Chapter 1610 — Preparing for the Ice Palace
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"Xiaoming, Yuyu really did turn up a lead on Tangtang, though we can't be sure yet whether this person truly is Tangtang... Look, he took photographs — I've asked you over to have a look!" Old Master Tang said.
"Oh! Where?" The moment she heard Old Master Tang's words, Third Concubine seemed to come alive again, her voice trembling with excitement. "Show me quickly..."
But almost at once she caught herself losing composure and hurriedly said, "Father, forgive me... I was too eager."
"Think nothing of it. Yuyu, hand your phone to Xiaoming." Old Master Tang had maintained a perfectly warm manner throughout; an old fox like him naturally played his part to the hilt, while Tang Yuyu's emotion was genuine in any case, so there was no need for him to put on an act.
"Third Concubine, please have a look..." Tang Yuyu passed the phone to her.
Third Concubine took the phone, glanced at the screen once, and let out a cry that nearly sent the device slipping from her fingers. Her eyes were locked fast on the photograph, her throat constricted so that no words could come, and the tears would not stop spilling down her cheeks...
It was a long while before she managed, in a voice too low to be heard, "Tangtang... is it you, Tangtang? It must be you..."
Old Master Tang and Tang Yuyu held their silence by tacit agreement. They both knew Third Concubine needed time to digest the news; anyone who failed to faint dead away with shock at such a moment could already be called strong. After all, when word of a daughter lost for so many years suddenly arrives, no heart can bear it without breaking a little.
"Yes! It must be! Father — the instant I saw her, something unnamed stirred inside me, as though she really were my daughter. It was the pull of blood. I am certain of it: she is Tangtang!" Third Concubine said. "Where is she? I am going to find her!"
"That..." Old Master Tang gave a bitter smile. "Xiaoming, don't be hasty. The matter is more complicated than it seems..."
"Complicated? She..." Third Concubine began, but thought better of it and fell silent, gazing at Old Master Tang with a mixture of hope and urgency.
"Xiaoming, do you know who she is now?" Old Master Tang sighed. "Her present identity is the Palace Mistress of the Ice Palace — an ancient sect!"
"What? An ancient sect? Palace Mistress of the Ice Palace?" Third Concubine was visibly shaken. Though she had been born into poverty, decades spent within the Hidden Tang Family had taught her something of the hidden clans and ancient sects; so to hear that the woman in the photograph was none other than the Palace Mistress of the Ice Palace left her frozen where she stood.
"That is precisely why Yuyu and I are still uncertain," Old Master Tang said. "The Palace Mistress of the Ice Palace — the distance between her and ourselves is simply too vast. How could an abandoned infant of the Tang family ever become mistress of the Ice Palace, one of the greatest of the ancient sects? It beggars belief... And moreover, according to Yuyu, she is a peak expert at the late Heaven-stage! I myself am only at the early Heaven-stage..."
Third Concubine gripped the phone white-knuckled and said nothing, her eyes fixed on the woman in the photograph, her thoughts unknowable.
Old Master Tang and Tang Yuyu, for their part, did not interrupt her.
It was some time before Third Concubine spoke again. "I feel it — she is my daughter. Truly she is..."
"Xiaoming, if you are certain, we shall go in person to the Ice Palace in the Ice and Snow Spirit Mountain. Whether it proves to be her or not, we lose nothing." Old Master Tang had already weighed the matter: going to claim kinship would not really be an affront to the Ice Palace. Unlike the Again-and-Again Tomorrow Sect, which played by no rules at all, the Ice Palace was the sort of power that often could not be bothered to quarrel with the weak. At worst they would make a mistake and be driven out — hardly a dangerous undertaking.