Chapter 41 — The Last Seed Keeper

Six days after leaving Vom Cat, the group discovered that building at dawn, when the light was still at a low angle enough to cast long shadows on the cracked ash floor and highlight a square border that the naked eye could easily miss among the surrounding jagged rock mounds.

"That's not natural terrain," Ngan The Binh said, stopping and squinting at the northern horizon, where a low, half-collapsed structure emerged from the ash like a broken tooth.

Khe Mien pulled Lai Ba Nguyen's notepad out of her pocket and turned to the last page where he had recorded a list of places where the Thien Ho symbol had been reported. Her finger stopped at a neatly handwritten line: *an old monitoring station, about four days' journey northeast of Sand Dome, near the edge of the mountain range leading to Stone Dome — according to a merchant delegation that passed through thirty years ago.*

“This could be it,” she said, feeling her heart beat faster in a way she had grown accustomed to since the day she opened Dai Van Cuong's box.

Bach Lam looked at her, then at the building, a quiet consideration appearing on his face. "We have time to go around and check," he said finally. "But not more than an hour. The cliff ahead is still far away, and I don't want to be stuck on the slope after dark."

The whole group turned away from the familiar path and headed towards the building through a patch of land covered with pieces of rusted metal. Diem Quynh, her eyes shining with professional curiosity, couldn't help but bend down and pick up each piece to examine before dropping it back on the ground.

“Antenna,” she said, pointing to a twisted metal structure rising from the rubble near the half-collapsed door. "Or it used to be an antenna. A large one, used to receive and transmit long-range signals — not something civilians like the Green Dome had before the Great Change."

Inside, what was left of the building was just a single room, the ceiling collapsed in the far corner, letting daylight flood in in a diagonal streak across the dusty brick floor. What had once been a desk was now just a rusty metal frame, and on the wall that remained intact, a faded but still recognizable symbol—two curved lines embracing a small circle in the middle, identical to the engraving on the badge they found in Dai Van Cuong's box.

"This used to be one of their stations," Ngan The Binh said, his voice low as he walked closer to the wall, gently touching the faded paint as if to verify it was real. "A monitoring station, perhaps to monitor the climate, or monitor something else."

Kien, standing near the door to keep watch according to the habit he had developed throughout the journey, spoke up, his voice trembling slightly. “If they had a station here, so far away from the Upper Dome,” he said, “then how big was their network in the past?”

No one answered that question right away, because none of them really knew.

Khe Mien walked around the small room, noting down every detail in a notebook — the location, the direction the building faced, the typeface engraved on a piece of metal sign so rusted that only a few separate letters could be read. She found no documents she could take with her, only physical confirmation that what Lai Ba Nguyen told was not just a legend woven through generations of storytelling.

“We need more information than a ruined building can give us,” Bach Lam said, standing in the doorway, his eyes scanning the sky to estimate the time left before he needed to leave. "The Stone Arch is right ahead, only two days' journey from here instead of going around the old way. If anyone there has heard of this station, or has seen a similar symbol during mining trips deep into the mountain, that will be a much more reliable source of information than we can guess on our own."

"Stone Dome is not a trading partner of Green Dome," Ngan The Binh commented, his tone cautious as usual. "We don't have any relationships to rely on, unlike Sand Dome."

“But we have supplies to trade,” Bach Lam replied, “and a good reason to stop by — we need to double-check our climbing gear before tackling the mountains ahead, and Stone Arch is the only place on this route that can supply spares suitable for the rocky terrain.”

Khe Mien closed the notebook and looked around the ruined room one last time before they left. There was something about the stillness of this place—not the peaceful stillness of a forgotten place, but a heavy stillness, as if the remaining walls themselves still held a secret they were no longer able to tell—that made her feel a vague unease that she couldn't name.

"I agree with visiting Stone Arch," she said, "but I think we should be more careful than usual about asking questions. At Vom Cat, Cau Bach Thinh welcomed us like old friends. We don't have that guarantee here."

"Agreed," Bach Lam said. "We'll ask about the accessories first. About the symbol and about the Guardian Angel, only when it feels safe to ask."

Diem Quynh, having finished checking the metal frame of the old antenna, stood up and brushed the dust off her knees, a slight smile mixed with a bit of worry on her lips. “I think I've learned to know when to keep quiet,” she said. "After the Salt Dome."

The group left the ruined building and continued their journey toward the distant mountains that were gradually becoming more visible on the horizon - gray, jagged mountain peaks, completely different from the monotonous flatness of Dong Tro they had become accustomed to for many weeks. Khe Mien looked in that direction, feeling a change in the air, not just the terrain but something more difficult to define, as if the land itself was warning them of what lay ahead.

That afternoon, when the whole group stopped to rest under the shadow of a large rock, Bach Lam sat down next to Khe Mien, took out the old leather map with worn corners that he always carried, spread it out on his knees to review the remaining route.

“The Arch of the Rock is built into the heart of the mountain, unlike any we have ever seen,” he explained, his finger tracing a squiggly line on the map. "There is no transparent Filter Roof like the Green Dome, no open walls like the Salt Dome. The entire residential area is deep in reinforced caves and tunnels, with only a few entrance gates being strictly guarded."

"Have you ever been there?" Khe Mien asked.

"Once, many years ago, with my teacher," he replied, his voice lowering a bit when he mentioned Tan Dinh Vu, as it always did whenever that name was mentioned. "They treated us fairly, but coldly. The Stone Dome People did not trust strangers easily — not because they were cruel, but because the mountain they lived in was inherently dangerous, and caution became their survival instinct, just as hoarding became Su Dinh Lam's instinct."

Khe Mien nodded, remembering that warning, even though in her heart, after all she had experienced at Salt Dome and all she had learned at Sand Dome, she still held a belief that most people, no matter what system they live under, can be approached with sincerity if one knows how to be patient long enough to find it.

"We'll be okay," she said, half reassuring him, half reassuring herself.

Bach Lam looked at her, a gentleness mixed with worry in his eyes that he no longer tried to hide like the first weeks they met. “I hope you're right,” he said. "But if anything goes wrong, I need you to promise to listen to me immediately, without argument, without hesitation. Stone does not forgive delays like sand or wind."

“I promise,” Khe Mien said, and in her voice, there was a seriousness that they both felt, as if the promise itself was planting a seed of foreboding that neither of them could, at this moment, foresee what it would blossom into.

Ngan The Binh, sitting by the fire sharpening the blade of his jungle knife with a small stone he always carried, spoke up to break the silence that had lasted since dinner. "There's one thing I've learned after many years of leading groups through this area," he said, without looking up from his work. "Places where people have to rely on the ground to live, to dig deep to find what they need instead of planting what they need on the surface, often have a different way of looking at the world than places like Green Dome or Sand Dome. They don't believe in circulation, in sowing then reaping then sowing again. They believe in scarcity — every mine of ore dug up is something that will never come back."

"You mean they'll be harsher on us?" Diem Quynh asked, pulling the thin blanket closer around her shoulders as the cold night air began to seep into her protective clothing.

“I'm just saying that they will see the world differently,” Ngan The Binh replied, finally looking up, the firelight casting shadows on his wrinkled, seasoned face. "That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that we need to remember, when we enter the bowels of their mountain, that we are guests in a world that operates according to rules not unlike the Green Dome."

Kien, who had almost fallen asleep next to the pile of luggage, was startled back to consciousness when he heard the word "mountain heart", his eyes opened wide in the flickering firelight. “I heard people can get lost forever in tunnels like that,” he said, his voice shaking a bit between curiosity and unacknowledged fear. "Is it true?"

"Only if you're alone, have no lights, and don't remember where you went," Bach Lam replied, a rare reassurance in his voice for the teenager. "We will always travel together. That is the first and most important rule in any strange land — no one is separated from the group, not even for a moment."

Those words, spoken naturally like many other instructions he had given throughout the journey, Khe Mien would later recall many times, wondering if it was the universe itself, or this harsh land itself, that had listened and chosen to respond with cruel irony.

But that night, she simply nodded in agreement, pulled her blanket closer, and watched the small fire burn among the familiar circle of people who had become her second family. In the distance, hidden in the darkness of the mountains ahead, a faint light flickered — the first sign of the Stone Arch, too far to see clearly, but close enough to remind all that the next leg of the journey had begun.