Chapter 1624 — Bing Tang's Origins, Part Two
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"That infant... was me?" Bing Tang had already guessed it; the baby in the swaddling clothes on the snow could be none other than her.
"Yes. By then your little face was red with cold, Palace Master, and yet you had not died -- which left the old palace master and me deeply puzzled!" Xiao Qing said. "When we came to that wilderness, there was no one near at hand. The perception of a Heaven tier expert such as your ** could reach far in every direction; which is to say, whoever abandoned you had been gone at least half an hour. And in that half hour, you, a newborn infant, on that desolate stretch of wild hills under a snowstorm of goosefeather flakes, had somehow not frozen to death. Truly astonishing!"
Bing Tang's face fell a little. A desolate wilderness? Had it been a bustling market town, it might yet be explained as a careless loss; but this wilderness, in the dead of night -- plainly she had been abandoned!
"There was no one there, no sign of human life?" Bing Tang asked.
"No... Otherwise I and your ** could not have ** there!" Xiao Qing said. "We knew the Hidden Tang family was in that town, so we deliberately kept far from their dwelling, precisely so that we would not be sensed by them while **! You must understand that when one **, one calls upon the spiritual energies of heaven and earth all around one; at close range, others will sense it..."
"Mm. Aunt Qing, go on," said Bing Tang, offering nothing more, only gesturing for Xiao Qing to continue.
"At first, the old palace master's thought was that since we had come upon you, it was a stroke of fate; she meant to take you back to the Ice Palace, find some ** to raise you, and keep you in the Ice Palace thereafter," Xiao Qing went on. "But you had gone so long without freezing to death that the old palace master grew curious, and on impulse examined your body to see whether you had suffered frostbite -- and discovered that yours was a pseudo Ice Heart Jade Bone constitution! That is a rare constitution second only to the true Ice Heart Jade Bone constitution, and it suited our Ice Palace's ** exactly. So the old palace master was overjoyed; she had never expected such a stroke of fortune. You should know that the Ice Heart Jade Bone constitution appears only once in a hundred years; even the old palace master herself does not have it!"
"Back then, if not for ** and Aunt Qing, then even with a pseudo Ice Heart Jade Bone constitution, I would have frozen to death..." When Bing Tang said this, there was little expression on her face, but Xiao Qing heard the fury beneath it, and could not help smiling bitterly to herself. The Hidden Tang family, truly -- they had thrown the child away, and now they came looking for her!
"Afterward, the old palace master and I carried you, Palace Master, back to the inn; and on your swaddling clothes we found a single character, 'Tang'. So we guessed that your true surname might well be Tang!" Xiao Qing continued.