Chapter 83 — The Last Seed Keeper

Vinh Thi Ngoan's son's name was a name she did not reveal even in the darkness of the technical walkway leading down to the security area, only briefly introducing him as "my boy" with an undisguised protectiveness, even though the young man standing in front of them was over twenty years old, skinny but his hands were calloused from many years of working in the narrow pipes of the ventilation system.

“I can only take everyone to the air vent closest to the cell,” he said, his voice an urgent whisper as he led the way through a maze of dark metal ducts, the air thick with the smell of motor oil and metal dust. "From there, everyone had to find their own way inside. I couldn't go any further with them — if I was discovered absent from duty, they would immediately know something was wrong."

“You have done more than we could have asked,” Bach Lam said, placing a hand on the young man's shoulder in a brief but sincere gesture of gratitude. "Come back as soon as you can, so no one will suspect anything."

They continued moving alone after the young man left, weaving through increasingly narrower pipes, until Kien, taking the lead because of his smaller frame, stopped before a ventilation grille that revealed a view down a dimly lit hallway, where two soldiers stood guard in front of a row of heavy metal doors.

"That's the detention area," he whispered, signaling Bach Lam and Khe Mien to come closer to observe.

Bach Lam studied the layout in silence for several minutes, counting the number of guards, estimating the distance and duration of patrols, with the absolute concentration of someone who had spent his life learning how to survive in the most adverse situations. "You two at the front door," he said finally, his voice almost inaudible. "But this grate leads down into a space behind them, near a side door that seems less noticeable."

“We can't fight the entire security team of Upper Dome,” Khe Mien said, worry evident in her voice.

"We don't have to do that," Bach Lam replied, a plan slowly forming in his eyes. "We just need enough time and silence to get in and out before they can react."

He removed the ventilation grille from the frame carefully, without making any noticeable sound, and the three slid down one at a time into the dark clearing behind the two guards, holding their breath as their patrolling footsteps sounded nearby and then gradually faded away. The side door, as Bach Lam predicted, was only locked with a simple mechanical latch, easily pried open with his knife in a few tense seconds.

Inside was a narrow corridor with small cells lining both sides, most of which were dark and seemingly empty. The cold and damp air smelled of rusty metal and another smell that Khe Mien didn't want to name. They moved quickly past each door, peering through small barred windows, until Kien stopped suddenly in front of a cell at the end of the hallway.

“Here,” he whispered, his voice shaking.

Khe Mien approached, looked through the iron bars into the darkness inside, and her heart seemed to stop beating for a moment when she recognized a thin figure, huddled in a corner of the room - Doanh Ba Thong, his face bruised on one side, his clothes torn and dirty, but his chest was still rising and falling with slow, tired breathing.

"Doanh Ba Thong," she called softly through the bars, her voice choked with both emotion and anger at what she was seeing.

He opened his eyes slowly, and for the first moment his gaze had the vagueness of one who has just been awakened from an exhausted sleep, before he recognized the face behind the bars and a faint light of surprise flashed in it. "You... shouldn't have come here," he said, his voice hoarse and shaky with exhaustion. "Too dangerous."

"We won't let you stay here," Khe Mien replied, decisively, while Bach Lam had begun examining the lock of the cell door with the concentration of someone who had no intention of accepting any answer other than success.

The lock was more stubborn than the side door outside, and it took Bach Lam nearly a minute of tension, sweat beading on his forehead from the pressure of time, before he heard the slight click that signaled the mechanism had been opened. The door creaked open, and Khe Mien rushed in, kneeling next to Doanh Ba Thong, helping him stand up even though his body was shaking from weakness.

"What did they ask you?" Bach Lam asked softly, supporting him from the other side as the group began to move out of the cell.

"About the alliance," Doanh Ba Thong replied, his voice broken with pain. "About what I passed on to you guys. I didn't say anything — not because I was brave, but because I knew, if I told even a small detail, they would use it to find out who else was helping me."

They moved as quickly as possible through the dark hallway, back to the space behind where the guard was still standing in the same position, unaware that the side door behind them had just opened and closed silently. Kien climbed up first, pulling Doanh Ba Thong up through the ventilation passage with Bach Lam's help from below, each move performed with utmost caution so as not to make any sound that could alert the two guards just a few feet away.

Just as Khe Mien was the last person to climb out of the gap, an alarm bell suddenly rang out from somewhere deep in the security zone, shrill and urgent, causing the whole group to freeze in a terrifying moment.

"They discovered the cell was empty," Bach Lam said, his voice sharp with the reality of the emergency. "Go now, don't delay another second."

The group moved through the ventilation duct system as fast as they could maintain without making a loud noise, Doanh Ba Thong was practically carried on Bach Lam's back as he no longer had the strength to move quickly on his own, while alarm bells and the distant shouts of the guards echoed throughout the corridors below them. When they finally reached the exit leading to the Base Level, Vinh Thi Ngoan was waiting there, her face pale with worry as she heard the alarm.

“Hurry,” she urged, leading them through the dark alleys of the Base Level at a surprising speed for a woman her age, away from the brighter areas where patrols could appear at any moment.

They reached the old sewer pipe just as the sound of the patrol car's engine began to echo in the distance, and Vinh Thi Ngoan stopped at the screen door, not continuing with them into the darkness of the pipe. “This is where I have to stop,” she said, her voice urgent. “Go quickly, and don't ever come back here, because next time, I may not be in a position to help you.”

"We will not forget your gratitude," Khe Mien said, squeezing her hand one last time before crawling into the dark tunnel.

"Don't be grateful to me," Vinh Thi Ngoan replied, a tired but determined smile flashing across her face. "Remember the Foundation, as you build your new world."

The group crawled through the pipe in near-absolute darkness, Doanh Ba Thong groaned in pain every time his body collided with the rough metal pipe wall, but none of them dared to stop until they were out in the open, breathing the cold air of Dong Tro under the night stars, away from the light and noise of the receding Upper Dome.

They ran for nearly another hour before Bach Lam decided to stop at a rock crevice that was private enough to rest, gently put Doanh Ba Thong down and examined the wounds on his face and body under the weak light of a small lamp.

“You'll be fine,” Bach Lam said after the examination, his voice carrying a note of cautious relief. "There are no broken bones, but he needs rest and fresh water as soon as possible."

Doanh Ba Thong, leaning his back against the rock, was breathing heavily but his eyes had begun to regain some sanity, looking at Khe Mien with deep gratitude mixed with anxiety. "You shouldn't take such risks for me," he said. "If caught..."

"We weren't arrested," Khe Mien interrupted, kneeling next to him and handing him a small bottle of water. "And we won't let you die in a dark cell when you have so many important things to tell the world."

Doanh Ba Thong took a long sip of water, and when he put down the water bottle, his eyes took on a new seriousness, even though his voice was still weak from exhaustion. “You're right,” he said. "Because there's something I never had a chance to tell you, something I hid so well that even Canh Ba Tuyen himself couldn't find it, even though he searched every corner of my office."

The group was silent, waiting in extreme tension as Doanh Ba Thong slowly lifted a layer of lining inside his torn sleeve, revealing a thin piece of metal, as small as a finger, that had been hidden for many days, even during detention and interrogation.

"What is this?" Bach Lam asked, his eyes fixed on that small thing.

"The key," Doanh Ba Thong replied, his voice trembling with an emotion that was hard to name, perhaps relief after months of carrying this secret alone. "The key to what I now believe is truly the heart of all the secrets that Loi Bach Dat and his family have tried to keep hidden for generations. A place deep beneath the Private Archives itself, whose existence even I, after many years of working there, only recently discovered."

Khe Mien looked at the small piece of metal in Doanh Ba Thong's palm, clearly feeling the weight of what it could represent, and in her heart, a strong premonition rose that their journey, despite all the hardships it had gone through, still had a final, most important stage waiting ahead.