Chapter 43 — The Last Seed Keeper

The knock on the door rang out in the middle of the night, strong enough to wake up the entire living room, causing Khe Mien to jump up from the wooden bed in a panicked reflex before realizing it was not the sound of an attack.

"Who is there?" Bach Lam asked through the door, his voice was completely awake even though he was still sleeping just a few seconds ago, his hand was placed on the hilt of the dagger hanging on his side out of habit that never goes away.

"Duong Thi Yen, Secretary to the General Manager," a female voice replied, small and somewhat hasty. "Sorry about this hour. Mr. Wei Baqiang would like to meet privately with the leader of the group, right now, in his office."

Bach Lam opened the door a crack, looking out into the dark hallway lit only by a few oil lamps hanging far apart, where a young woman stood waiting, her hand clutching a small notebook tightly to her chest like an invisible shield.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice still calm but his eyes had changed to a state of high alert.

"I'm not allowed to say," Duong Thi Yen replied, her eyes quickly glancing over her shoulder toward the end of the hallway, a gesture that did not escape the attention of Khe Mien, who had stepped out to stand next to Bach Lam. "But I thought you should know before coming in to see him — the Tunnel Surveillance Team was in the office an hour ago."

That sentence, short but full of meaning, made Khe Mien feel a cold streak running down her spine.

She woke up Ngan The Binh and signaled Diem Quynh and Kien to stay in the room, instructing them to lock the door and not open it for anyone but herself or Bach Lam, before joining him and Ngan The Binh along Duong Thi Yen through the winding stone corridors, deeper into the mountain, to the administrative area they had come to during the day but now, under the sparse light of late at night, had a completely different menace.

Wei Ba Cuong's office was lit, and when the door opened, Khe Mien saw him sitting behind the desk, his face even more tired than in the afternoon, while standing next to him, a tall man with black leather armor different from the brown of the gate guards, arms crossed over his chest, cold eyes scanning each person in the group as they entered.

"This is Han Dinh Sang," Wei Ba Cuong introduced, his voice somewhat tense. "Captain of Tunnel Surveillance."

"You guys arrived at the old monitoring station in the northeast, two days ago," Han Dinh Sang said, not wasting any time with greetings, his voice was deep and even to the point of being scary, like someone who had carefully practiced never revealing his true emotions. “The guard at the gate reported you asking about a symbol engraved on the wall of that building.”

Khe Mien felt her heart stop for a beat. She didn't remember what she said about the symbol to the guard at the gate—perhaps just a passing question when they first arrived, a natural curiosity noted and reported that she had not anticipated.

“We happened to stop by that ruined building on the way here,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. "We're curious about its history, nothing more, nothing less."

"That building," Han Dinh Sang said, taking a step closer, "is located right above Well Seven, less than half a mile from the mouth of the shaft as the crow flies. Ten days ago, that well collapsed, killing three of my miners. And now I discovered that a group of strangers who had just set foot in the Stone Dome had visited that same area, asking about a mysterious symbol, just a few days before appearing at our gate."

"It's a coincidence," Bach Lam said, his voice stiffening, a distinct defensiveness replacing his usual calmness. "We passed by there because it was on the natural route between Sand Dome and Stone Dome. We didn't know anything about Seven Well until the General mentioned it this afternoon."

"Coincidence," Han Dinh Sang repeated, a cold smile that didn't reach his eyes appeared on his lips. "I have learned, in my many years of protecting these tunnels, that coincidence is a luxury I cannot afford to rely on."

He turned to Wei Baqiang, his tone taking on a more formal tone. "Dear General, I propose to keep this group for further questioning, and check all of their luggage."

Wei Ba Cuong looked at Han Dinh Sang, then looked at Khe Mien and Bach Lam, a conflict was clearly visible on his face. "Han Dinh Sang," he said, his voice carrying a note of fatigue mixed with warning, "this is a trade delegation from the Green Dome, not a suspect arrested at the scene. We need evidence, not just a coincidence of location."

"The evidence will come from their own luggage, if the General Manager allows me to check," Han Dinh Sang replied, undeterred by his superior's objections. "Three people are dead, Warden. Their families are waiting for an answer, and all of Stone Dome is waiting to know whether it is safe for them to continue underground tomorrow. I will not let an opportunity to find out the truth pass by just out of diplomatic courtesy."

Khe Mien felt Han Dinh Sang's eyes stop on the seed box she kept close to her body even late at night, a habit she had never broken since the day she left Green Dome, and in those eyes, she saw a cold calculation forming.

“We are willing to show you whatever we carry,” she said, deciding that transparency, while risky, was better than a defensiveness that could be interpreted as a sign of guilt. "We have nothing to hide."

But as soon as those words left her mouth, she realized she had forgotten something - Lai Ba Nguyen's thick file of documents, along with the badge engraved with the Thien Ho symbol found in Dai Van Cuong's box, still in a separate compartment of her luggage, right in the living room where Diem Quynh and Kien were waiting.

Bach Lam, standing next to her, also realized the same thing in that same moment, and their eyes met for a split second, carrying a silent worry that neither of them could put into words in front of Han Dinh Sang.

"Good," Han Dinh Sang said, a cold satisfaction in his voice. "Then we'll start now, with the entire group's luggage, without excluding anything."

Ngan The Binh, who had been silent since the beginning of the meeting, took a step forward, his voice calm but with the weight of someone who had lived long enough to know when to speak up. "Captain," he said, "I have been leading the party through Ashes for more than twenty years. I understand the pain of one who has lost a comrade underground—I have lost mine in similar ways. But I also know that haste in times of grief often leads men to accuse the wrong person, while the person truly responsible—whether mechanical failure, or simply the harshness of the underground—continues to go undetected."

"Are you suggesting I'm looking for a scapegoat instead of the truth?" Han Dinh Sang asked, his voice sharp, although his eyes did not leave Ngan The Binh with a grudging respect for an experienced elder no less than himself.

"I'm saying that fear and grief are bad advisors," Ngan The Binh replied, not backing down. "And I hope you will let real evidence guide you, not coincidence of timing."

Wei Ba Cuong, observing the exchange with the expression of a man standing between two torrents of water, finally spoke, his voice carrying a decisiveness that Khe Mien had never heard from him before. "Han Dinh Sang," he said, "you may check their luggage, in accordance with Stone Dome's regulations for any group staying overnight. But this will take place in my presence, fairly and with full records. I will not allow anyone, not even you, to turn the pain of Stone Dome into a hasty trial."

Han Dinh Sang nodded, a reluctant but accepting gesture, and in that moment, Khe Mien realized more clearly than ever what she had vaguely felt since the previous afternoon — that the Stone Dome was not a unified mass, but a place being stretched between two different wills, between Wei Ba Cuong's fair caution and Han Dinh Sang's extreme fear, and her caravan had accidentally stepped right in the middle. That happened at the worst possible time.

"We need to go back to the living room first," Bach Lam said, trying to keep his voice calm even though Khe Mien could feel the tension building up in every word he chose. "The two remaining members of the crew are there, and they'll panic if strangers show up in the middle of the night without us."

"Okay," Wei Baqiang said, standing up from his desk. "We'll get there together."

As the group left the office, walking back into the dark stone hallway, Khe Mien felt Bach Lam's hand gently touch her back, a small gesture but enough to convey a message without words — stay calm, have faith, we will get through this like we got through everything else. But this time, when she glanced back, where Han Dinh Sang was walking with the cold determination of someone who had already decided on the answer he wanted to find, she couldn't completely believe that silent promise.