As the battle continues, Ling zhi tries to find out what's going on between the emperor and his wife. She finds out that the emperor is in love with Lady Ling, and that he's planning to make her a consort soon. She begs the spirit queen to help her survive in the harem. The spirit queen tells her that consort huan isn't a wise woman, but she's just a "humble beauty" who can't be harmed by the emperor's love for her. She's not a threat to the emperor, she says, and she doesn't need to worry about the empress's power. The empress is still in charge, and he won't have a successor with a concubine. Even if she were to have a son, she'd have to give birth to him to be her leverage. She married the emperor only for peace, because she couldn't bear a child to use as leverage to get her husband's hand in marriage. The blood running in her veins is still unknown, and the origin of her blood is still a mystery. She says that she'll stick it out in the battle, and if she has to kill her, that's the way to do it. She knows that the phantom women are going to punish her for telling the emperor who slapped her, so she tells the story of how she was humiliated when she was questioned by a slave. She felt humiliated because she was just a tool for the emperor to marry him for political reasons. The phantom women have been treating the emperor like a king for a long time, and they've even tried to pick on him if he tells them who slapped him. They'll punish the woman who slapped you, too, if you tell the emperor.