Iron Widow

Shimin’s mind-realm is a land made of swords and a lake of fire. Zetian fights to not be consumed by the lake of fire and finds herself attacked by birds similar to the Vermillion Bird. As with Yang Guang, when she finds the child-version of Li Shimin, she pushes him into the lake of fire and kills him, an act that snaps her out of the mind-realm and into the yin-yang realm where she tries to kill Shimin. Instead, Shimin fights back, and the two discover that they are completely equal in power and therefore unable to kill one another. Because of this internal conflict between its pilots, the Vermillion Bird transforms into a mass of cancerous growths that is later dubbed a “Villainous Form” (108).

After her unsuccessful attempt to kill Shimin, Zetian passes out and awakens in the Bird’s cockpit after the fight with the Hunduns is over. Zetian feels sudden sympathy for Shimin after seeing his inner turmoil and speaks to him briefly, one-on-one, before the soldiers take them out of the Chrysalis. The two hold hands briefly for the first time.

Zetian and Shimin are dragged into a meeting with Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi, where they are interrogated over the appearance of the Vermillion Bird’s Villainous Form. Zetian discovers that Shimin has an alcohol addiction and is just as afraid of her as the other men are. Zetian is admonished for not comforting the child-Shimin in the mind-realm to help him pilot, and the strategists decide that Zetian will be housed with Shimin, in the hopes that the duo will begin to cooperate with one another “like husband and wife” (111).

During the interrogation, Zetian learns that her spirit pressure spiked at 18 thousand in her struggle with Shimin, an unimaginably high number. She also learns that some strategists believe she is a fox spirit, a magical creature that appears as a beautiful woman and eats men alive.

Li Shimin is housed in a cramped, concrete jail cell with no windows, and when Zetian is tossed in with him, she worries that he may try to sexually assault her. She vows to retain her dignity no matter what so that she can gain the upper hand in the end. Shimin promises not to hurt her and shares a jumpsuit with her, as Zetian is still wearing the same tattered robes from her night with Guang.

Zetian discovers that Shimin is able to “read” books via memory since the guards have confiscated his library. Shimin, unlike many of the male pilots, feels extreme guilt over the deaths of his previous female pilots and drinks heavily to cope with the collective guilt and psychological trauma. When the lights go out for the night, Zetian panics and thinks Shimin will assault her in the dark, but instead, he explains that he was originally imprisoned because he killed his brothers and father for sexually assaulting a close female friend of his. As a half-Rongdi nomad, Shimin would have suffered discrimination from the authorities, and his brothers could easily put the blame on him if he hadn’t killed them. Zetian berates Shimin for being a hypocrite, arguing that if he cared so much, he wouldn’t get in the Chrysalis knowing a woman would die every time. She declares him to be no different than his brothers. Shimin breaks down in tears.

The pair is taken to the Tiger Cage Training Camp to improve their cohesion as a Balanced Match. Pilots need two weeks of downtime between exerting themselves in battle and are usually sent to the Tiger Cage to recuperate and train. The media is present to spread news of the Balanced Match of the most infamous pilots in Huaxia. Zetian learns from a hushed conversation between Yi and Shimin that Shimin once had a Balanced Match before. Yi tells Zetian that she needs to act like Shimin’s wife now and is thus responsible for his alcoholism and public behavior. Zetian vows to kill Shimin the next time she enters the Chrysalis with him.

Zetian and Shimin reach the Tiger Cage and are swarmed by the media in the mess hall. During their lunch, the other pilots launch a revenge scheme for Guang’s death that neither Zetian nor Shimin is aware of. A worker spills food on Yi’s robes, forcing him to go change and leaving the duo alone. Wang Shicong, the pilot of the Sky Dog, picks a fight with the pair along with another nameless pilot. Tension escalates and turns into a brawl as Shimin fights the two men. The fight escalates into extreme violence as the other two pilots use their qi to try to kill Shimin. Zetian takes great satisfaction in watching the fight and seeing the other pilots get hurt.

Zetian finds Shimin’s pent-up rage very relatable and joins him in the fight. Shimin wins the fight but is sedated and dragged off by guards, leaving Zetian completely alone until Yi returns.

After the fight, Zetian is returned to Shimin’s cell entirely alone. A hooded man, the pilot of Xing Tian, breaks into her cell and assaults her. He tries to strangle Zetian to death to avenge Yang Guang’s death, but Yizhi appears at the last moment and chases the pilot off, saving Zetian.

Zetian realizes that the mess hall fight was a trap, and that the pilots wanted to antagonize Shimin and draw him away from Zetian to facilitate the assassination attempt against her. She wonders how deep the plot goes, a musing that lightly foreshadows Ma Xiuying’s eventual betrayal. Zetian learns that Yizhi enrolled in strategist courses in the hopes of getting close to her and seeing her again. Yizhi apologizes for going against her wishes and trying to marry her in order to stop her plans for revenge. Zetian forgives him and is elated to be with him again.

Zetian is tired of the treatment she receives due to her lower status as a woman and wishes to be shown the respect she deserves. She believes that the arrangement of the gendered pilot system is unnatural and hampers the war effort, and she learns from Yizhi that many of the assumptions spread by the media about Shimin are false. She discovers that Shimin was an impoverished child who fought in an underground fight club in order to be able to afford his high-brow schooling, and that his vision deteriorated due to the time he spent studying in the near-dark of the fight club. Yizhi decides to befriend Shimin in order to visit Zetian regularly without raising suspicions.

When Shimin comes back from solitary confinement, he meets Yizhi and learns about the assassination attempt on Zetian. Yizhi pretends to be a random passerby who happened to save Zetian. Zetian notes that Yizhi seems to feel some kind of attraction to Shimin, and she wonders if he is attracted to men as well as women.

Yizhi convinces Sima Yi that Shimin needs to sober up in order to pilot effectively. Yizhi asserts that he should be allowed to handle Shimin’s detoxification, and Yi agrees.

Yizhi pulls strings with the government and arranges for the three of them to share a high-level suite in the Kaihuang Tower. Officially, Yizhi lives with the pair to help Shimin recover from his alcoholism, but Shimin notices the emotional connection between Yizhi and Zetian, and when questioned, she admits to her ongoing relationship with and love for Yizhi.

Zetian visits Yizhi in the night and attempts to have sex with him for the first time. She learns that Yizhi’s entire torso is covered in tattoos that act as a family brand and mark him as his father’s property. Before the two can become intimate, Shimin’s heart-rate spikes, and he collapses in the other room.

Yizhi and Zetian find Shimin collapsed in his room. His alcohol withdrawal is agitating the severe liver damage he has sustained over the years. Experiencing delirium, Shimin mistakes Yizhi for Wende, his ex-Balanced Match who died in the Chrysalis. It is discovered that Shimin is missing half of his liver and an entire kidney, since death row inmates customarily have their organs harvested before execution. The pair move Shimin into a hospital room with the help of Sima Yi. After falling asleep briefly in the hospital room, Zetian watches as Yizhi comforts Shimin through his illness. The alarms for a Hundun attack go off once more and although Zetian initially believes that they will be excused from the battle due to Shimin’s condition, the strategist An Lushan soon invades the room and demands that Shimin join the battle.

As the group argues with An Lushan and his soldiers, Zetian learns that the military wants to “tribute” both her and Li Shimin. (Tributing a pilot means purposefully allowing the Hunduns to kill them in battle, because when the Hunduns kill a powerful pilot and sense their death, they feel less threatened by the humans and therefore attack less frequently.) Because pilots’ skills lessen drastically after age 25, they are rarely permitted to live beyond that point, and tributing offers a way to dispose of them usefully. If Shimin gets in a Chrysalis in his present condition, he will die. Lushan tries to tempt Shimin with alcohol to get into the Chrysalis before Zetian slaps the bottle out of Lushan’s hand and shatters it. Lushan slaps Zetian, and the room explodes into chaos. Zetian, Yizhi, and Yi drag Shimin out of the scene and escape through an elevator, where Zetian rages at Shimin for allowing himself to be manipulated. Shimin admits that cowardice is what keeps him alive instead of choosing to die and spare the multitudes of women that will inevitably have to sacrifice themselves for him in the Chrysalis.

The Vermillion Bird’s Villainous Form has caused an unprecedented spike in spirit pressure that has greatly agitated the Hunduns. The group suspects that the present onslaught of Hundun attacks indicates the coming of an inevitable, climactic fight, and Zetian wants allies on her side before that happens to ensure that she and Shimin are not tributed. She decides to approach Dugu Qieluo, the female pilot of the White Tiger and one of only two other Balanced Matches in Huaxia.

Zetian bribes the female workers of the Great Wall to tell her when Qieluo showers in the communal bathing area so that she can arrange to meet Qieluo alone and get to know her better. Qieluo is a Rongdi, one of the nomadic people outside of Huaxia’s Great Wall, and has unbound feet, a fact that rouses Zetian’s intense jealousy. When Zetian introduces herself, Qieluo sees through her intentions and turns a cold shoulder to Zetian. She warns Zetian to stay away from her male pilot Yang Jian, who is a distant cousin of the illustrious Yang Guang. During her time in the mind-realm during the last battle, Qieluo saw Zetian in Jian’s thoughts and became paranoid over her partner’s feelings for the other woman, despite Zetian never having met Jiang. Zetian’s attempt to become friends angers Qieluo, who attacks and humiliates Zetian in front of all the other women in the showers.

Ma Xiuying, the pilot of the Black Tortoise and the only other Balanced Match female pilot in Huaxia, helps Zetian up after Qieluo’s attack. Xiuying introduces Zetian to her two toddler sons and states that Qieluo’s explosion isn’t significant, since every man in Huaxia finds Zetian interesting. Xiuying assumes that the bruises on Zetian’s neck from the assassination attempt were caused by Shimin and suggests that Zetian cover them with makeup. Zetian bristles at the idea of making herself look more desirable to others and harshly judges other women who wear makeup to hide the evidence of their husbands’ abuse. Xiuying reminds her that not every woman is privileged enough to make a scene and defy the men like Zetian is. She tells Zetian that she is always available to talk if Zetian needs her. Zetian thinks Xiuying may be right in her view of the world but has a hard time trusting other women.

Unable to find an ally in Qieluo and distrusting Xiuying, Zetian searches for allies elsewhere. She believes that her plan may be successful if she can convince Gao Qiu, Yizhi’s father, to turn her and Shimin into a renegade celebrity couple in the eyes of the public. Zetian reasons that if she leans into the hatred and intrigue surrounding her then she’ll be too big for the military to dispose of quietly.

Gao Qiu is interested in working with Zetian, but due to Shimin’s reputation for killing women, he is hesitant to invest large sums of money into her cause, and he declares that Zetian must survive another fight with Shimin before he will agree to help.

Zetian is introduced to the Vermillion Bird’s spirit armor, which she will wear as one of its pilots. The armor comes with a pair of wings, and Sima Yi insists that she learn how to use it alongside Li Shimin. Afterward, Zetian engages in several cohesion-building exercises with Shimin, and when he leaves to visit the bathroom, Yi expresses his concern over the love triangle between Shimin, Zetian, and Yizhi. Yi insists that Zetian needs to sleep with Shimin immediately in order to improve their cohesion together, but she shouts that she cannot sleep with a man she hates, and Shimin overhears. Before the situation resolves, another Hundun alarm sounds, and the trio is cornered by Lushan’s soldiers. They force Zetian and Shimin to get into the Chrysalis despite their lack of recovery from the previous night.

While the soldiers escort them to the Vermillion Bird, Zetian attempts to fly away with her spirit metal wings. The guards shoot her down, injuring her severely. Shimin is forced to carry her to the Chrysalis, and along the way, he confesses that he cares greatly for Zetian and wants her by his side. Zetian kisses him before they are forced into the Chrysalis, demanding that he fight and survive because the military wants the two of them to die.

Zetian and Shimin struggle to reach a balance in the Vermillion Bird. Meanwhile, the other pilots intentionally let the Hunduns break through the defenses and attack the vulnerable Vermillion Bird. The two begin working together just in time to fend off the Hunduns and join the rest of the battle. Zetian forcibly wrestles control away from Shimin and attacks the other Chrysalis, and although she succeeds in mangling it, she refrains from destroying it in order to spare the concubine-pilot inside. With the qi she drains from the Chrysalis, she turns the Vermillion Bird back toward Kaihuang Watchtower, intending to destroy it.

As the Vermillion Bird bears down on the tower, Yizhi appears on the Great Wall to stop Zetian’s rampage. Yizhi pretends that Zetian has come back to be charged with his qi in order to cover up her attempted treason. Yizhi lends his Wood and Earth qi to Shimin’s Fire qi and Zetian’s Metal qi by joining them in the cockpit. Yizhi’s energy helps the pilots achieve their Heroic Form despite their injuries, and the trio returns to the battle and effortlessly cleans up the Hunduns before Zetian finally passes out from the effort.