Chapter 1631 — A Helpless Outcome: Apart from Tang Yu, Bing Tang Did Not Find a Single One of the Tang Family Pleasing

Though airing such a thing would look like washing the family's dirty linen in public, abandoning Bing Tang back then had already been a disgrace of the highest order, so a trifle like this hardly counted for anything anymore! And Bing Tang had never once asked Xiao Ming about it. Since that was so, all the better—Bing Tang's attitude toward the Hidden Tang family became that much easier to handle. She would treat them purely as clansmen. With no bonds of kinship to bind her, her heart was the lighter for it.

Just as it had once been with the mundane Yu family and the Hidden Yu family, so it now was with Bing Tang and the Hidden Tang family.

Since they could not ask Bing Tang, they had no choice but to ask their own people.

In the Hidden Tang family's conference room, Old Master Tang sat in the seat of honor with a thunderous face, scanning every member of the Hidden Tang family. He slammed his palm against the table and said, "Speak! Who did it back then? Say it now and I will not pursue it—nor can I pursue it. With Bing Tang's standing as Palace Master of the Ice Palace, this can only be treated as a family disgrace, not to be spread abroad. But if I uncover it myself, do not blame me for showing no mercy!"

Years of unquestioned authority had made Old Master Tang's word law within the Tang family, and so once he had spoken, every Tang was cautious to the point of not daring to breathe.

"Silence? Not one of you will speak?" Old Master Tang waited a long while, and seeing that no one spoke, he slapped the table and sneered, "Fine. Since no one will speak, then every last one of you will go and take a DNA test for me. I would very much like to see who did it!"

Of course, after Old Master Tang finished, still no one opened his mouth. They all quietly lowered their heads, each nursing his own thoughts.

"Good. In that case, Tang Yu, call the doctor in and give every one of them a DNA test!" Old Master Tang said in a fury.

"Yes... Grandfather..." Tang Yu smiled bitterly. He had never imagined a scene like this. To think that his own third aunt should have borne Bing Tang by another man! But such a thing could not be spoken of carelessly, and he could only do as his grandfather bade him: fetch the doctor and have a paternity test performed on every member of the Tang family in that conference room.

Once the doctor arrived, Old Master Tang studied each Tang descendant present—yet he found that every one of them was calm and composed, as though it had nothing to do with them at all, without the slightest trace of a guilty conscience.

This left Old Master Tang rather bewildered. What was going on? Could it be that none of them was Bing Tang's father?

The results came out very quickly, and Old Master Tang's guess had indeed struck the mark: Bing Tang was related by blood to all of them, yet where father and child were concerned, there was nothing of the sort! Not one of these people was Bing Tang's father.

There was truly nothing Old Master Tang could do. He could only pass the news on to Xiao Ming. Though he did not say it outright, he hoped she would reveal the truth of what had happened all those years ago.

But Xiao Ming felt deeply wronged. Back then she had been with Tang Lingtou and no one else, and afterward she had Tangtang. She had never so much as touched another man, much less carried on some improper affair with one.

Though the Tang family said nothing, the way those people looked at Xiao Ming had begun to turn strange. When Xiao Ming came into the conference room, she felt as if her face were burning! She truly did not want to come, and yet come she must.

This concerned her own innocence, and Xiao Ming had to make it clear.

But how was she to explain it? How was Xiao Ming to prove it? Just as she stood there at a loss, someone wholly unexpected walked into the conference room.

"Uncle Da, why have you come?" Tang Lingtou looked at Uncle Da entering the conference room and was at once puzzled. Uncle Da might be Old Master Tang's trusted aide, but a family council like this was not something he would attend; he was a servant, and he knew his place well enough.

"This old servant deserves ten thousand deaths! Whatever went wrong, the fault was all this old servant's!" Uncle Da said, going down on his knees before Old Master Tang the moment he entered the conference room.

"Ah?" Uncle Da's sudden move startled Old Master Tang into stillness. They were in the middle of discussing Xiao Ming's affair—what did Uncle Da mean by butting in? Could Bing Tang be Uncle Da's child? Impossible. Uncle Da was only a servant, with not a drop of Tang blood in him. Not now, and not tracing back several generations. The odds of such a thing were all but zero. What wrong could he have committed at a time like this?

So Old Master Tang frowned and said, "Old Da, what play are you putting on? What do you mean, you were wrong? What exactly did you do wrong? We are discussing serious business here. If you have made some mistake, can it not wait until afterward?"

"Old Master, please hear this old servant out!" Uncle Da said. "What this old servant has to speak of concerns precisely the matter of the Third Young Madam's daughter, back then..."

"What? You know? Speak, and be quick about it!" The instant Old Master Tang heard what Uncle Da had come for, he pressed him.

"Yes!" Uncle Da said. "Back then, the First Young Madam sent word for a servant to abandon Tangtang. This old servant could not bear it. I thought, no matter what, the child was still the eldest young master's own flesh and blood—left out in the snow like that, how could she live? So this old servant thought of a way to save the child..."

"What do you mean? Explain yourself clearly!" Old Master Tang frowned, sensing that something was not quite right.

"Yes! At the time, it happened that a daughter had just been born to a member of a collateral branch of the Tang family as well. They brought the girl to the Hidden Tang family to be registered and entered into the genealogy, and this old servant seized that chance to switch Tangtang with their child. The child that was abandoned was that collateral descendant's daughter, not the eldest young master's daughter Tangtang..." Uncle Da said. "And the real Tangtang must have been taken back and raised by that member of the Tang family... Newborn infants all look much alike, so they surely never noticed the switch, and so..."

"What!" Old Master Tang nearly swooned on hearing it. By that account, Bing Tang must be that collateral Tang descendant's daughter—not of Tang Lingtou's blood at all! And that, in turn, explained why Bing Tang's DNA matched a portion of most of the Tang family: because she was related to them by blood as well.

But if so, the Tang family had been sorely wronged. They had been overjoyed at the thought of claiming Bing Tang back, for then the Hidden Tang family would have had a powerful patron. Yet now it seemed it had all come to nothing—how pitiable it was for Old Master Tang!

"Ah! Then Bing Tang is not my daughter... Then my daughter..." When Xiao Ming heard Uncle Da's words, she too turned pale with shock.