United Nations Plaza is the threshold between institutional authority and exposed public life in this episode. Luo Ji leaves the historic special session carrying the full psychological burden of the Wallfacer identity, encounters the security apparatus that now regards him with awe, and steps into a plaza where the world has not yet learned what has happened. Within moments, the apparently ordinary public space becomes the site of a violent attack and his emergency removal by ambulance.

Setting and Political Threshold

The plaza lies outside the meeting’s formal interior, but it remains surrounded by the machinery of international security. After Luo Ji walks out past the empty seats, he encounters Shi Qiang, Kent, and black-suited guards near the entrance. The guards continue speaking quietly into radios as he passes, while Shi Qiang and Kent, who had previously treated him naturally, can no longer conceal their new respect and awe. Their changed expressions make the plaza a visible boundary between Luo Ji’s former status and the authority suddenly attached to him as a Wallfacer.

The setting also retains a symbolic connection to the planet itself. At the entrance stands the Foucault Pendulum, demonstrating the rotation of the Earth. Luo Ji passes it without comfort or release, moving through the bare lobby and toward the exit while feeling that the entire situation has become unreal and devoid of logic. The pendulum’s precise demonstration of terrestrial motion contrasts with his own trance-like movement: the Earth turns according to a measurable order, while his place within the political order has become incomprehensible to him.

From Protection to Exposure

Outside, the cool nighttime air and bright lamps make the plaza seem open and ordinary. The delegates have already driven away, leaving only tourists and local people. Because the historic meeting has not yet reached the news, nobody recognizes Luo Ji and his presence attracts no attention. This anonymity briefly strips away the public meaning of the Wallfacer title. In the plaza, he is not surrounded by delegates or addressed as a strategic figure; he is simply an unnoticed man walking through the night.

That apparent freedom is immediately complicated by Shi Qiang’s warning that it may be dangerous outside and by his offer of security protection. Luo Ji refuses and orders Shi Qiang and Kent to move aside. They comply, emphasizing that the security system can protect him only under the authority he has just acquired and chosen to exercise. His passage through the exit therefore appears to be an act of independence, but it also places him beyond the organized protection surrounding the session.

The Attack at the Statue

Luo Ji wanders onto the lawn without knowing where he has come from or where he is going. He stops at a statue of a man hammering a sword, titled Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares, a gift from the former Soviet Union. The composition initially appears as a public emblem of disarmament, yet Luo Ji perceives violence in the hammer, the bulky figure, and the sword being forced beneath the blow. The statue turns the plaza’s political symbolism inside out: an image meant to represent the transformation of weapons into peaceful tools carries an unmistakable suggestion of force.

The suggestion becomes physically real. The man represented by the statue seems to strike Luo Ji savagely in the chest, sending him to the ground and knocking him unconscious before he reaches the grass. The attack collapses the distance between public art and bodily violence, between the symbolic weapon and the actual threat against the newly designated Wallfacer. The plaza’s openness offers no warning and no visible explanation; the danger arrives at the moment Luo Ji has rejected escort and stepped outside the controlled space.

Rescue and Narrative Significance

Partial consciousness returns amid pain, dizziness, and blinding flashlights. Luo Ji recognizes Shi Qiang by his voice and hears the same offer of protection he had just refused. He responds with a weak nod, after which the security personnel lift him onto a stretcher and carry him through a tight circle of bodies. The human ring forms a narrow enclosure around him, leaving only the black night sky visible above until the ambulance replaces it with illuminated ceiling panels.

The aftermath makes the plaza a place of reversal rather than escape. Luo Ji entered it as a person trying to discard the Wallfacer identity and its responsibilities, but he leaves it injured, surrounded by the protection he had rejected, and physically marked by the dangers attached to that identity. Blood in his mouth, vomiting, an oxygen mask, and the continuing pain in his chest transform the political recognition of the special session into an immediate medical emergency. United Nations Plaza thus joins civic symbolism, anonymity, surveillance, and violence in one compressed transition: the public world has not yet recognized Luo Ji, but the forces organized around his new role already have.