"Song... Ting?"
Shang Qingzheng stood dazed. She realized that she actually had no particular impression of her father.
Now that he had suddenly been mentioned, he seemed like a distant stranger. She did not even know whether he was alive or dead.
Shang Chaohua, meanwhile, did not pause at all. He sneered and said:
"As for why we did it, it was because we would die if we didn't."
"The only difference was whether one person died or the entire clan was exterminated."
Silence fell over the gathering. It was as though a scar had been torn open, leaving them prickling with discomfort from head to toe. They lowered their heads, trying to look away.
The old man's long beard was disheveled. Once he began speaking, he grew increasingly uninhibited and retorted:
"What? Is this the first you've heard of it?"
"Hasn't this been how things worked for hundreds and thousands of years? This was hardly the only case. How many geniuses of our Shang have filled that pit with their bodies over the generations? What difference would one more make?"
"What talk of exploring a secret realm together? It was nothing but an excuse to lure her there."
For hundreds and thousands of years, no one had spoken of this reason aloud. But however slow the Shang might have been, after several repetitions, they had caught on. Yet no one dared pierce that veil and face the cruel truth behind it.
Jiang Yang lowered his eyes. He had already learned some of the details from True Person Xuan Xi, so there was nothing here to surprise him.
Shang Qingzheng was different. Her expression changed abruptly. Over the years, she had guessed at her mother's cause of death countless times, but this possibility had never occurred to her. She could