After Cheng Xin is discharged, AA tells Cheng Xin that Sophon, the Trisolaran ambassador embodied as a beautiful robotic woman, wants to meet. Cheng Xin and AA visit Sophon’s tree-house dwelling, where Sophon performs an elaborate Japanese tea ceremony. The ritual’s beauty and calm make Cheng Xin feel the fragility of the peaceful, feminized world, and Sophon quietly urges the women to protect it.

The next day, six Common Era men who are candidates to replace Luo Ji as Swordholder visit Cheng Xin. Their old-era masculinity and emotional opacity unsettle Cheng Xin. Bi Yunfeng, who helped save Cheng Xin by warning the police, is among them, but the group’s main purpose is to persuade Cheng Xin not to run.

The candidates argue that Cheng Xin would almost certainly win because the public sees Cheng Xin as gentle, angelic, and nonthreatening. They insist that Cheng Xin lacks the political experience, judgment, and psychological hardness required to maintain deterrence, while Cheng Xin senses that the men may conceal dangerous ambitions. After the meeting, Cheng Xin and AA discuss the terrible burden of the Swordholder’s life and the dark attraction of having power over two civilizations.

A week later, at the UN handover ceremony for the DX3906 planets, the PDC chair asks Cheng Xin to declare her candidacy. He argues that any of the six existing candidates could create panic, empower hardliners, and endanger the peace and exchange developing between Earth and Trisolaris. Cheng Xin then faces a crowd that sees Cheng Xin as a protective Madonna figure; a young mother places a baby in Cheng Xin’s arms and begs Cheng Xin to save the world from violent men.

Holding the baby, Cheng Xin concludes that Cheng Xin has no real choice. Cheng Xin feels pushed into the savior role, discovers that Cheng Xin’s responsibility toward the new world is maternal instinct, and remembers Yun Tianming’s sacrifice as a debt Cheng Xin must repay. Cheng Xin also recalls Cheng Xin’s own childhood: Cheng Xin was abandoned as an infant, adopted by a woman who gave up relationships to protect Cheng Xin, and later raised in a loving family. Remembering that love, Cheng Xin decides to act for love and declares that Cheng Xin will be a Swordholder candidate.