Chapter 1626 — A Bitter Memory
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Alone in Bing Tang's presence, Xiao Ming felt both nervous and excited. The person before her was, in all likelihood, her own daughter; yet Xiao Ming did not dare claim the bond rashly, nor did she dare say much. She only stood there stiffly, at a loss.
"Auntie, please sit," Bing Tang said, her tone far gentler than before. A moment ago she had been the lofty Palace Master of the Ice Palace; now she was simply a young girl with no airs about her at all.
"Ah... all right..." Xiao Ming nodded hurriedly and sat down primly and properly.
"Auntie, there's no need to be so ill at ease. One can see how much you fret over your daughter, isn't that so?" Bing Tang looked at Xiao Ming and could not help but sigh.
"I... I... These nineteen years, not a single day has passed that I did not think of my daughter..." At Bing Tang's question, tears instantly fell from Xiao Ming's eyes, bitter and sorrowful: "She was my child, my own flesh and blood, yet only days after she was born she was taken from me... Day and night I thought of her, longing for her to come back to my arms and call me mother..."
Xiao Ming's floodgates opened all at once, and she poured out every bit of the longing for her daughter she had held these many years... In the end, though, it was all yearning and missing, with no real point to it. Yet Bing Tang did not interrupt her; she simply listened quietly, listening to this mother's longing for her daughter!
To be honest, Bing Tang did not much care about Old Master Tang. So what if he was her grandfather? He had abandoned her back then, and that was as good as severing all ties of kinship. But toward Xiao Ming, she could not be indifferent!
From the way Xiao Ming had just cautiously inquired after Old Master Tang's circumstances, it was clear that her standing in the Tang family was absolutely not high—certainly not that of a young madam. Whatever that letter had said about her mother's status was pure nonsense; by the look of it, she had been at most a concubine!
"Then... how did you come to be separated from her?" Only after Xiao Ming had finished pouring out her heart did Bing Tang sigh and ask. To tell the truth, in that instant just now, Bing Tang had wanted to rush forward and call Xiao Ming mother, but she had held herself back and not done it!
For one thing, the matter was not yet confirmed; for another, she had not yet decided how to handle her relationship with the Hidden Tang family.
"Back then..." Xiao Ming's floodgates opened: "My elder sister married a man from a collateral branch of the Hidden Tang family. He was of Tang blood too, but not a direct descendant of Old Master Tang—a side branch, counted merely as one of the clan, except that when taking a wife and bearing children they had to go to the Hidden Tang family to register the names. It was then, when I accompanied my sister and brother-in-law to the Tang house to register, that the Tang family's eldest young master—that is... Tangtang's father—took a fancy to me. Borrowing the courage of drink, he... and I... I wanted to resist but could not..."
Here Xiao Ming sighed faintly. She had no background at all, merely a girl from an ordinary family. Faced with such a thing, how could she ever have been a match for a man of power like Tang Lintou?