Cheng Xin and 艾 AA arrive in Australia with the earliest forced migrants and choose a harsh interior resettlement zone near Warburton instead of a more comfortable city. Cheng Xin lives as an ordinary refugee and becomes a target for public rage because people blame the failed Swordholder for surrendering deterrence. Her shelter-mates curse her, steal her rations, and attack her until AA violently defends her, but harassment from nearby migrants continues. Cheng Xin accepts the hatred as deserved punishment.

Elder Fraisse, an elderly Aboriginal man, invites Cheng Xin and AA into his house, giving them physical safety and emotional calm. Fraisse’s home preserves Aboriginal culture, and his reflections on historical dispossession frame humanity’s new condition in Australia as a bitter repetition of reservation history. After performing a Māori war haka, Fraisse tells Cheng Xin that she failed to hold the enemy’s gaze but insists the failure was not truly her fault.

The next day, Cheng Xin visits Wade, who is working as a prisoner with one sleeve empty and his will unbroken. Wade warns Cheng Xin to leave Australia before resettlement is completed, but he refuses to explain. Cheng Xin is frightened by the implication and later tells Fraisse, who advises that Wade should be believed even though escape is practically impossible; Cheng Xin decides she will not leave.

As the Great Resettlement advances, Australia fills with billions of people, while the Martian base becomes the second human reservation and the rest of human space civilization is emptied. Overcrowding, food shortages, lack of communication, and governmental helplessness lead to violence and authoritarian thinking. Sophon publicly kills refugees at a food distribution center to impose order, and later the Sydney Incident and Canberra Massacre accelerate the collapse of democratic norms. Humanity increasingly clings to the approaching Second Trisolaran Fleet as its only hope.

When resettlement is complete, most humans are confined in Australia, while the Earth Security Force enforces Sophon’s orders outside the reservation and the Earth Resistance Movement fights a hopeless guerrilla war. At dawn, ESF bombers attack Australian infrastructure, confirming Wade’s warning. Cheng Xin tries to contact Sophon through local authorities, hoping to act before disaster spreads, but an emergency broadcast from Canberra reveals Sophon’s true plan: Australia will be sealed off, all modern technology and electricity eliminated, and the population forced into a survival struggle that will reduce 4.2 billion people to thirty to fifty million.

Cheng Xin collapses and wakes blind amid panic. An Earth Security Force commander says Sophon sent a team to rescue Cheng Xin, and Sophon speaks to Cheng Xin by phone. Cheng Xin refuses rescue for herself and asks only that AA and Fraisse be taken from Australia; Sophon agrees, revealing that she has been protecting Cheng Xin all year. Cheng Xin remains behind in darkness, understanding that most people will die because they will not become cannibals, and she thinks of babies and motherhood as humanity reaches what feels like its final end.