In this chapter, we learn that the gods have destroyed the last of their creations, and that they're using it as an excuse to destroy the rest of the world. We learn that before the war, the people of the north used to worship nature and celebrate life, but when war consumed their land, they lost their faith in nature and worshipped the gods instead. They were defiled by their arrows, and now they worship the gods. The gods, he says, are the ones who created the calamity and the epidemic. He says that he can create an army for the people, but that they must pay for their sins. He tells them that he's killed the god of the golden mask and taken princess me to the west, and he says that no one else will ever know the crimes they've committed now that he has killed him. He reminds them that their culture will eventually perish, but it will survive in different forms and shapes. If they don't want history to rewrite their culture, they should allow it to live on. The walls of the cauldron are lined with soul butterflies. The smell of soul butterflies makes the people smell alive. They've spent so much time in the crucible that their bodies should have been transformed by now. They should be boiled alive too, he tells them. He asks if he can use the perfume to cure the people. He's not sure, but he knows that it might help.