After the attack, Cheng Xin asks the security officers to take her to the eruption site. AA insists on accompanying her, and their low-flying cars cross the Gobi, where smoke, small craters, burning vegetation, and damaged buildings reveal the violence caused by the droplet’s passage through the ground.

At the security line, the soldiers still treat Cheng Xin as the Swordholder and allow her through, though AA is stopped. Cheng Xin reaches the edge of a huge funnel-shaped crater glowing with lava. The destroyed site had hidden Earth’s gravitational-wave antenna, and Cheng Xin feels that falling into the crater would be a fitting end for a Swordholder who failed to deter.

Sophon appears in a transformed, militarized form, wearing camouflage and carrying a katana. Sophon tells Cheng Xin that humanity chose this outcome by choosing Cheng Xin, and that Cheng Xin is the only innocent person. AA arrives, furious, and attacks Sophon with a rock, but Sophon effortlessly disarms and terrifies AA by slicing strands of hair from her head.

Cheng Xin asks why, and Sophon answers, “Because the universe is not a fairy tale.” Cheng Xin realizes that Trisolaris spared her not out of mercy but strategy: with the broadcast system destroyed, Cheng Xin is harmless, and as long as she remains alive, others can avoid taking responsibility for any possible backup broadcast.

AA claims humanity still has Gravity, but Sophon reveals that Gravity was destroyed an hour earlier, exactly at the handover, by droplets that had already received their orders before entering the sophon blind zone. Sophon then contrasts Cheng Xin’s low deterrence with Luo Ji’s strength and Thomas Wade’s terrifying certainty, saying that if Wade had become Swordholder, Trisolaris could not have acted. Before leaving, Sophon tells Cheng Xin and AA to prepare to go to Australia.