shi Qiang warns them that normal legal restraint no longer applies because they have made themselves enemies of humanity. In response, three ETO members rush to the three-body sculpture and seize its metal spheres, claiming they are nuclear bombs and demanding Ye’s release. An explosives expert tests the spheres by weight and shows that two are fake, but the young woman’s sphere is heavy enough to contain fissile material. The standoff becomes more dangerous when the expert concludes that at least one device is real, even if its triggering mechanism cannot be fully confirmed.

Shi Qiang rejects sniper options and instead tries to destabilize the young woman psychologically. He approaches her and claims that her mother has been found, correctly guessing that the news will shake her concentration. As another ETO member steps in to take the envelope, Shi Qiang uses the brief obstruction to fire. The real bomb explodes, but only as a conventional blast rather than a nuclear detonation. In the aftermath, more than a dozen ETO fighters are killed in the gunfight, more than two hundred members including Ye Wenjie are arrested, and the young woman dies. Shi Qiang survives because another man shields him from the blast, but he suffers severe radiation contamination. Speaking to Wang afterward from an ambulance, Shi Qiang admits that his mention of the woman’s mother was only an instinctive bluff, and he marvels that Wang had been right that aliens truly were behind everything.