That's not to mention her incredible ruthlessness and her cunning. Deadlier Than The Male: Literally While Zetian is not a direct physical threat to most men due to her petite stature and bound feet, she is one of the strongest pilots in all of Huaxia and could effortlessly kill almost any male pilot inside a Chrysalis.Nonetheless, she is ultimately fighting to avenge her sister and later to free women everywhere from a horribly patriarchal society. This comes to a head in the book's finale, in which Zetian kills the entire ruling class of Huaxia after their scheming leads to Shimin's (apparent) death. Anti-Hero: Zetian is incredibly ruthless, cold and doesn't hesitate to kill people who get in her way.the first Chrysalis she ever pilots is the Nine-Tailed Fox and she is often called a fox-spirit after her murder of Yang Guang. Shimin describes his out-of-body experience in her shoes as 'walking on daggers'. As a result she is forced to use first a cane and later on a wheelchair to get around. Agony of the Feet: Zetian's feet were crushed when she was younger, as part of the foot-binding process practiced in Huaxia.While Zetian's mother doesn't take an active part in the abuse, she does nothing to stop it either and instead tries to make Zetian accept it. When Zetian returns home from the front lines for a brief while, the first thing her father does is accuse her of leaving the rest of her family to rot while she lived the high life.

Abusive Parents: Zetian's father had his wife and daughter live in perpetual fear of his temper and didn't give two shits that his eldest daughter was murdered.Originally having enlisted to avenge her sister's death, she is forcefully conscripted when she was identified as an 'Iron Widow', a female pilot who kills male pilots to power up Chrysalises. Wu ZetianThe female pilot of the Vermillion Bird and the main protagonist of the book.

The iron widow